Murderbot Diaries – Book Series Review

Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells – Review by @arcana_reads

I wish some characters could be torn off pages and dropped into reality. Quite a selfish take, considering Murderbot wouldn’t like it one bit. Murderbot is well, a robot, which has hacked its governor module – a program that makes it obey its overlords aka humans.

After becoming the master of its actions, Murderbot realised something that takes some of us humans 35 years (and a pandemic) to comprehend. That complete freedom from societal bonds is best utilised by…. consuming media. Constantly. Always. That’s it.

The basic premise of the series is if AI is truly “intelligent” and coldly logical – do you really believe that after seeing us humans gloriously fuck up everything we touch, they will want to rule… US???? Like, why? Why would an intelligent and logical system look at its new-found freedom and immediately decide “wow lemme kill me some humans”?

Martha Wells’ Murderbot is probably the first logical and sane robot I’ve ever read. Anyway, I digress. Wells has released six books till date – most of them quite short and easy to race through. The first book (All Systems Red) is a novella – which is the perfect springboard to launch a series, IMHO. All series should start with a novella. Authors, please take note.

None of the books end on a cliffhanger and at least till book 5 they continue as a series. Book 6 (Fugitive Telemetry) feels a bit like a standalone novel (and equally fun to read).

Book 2 (Artifical Condition) is my favorite. The sarcastic, dry-humored banter between the aptly-named ART and Murderbot is fun. The most engaging part of the entire series is Murderbot’s take on humanity – relationships, emotions, daily life, essentials.. everything. But I’m also worried that more it comes closer to the dark side (aka adopts humanity), it might get boring.

Wrapping this up on a happy note because Goodreads indicates there are three more books in the offing. Definitely recommend!

Rating (for all six books) : 5/5

This book review is by @arcana_reads (Click to follow on Instagram)