Network Effect

I am LOVING this series, and this novel was no exception.

With all the inner monologue and 4th-wall breaking (and the asynchronous HelpMe.file insertions), I keep thinking "how could this be rendered in video?" (Except I didn't think "render" in my head, because holy cow, is it pretentious.)

And my conclusion is: it would be tough, and very few could do it. I'd love to see it done well, but 99% of book-based video is so "lossy", to appropriate a criticism of JPEG as compared to GIF. ("Lossy" meaning all those delicate plot and character nuances are lost.)

The first few books of the Murderbot series were very short. This one is the first true novel-length installment and it features all the usual fun:

• Murderbot is trying so much to read humans and understand their communication
• Murderbot is learning to navigate its own emotions
• Murderbot meets ART again, and they are both fond of each other, trying to learn to have a relationship from one bot to the other

And of course, all of it is very funny. Murderbot shut down its own governor module, which was installed to make sure it complies to human orders. Now, murderbot only complies to its own motivations and rules. But another task of the governor module seems to have been anger management, and without such module, murderbot is angry most of the time.

I really loved this book, the best so far. I'm ordering the next two installments now.

This series gets more addicting with each installment. The first four books were almost too short, and reading this one felt like I was finally really getting to dig in to the world of Murderbot. Consider me thoroughly hooked!

Enjoyable, but I got bogged down in the middle for a good while: I suspect I prefer this kind of story at novella length.