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Network Effect
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May 2023 READER Network Effect by Wells
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i loved this one. funnily enough i kind wished it was shorter. lol i really got used to the novellas.
I'm about a third of the way through. It's good to see old friends return in this book.
My review of Network Effect, posted on Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...and re-posted here (Spoiler-free)
4 Stars
The Murderbot story continues in Network Effect, and much to my delight, it's a full-length novel rather than a novella as the previous installments of this series. Murderbot has grown significantly, yet he still has that petulant child-like distaste for everyone else, primarily humans, and has awkward relationships with other robots. In addition, Murderbot suffers from anxiety and depression and a longing to be free, so he disabled the governor module in his SecBot technology. However, Murderbot's usual MO in the past books is different in this book, and it's terrific. Again, we have friendly and hostile humans and friendly and hostile bots. We also get an old friend who's altered and makes Murderbot grow up a little and expand himself in ways we may not have expected, but that is fantastic. Still socially awkward. He's developing and maturing a bit if you can believe that.
This story breaks out of the mold of the previous books and does so in a delightful way. While Murderbot still prefers to watch his video feed than do anything else, avoids humans as much as possible, and still has a depressive, snarky attitude, his story is much different in this book. There are ties to characters from the previous books, both AI and Human. There are, for the first time, some different perspectives in the storytelling in ways that might have been confusing but did not detriment the plot or the action in any way. Unfortunately, there were a few moments of slag in the middle. Fortunately, the slow pace was only sustained for a short time and eventually picked up very quickly in the book's third act, cumulating into a wild ride and a remarkably satisfying finale with a hook that makes me want to read the next book.
I was glad to read this installment of the series. I have been enjoying the adventures of Murderbot. While reading the last book, I wanted to know if something different would happen soon or if there was a setup of something more to come. This book answered those questions and more and delivered the action, tension, suspense, comedy, and some of the meaning of [bot] life!
I recommend this book to anyone interested in Sci-Fi Opera, who has already read the previous Murderbot Books and liked them, or even those who read the last book or two in the series and started to get turned off. If that describes you, you will get sucked back into this series after reading this book.
Murderbot made major strides in personality development in this book. Experience is teaching it about friendship, forgiveness, and doing for others, even those that aren't friends. Still a media junkie though, coping without that media fix only goes so far.
I'm still reading. For me, it's one of those books that I do intend to finish, but don't like in large doses; I take breaks from it. It's just good enough for me to keep reading, but no more. I'll chime in when I finish later this month.I won't be moving on to book 6, at least not right away.
Review: 2 stars. Much of the time, the structure of this book was a bit of info, speculation about that info, a bit more info, speculation about that info, and so on. The action mostly involved hard-to-follow technofaff. This padded the book and made it longer than it needed to be without adding anything worthwhile to the plot or characters. Nearly three quarters of the way through the plot started getting interesting, but by this point it was too late.
Chapter 11: "(I had a camera view of the lower part of the control deck where the drone was now sterilizing the area where Targets One and Three had died. It started working faster.)"It seems this is in response to Murderbot's attention, but aren't these drones simple enough to not be able to realize this? Moreover, why would drones slack off in the first place?
Can someone provide an accurate timeline of the book? I had a little trouble following it. For instance, in Chapter 9, ART says he arrived before two corporate ships: "Before. With my crew held hostage, I was forced to comply with their captors' orders to fire on a Barish-Estranza support carrier."
How did his crew get captured?
Official description:
Murderbot returns in its highly anticipated, first, full-length standalone novel.
You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot.
Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century.