Jeff

A fun little book, and a good entry into the genre. Didn't get too heavy on tech macguffins, didn't overstay its welcome with references and memes. The characters were all a little bit more capable than was realistic, which clamped down the suspense and "danger" of any particular point in the book, but it kept the plot moving forwards.

While reading this I couldn't but help thinking of the Stephen Gould book Wildside, which features a similar initial plot device (gates) and initial early motivation (take depleted resources from the other side). While the books diverge in their plots, they start off incredibly similar

This book closes the loop of Murderbot-out-on-its-own, which is timely, given that plot was getting a bit stale at this point. Unfortunately, MBs quest to find more answers about its past was abandoned at the end of the last book, and there's no hint of it anywhere in this book.

MB fights off more bastard corpos and reunites with Dr. Mensah, which lets the future books in the series drive forwards, but once again the pacing of the book seems ever so slightly accelerated. Scenes and plot devices aren't given room to breathe, and the book just seems to jump from action to action. Good as a page turner, but its a meal that quickly leaves you hungry for more.

A very good return to form, with somewhat of a novel mystery, and fairly high stakes. The return of some friends from the past make the book a lot more interesting, and the plot was given some room to breathe in places, not rushing between events, which greatly helped out.

Suffers a little bit of similar-name-itis amongst its characters, exacerbated by the fact that two of such characters are related, but the characterization throughout the book is a bit more in depth than we've seen in much of the other books.

Also explores some more backstory of some other characters in the series, which is always welcome

A bit of an odd duck in the Murderbot diaries, as it takes place out-of-order of the otherwise normal chronology of the books. The plot this time returns to Detective Murderbot, which is nice, but unfortunately its Det. MB investigating something he had nothing to do with. Proceeds like most other detective stories, with clue finding, a couple of tense moments where the bad guy seems like they could win, and then a happy resolution at the end.

It could practically be Murderbot Noir.

The book is technically very good, and the plot pacing issues some of the past books have faced isn't present here, but I just didn't find this particular story the most interesting. There are no issues with prose, characters, or delivery, its just very formula murder mystery, complete with the mayor/chief of police/security head/whatever imposing artificial limitations on our enterprising detective.

Not quite as good as the other entry in the series, but still a reasonably enjoyable read.

The injection of some real-world politics and single-purpose characters felt a little off, and while it was satisfying to see them get their comeuppance, it was a hollow satisfaction, the kind you get from junk food, not a real meal.

As I said in my review of Outland, the idea of this universe reminds me a lot of a Steven Gould book. In Outland, it was mostly a reminder of Wildside, but this one felt a bit more like the third and fourth books in the Jumper series, which also had a story that seemingly had modern-day (for the time) politics grafted on, diminishing the actual story in the process.

At the end of this book, not really all that much has changed since the beginning. A few new plot threads for future books have cropped up, sure, but we've still got a collection of survivors from the Yellowstone eruption, some conflicts among them, and no real change to anything of significance.

I await the next entry in the books, hoping it can actually drive the overarching plot forwards, and not get bogged down in itself like this one seemed to.