Exit Strategy by Martha Wells (Murderbot Diaries #4)

Note: For convenience, I'm going to use "he" and "him" pronouns, although Murderbot is neither male nor female as it's a part organic and part mechanical being and therefore technically an "it". 

Murderbot is traveling again when he becomes aware that someone is in pursuit of him. And, whoever it is, they've got a well-armed and heavily weaponized security team. He'll have to use all his wits to get away from them. Then, a series of news items indicate that Murderbot's old friend, Dr. Mensah, is in trouble and it's likely Murderbot's fault for causing the devious GrayCris company problems, including exposing the cover-up of illegal activity he discovered in Book #3: Rogue Protocol. 

Knowing the danger, Murderbot carefully heads out to rescue Dr. Mensah. Some of the team from the original Murderbot book, whom Murderbot once saved, have gone to try to work out a deal for Dr. Mensah's release. But, there are complications. Will Murderbot be able to help them secure Dr. Mensah's release and keep the entire team safe? 

Exit Strategy is the 4th novella in the Murderbot Diaries series and it brings the story full circle yet leaves an opening for the story to continue. In fact, I read a review saying the book was originally intended to be the end of the series, although there's now a novel and another book is coming out soon (a friend who has read it says the coming release is novella length). I have the novel and the new book coming out in April, Fugitive Telemetry, is one that I pre-ordered before the end of 2020. I'm so glad I did. 

Highly recommended - Another edge-of-your-seat read. The Murderbot series needs to be read in order but they each stand alone. There are no cliffhanger endings.

I have absolutely no regrets about buying them all. None. They are so entertaining. As with all the other novellas, there's always some set-up in which Murderbot must figure out what's happening before a series of breathtaking action scenes. I loved the interaction between Mensah and Murderbot in the first book and it was very satisfying to read more of the same as they're reunited. 

I'm saving the novel for later since Murderbot books make terrific slump breakers but I confess it's been difficult staying away from the next book, this time. I really want to read on. 

©2021 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells (Murderbot Diaries #3)

In this third installment in The Murderbot Diaries series, Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells, Murderbot (a part-human, part android who no longer works for a corporation, having been freed by his scientist friend) goes looking for answers to some nagging questions. Why did the corporation that used to own him as a Security Unit (SecUnit) abandon a terraforming project? Is GrayCris involved in more deception? If so, and they weren't really terraforming at all, what were they up to? 

As in the second book, Artificial Condition, a good portion of Rogue Protocol is set-up to the action that takes place in the last third or so as Murderbot goes through a space port and figures out how to get to its destination without drawing attention to itself. Once Murderbot arrives at its destination, it figures out a way to tag along with a group going to check out the abandoned station and, in the process, is obligated to make friends with one of the group's personal androids, Miki, who turns out to be smarter and more sensitive to nuance than expected. 

Then, the action really begins. While Rogue Protocol and the previous book spent much of the time building to the exciting scenes, it doesn't matter one bit because there's always something happening. Unexpected extra passengers on the ship that obligate poor Murderbot to cram itself into a closet, for example. There are lots of little twists and turns and plenty of grumpy humor on the part of Murderbot. I did surprise myself by predicting one of the plot twists in this one but again, it didn't bother me. I just kind of nodded to myself and kept on enjoying the book. 

Highly recommended - I bought the entire Murderbot Diaries series on a whim and pre-ordered the newest release before my book-buying ban began, so I've got more fun Murderbot reading ahead. Because most of the books are short (only one is novel length, so far; the rest are novellas) and action-packed, they make great slump breakers. Best whim ever. It was risky buying an entire series without having even read the first but I trusted my friend Alyce's recommendation and I'm so glad I did. 

©2021 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells (#2 in the Murderbot Diaries series)

In Artificial Condition by Martha Wells, Murderbot (a part human/part robot that is neither male or female) decides to flee the area in which it is required to stay after being freed from the watchful eye of the corporation that used to own it. Murderbot is in search of answers about what happened in the disastrous killing for which the security unit has given itself the moniker "Murderbot". Was Murderbot responsible for scores of deaths? Did it go rogue or is there more to the story?

To keep from being detected, Murderbot has to interfere with cameras, convince various spaceships to let it aboard, and figure out how not to look like a security unit. During the long, boring parts of flight, Murderbot watches videos.

The best thing about Artificial Condition is probably the relationship that Murderbot builds with a particular ship's bot pilot. I didn't know whether the pilot should be trusted or not for a good portion of the book and I liked that uncertainty.

Recommended - While it takes longer for the action to crank up in Artificial Condition than it did in the first book, Martha Wells' writing is stunning and I have no regrets about buying the entire series. I'm deliberately spacing out the reading and trying to save my Murderbot books for times when I feel myself falling into a slump. They're fantastic for breaking the spell because they're so action-packed it's almost impossible to put a Murderbot book down.

Click through to read my mini review of the first book in the Murderbot Diaries series, All Systems Red. You'll need to page down a bit.


©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Minis - The Malady of Death by M. Duras, Talkative Man by R. K. Narayan, All Systems Red by M. Wells, and Jacob the Baker by N. benShea

I have not finished any ARCs, lately, and I don't actually have long to go before I'm totally ARC-free, apart from older titles from last year's slump (partly deliberate; partly a plague thing, since many publishers temporarily shifted to e-galleys only). So, it's mini review time! All of these are under 200 pages.

The Malady of Death by Marguerite Duras is only 60 pages long, novella length at best, and that's why I read it. This year has been my most sluggish reading year in ages and I just needed to feel like I was reading productively, if only for a short time.

The story of a man who hires a woman to spend several weeks with him by the sea, The Malady of Death is very erotic, like everything else I've read by Duras. The male protagonist claims to have felt no love or desire in his life and is apparently trying to find out if he can acquire them. His lack of love is what the female, who claims not to be a prostitute, calls "the malady of death" — perhaps because there's something dead inside him.

Interesting, weird, thought-provoking, and a little unsettling, The Malady of Death is pretty much just a woman lying naked on white sheets with the sound of the black sea, the man exploring her body, without any feel for how time is passing. I'm sure the black and white emphasis is relevant. In the last few pages, the author describes how she believes the story should be staged if put on as a play or filmed.

Talkative Man by R. K. Narayan is my first by Narayan and I was impressed and delighted but thrown by the fact that I thought it was going to be about the Talkative Man, the narrator. It was not. Instead, the narrator tells the story of a man he encountered in the past.

When a stranger arrives in Malgudi (a fictional town in India) and takes up residence in the train station's waiting room, the Talkative Man (whose name is only mentioned once — mostly he goes by TM) is asked by the station master to find the stranger lodgings so that the station master won't lose his job if an inspection takes place.

The stranger, Rann, is disinterested in everything he's shown so TM moves him into his lavish home. But, what is Rann up to? He claims to be doing a job for the UN and writing a book. But, there's something shifty about this secretive world traveler. When TM figures it out, he comes up with a plan to save the young lady Rann is planning to run away with, a girl he's known since she was a baby.

Wonderful writing and not among the books Narayan is best known for. I can't wait to read more by him.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells is the first in the Murderbot Diaries series. Murderbot is what the part-human, part-robot narrator calls itself (it is neither male or female).

Murderbot is a security unit that has hacked its own governor module, meaning it isn't entirely controlled by outside forces. Instead, it can download updates to its system, shove them off to the side without actually inputting them, and pretend to follow the rules. When not on duty, it spends time watching videos.

Murderbot is not a big fan of humans and just wants to be left alone. But, on this particular job, the humans are friendly, a team of scientists conducting tests on a planet, where their corporate sponsors want to find out if mining the planet's resources will be profitable. There are two teams of scientists on the planet but when communication with the second team is suddenly lost, the scientists must find out what's going on.

All Systems Red is by far one of my favorites of the year, so far, for the action, the humor, the plot. I loved everything about it. I bought the first two (novella length) books in the series after a friend recommended them and then after reading All Systems Red, I bought the next two. And, you may have noticed that I bought the first full novel, last week. So, now I've got the entire series and I can bake my brain on Murderbot books, the next time I need a wild escape.

And, finally, this last book is one I bought from a salvage store, back when we had one that occasionally received book stock. Just an FYI, this is not the cover of the book I own but I couldn't find a decent image of the correct cover.

Jacob the Baker: Gentle Wisdom for a Complicated World by Noah benShea is the story of a man who writes down little bits of wisdom that pop into his head. He's also, of course, a baker. When he accidentally bakes one of his little bits of wisdom into a loaf of bread, the woman who bought the loaf of bread shows up to ask if he can share more bits of wisdom in further loaves to be given to her friends.

This begins Jacob's notoriety as a man of wisdom, from whom people seek answers. Jacob is patient with those who ask him for his thoughts, but sometimes he just wants to be alone. Still, he feels like it's important to share what he understands about life.

When I opened this book and started reading it, I thought I was going to hate it. I liked Tuesdays with Morrie, a similar kind of book, but generally speaking I'm not a fan of books filled with platitudes. And, yet, I enjoyed Jacob the Baker, primarily because of the protagonist. Jacob is very human. He's just a naturally philosophical guy. If he doesn't know the answers, he's not afraid to say so.

I liked all 4 of these books but All Systems Red and Talkative Man were 5-star reads, Jacob the Baker was interesting and somewhat meditative but not a book I'll hang onto, and The Malady of Death is a book that's a little too creepy for me, but definitely thought-provoking.


©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Lock In by John Scalzi

I like the cover of Lock In better than the book.  Huh. I usually love John Scalzi's writing. Granted, the final section (the three codas) of Redshirts lessened the reading experience for me. But, I always feel like I'm in the hands of a brilliant mind when I'm reading Scalzi's work. So, why didn't Lock In work for me? Well, let's look at the elements.

Lock In is a detective story (mystery) set in a future (sci-fi) that takes place after a pandemic (health/politics). Shane came down with the disease as a child and is well-known as the "poster child" for Haden's Syndrome, the virus that locked him into his body without the ability to move or respond to stimuli, like many other survivors of the virus. He has an implanted neural net that allows him to get around in an android-like body with all sorts of computerized features. He can record and store video and other information and refer back to it, transport his brain into other "threeps" or android bodies, view additional information in a Google-glass manner that streams across his vision or hang out in a virtual agora, where he can mingle with other locked in "Hadens".

Shane is also a brand spanking new FBI agent. His partner had Haden's but without loss of mobility and was, at one time, an "integrator" -- a person who has an implanted neural net for the sake of allowing locked in Hadens to access a human body, move and feel, while the integrator is still present and aware but suppressed, having ceded the ability to control his body to a client.

There's a lot of complex world-building in Lock In and it's very, very well done. You can't help but be impressed by the level of thought that went into this world. However -- and this is a big "however" -- I thought there came a point that the details of the world got in the way of the story, itself. Halfway into the book, I found myself irritated that Scalzi was still explaining his world to me. Maybe I didn't need to know everything or some of what he explained was intuitive enough that the author should have given the reader a little credit for understanding without detailed explanation? I felt like he was trying to show the reader just how well he'd thought out his backstory by shoving it into the narrative or dialogue at every opportunity.

There's also the problem that Lock In is a detective story with a boat-load of characters. I burned out on mysteries years ago -- at least a decade ago -- so a mystery/detective novel is a hard sell for me. When I pick up a John Scalzi book, I do so in anticipation of a good sci-fi read. I do occasionally read mysteries but I've never returned to loving them. The number of characters added as the story progresses amounted to yet another road block; they made my head spin. I managed to keep most of them mentally sorted but it would have helped if I'd read the book in paper form rather than electronically because it's a nuisance to flip back through an e-book to locate previous mention of a character.

Otherwise, my only problem with the book was that I didn't feel like Scalzi did an adequate job of describing the threeps. Were they basically hollow plastic shells or more flexible and closer to human in appearance, like Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation? I never had a fully developed image of a threep in my mind, although I leaned toward the former (hard plastic shell). I do believe the fact that Shane was independently wealthy and could rent a new threep at any time if, say, a borrowed threep didn't work out or was damaged, made things a bit too easy. But, his wealth also did serve a purpose so the ways in which he avoided certain barriers to action due to access to money didn't bother me as much as my inability to fully visualize how the character was represented each time he switched threeps.

Recommended but not a favorite - I didn't expect this to end up such a lengthy review! There were a lot of things that bugged me about Lock In that are personal issues, like the fact that it's basically a detective novel, so I would not dissuade anyone from reading Lock In. However, even with personal prejudices aside, I don't think it's Scalzi's best work; and, since I also found Redshirts disappointing, I'll go back to Scalzi's earlier works in the future, rather than eagerly awaiting new releases.

Cover thoughts - The cover image is an excellent graphic representation of the fact that only a fraction of the population ends up permanently damaged by the virus. It's both eye-catching and a good fit for the storyline. I really do love it more than the book. But, I liked the book; I just didn't love it.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

A few minis - The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, The Returned by Jason Mott, Redshirts by John Scalzi

A few minis, today, to help me catch up on recent reads (so many!) that have tossed me into backlog hell.  
The Rosie Project is a book I read in electronic form because I saw  so many effusive tweets and reviews that when it became available for $1.99 I figured fine, I can do without the paper for the sake of reading it sooner.  I really do hate e-books.

Don Tillman is a professor of genetics with Asperger's, brilliant in his field but socially inept. When he decides it's time to find a wife, he goes about the process in the same meticulous way he does everything else.  Don finds, however, that even the women who pass his stringent written test don't meet his criteria for one reason or another but Rosie, a completely unacceptable woman sent by his best friend, attracts him in spite of her unsuitability. 

When Don finds out Rosie wants to know who her father is, he uses his research techniques and knowledge to help Rosie narrow down the candidates, mostly as an unconscious excuse to spend more time with her. But, the more time he spends with Rosie, the more he realizes that it is he who must adapt to Rosie's needs, rather than the other way around.

Don is very much like Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. His inability to understand human interaction and his need for strict order make for some hilarious situations. I absolutely loved this wacky  romance and highly recommend The Rosie Project to anyone looking for an upbeat, smart, funny read. Highly recommended.

The Returned by Jason Mott is a book I'm pretty sure I read about in Entertainment Weekly. When dead people inexplicably begin turning up all over the world, they are at first returned to their homes if there are survivors willing to take them in. But, as the number of Returned grows, people begin to panic.  Are they really the people that died or something else entirely? Why are they coming back to life, if they're real?  Should they be allowed to continue living when the sheer number of Returned threatens to decimate the food supply and overwhelm the planet's resources?  The living people who have not died are referred to as the True Living.

It took me a while before I realized that The Returned was not a science fiction novel that was going to explain away the return of the dead but a "What if?" that asks what would happen if the people we lost were able to come back, for a time.  That changed the way I viewed the novel but since it was based on a dream the author had about his mother after her death and I had that same kind of dream not once but several times after my father died, I found the book gripping and then touching.  It makes you think long and hard about what might happen if you really could speak to your loved ones and interact with them, again, if only for a few months or a year.  

I would have preferred that The Returned was sci-fi because it was the curiosity about what was causing the Returned that made it such a page-turner, at first, and yet I really did appreciate the book for what it was, once I figured out where the author was taking the story. The Returned is in many ways reminiscent of "Miracle Day", the fourth season of Torchwood, although in "Miracle Day" people cease dying rather than returning from the dead.  Of course, Torchwood is sci-fi and an explanation (although not an entirely logical one) is eventually given at the end of the "Miracle Day" series but there were similarities in the way people reacted -- with fear more than hope, separating the Returned from the True Living, considering the eradication of those whom many think should return to being dead. It's fascinating to theorize about how people might really react.

Recommended. Not at all what I expected.  Still, I enjoyed the book even after realizing it was something entirely different from what I thought it was going to be.

I think I already mentioned the fact that I have a library due-date to thank for the nudge to pick up Redshirts by John Scalzi.  

Redshirts is a story that begins on with a prologue in which several crew members on the space ship Intrepid are killed by Borgovian Land Worms on an away mission. In the first chapter, an entirely different group of new crew members meet up as they wait to board the Intrepid. It doesn't take long into their service on-board the Intrepid before Ensign Andy Dahl realizes something strange is going on. When Chief Science Officer Q'eeng shows up seeking away team crewmen, his coworkers disappear for coffee or to do inventory. Dahl's not stupid; he can see that they're ducking out.  But, why?  

Then, Dahl begins to notice certain trends regarding the deaths of underlings and he's given a warning by an elusive crewman who promptly disappears.  Why are so many new crew members dying during missions?  Who is the hairy man who gave Dahl a warning and why is he so difficult to locate?  Can Dahl survive as a new crew member who can't always duck his duty on away teams?  

Eventually, Dahl figures out what's going on and I'm not sure whether or not it's a spoiler but I'm not going to share his conclusions or what happens, just in case doing so might ruin the reading for someone. I like going into a book as clueless as possible, myself.  Suffice it to say, there is a very crazy reason for the deaths of the eponymous Redshirts (whom any Star Trek fan will have noted as the most likely crew members to die on an away team).  

John Scalzi never fails to entertain and Redshirts is a delight.  Subtitled "A Novel with Three Codas", I think the storyline could have stopped right before the codas and I would have been perfectly satisfied.  I didn't like the first coda at all; it was a jarring switch from the main storyline to the viewpoint of . . . oh, maybe that's a spoiler, but anyway . . . while I think the codas could have been dropped entirely, in the end I liked where Scalzi took the story.  

Highly recommended, especially to Star Trek and sci-fi fans.  There were quite a few grammatical errors in Redshirts, which surprised me because I used to read Scalzi's blog, Whatever, and he's such a sharp writer that I hesitate to blame the errors (mixed tenses in particular) on the author. Eh, whatever. It's a crazy-fun ride.  

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.