misty9 wrote:I enjoy the irony of the main character, his disenchanted way of examining humans, and his growth towards true sentience.
*its, its
rumplestilts wrote:The last installment (Network Effect) has been posted
*latest
It's wide open for another.
* * * SPOILERS * * * SPOILERS * * * SPOILERS * * * SPOILERS * * * SPOILERS * * * SPOILERS * * *
I've sort of wanted to write a review of the 5th just because I was so disappointed in it. She'd left a perfect opening for a sequel at the end of "Exit Strategy", when they'd been contacted about a possible new contract by the people Murderbot had saved in book 3. It would have been so easy -- Murderbot goes out with them again, saves them from more violent competitors, and Wells *still* could have written in some good thoughtful bits.
Instead, she goes off on some weird tangent where BOOM alien-human hybrids attack and alien remnant technology is scary and there's even maybe a hive mind and who knows what else. Oh, and ART's university
just accidentally happens to be involved in rescuing recently-rediscovered colonies as a sort of special underhanded sideline? Suuuuure. And the hybrids' motivation is umm protecting themselves so they're basically starting a new war with a bunch of people they don't know as their very first move by kidnapping people who might have otherwise been motivated to help them? Uh-huh, everyone does that.
It all just felt so forced. Even the conflict between Murderbot and Dr. Mensah's husband was just plain silly -- she's not telling her family that she got attacked, even though the entire universe already knows she was kidnapped once and so on? And yet everyone in the family knows about that part? But he just thinks the asexual human-bot construct is screwing his wife or something? Sorry, makes no sense. No wonder her kid nearly got raped or kidnapped or whatever, nobody is paying any attention to the very risks Dr. Mensah has been facing even though they've been widely publicized and one of her kids even got to see Murderbot's little video logs at the end of book 4.
I really hope Wells takes some time to come up with a plot that fits within the universe of the first four books next time around. And maybe even makes sense. Otherwise everything just ends up like "Allie McBeal" did, nothing more than disconnected stunts strung together by writers who didn't know what to do with the characters after a mere two seasons.
