The two middle Murderbot diaries, Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy, are the ones I tend to have the least to say about. They remain as good as ever, with the character continuing to evolve and figure out what makes Murderbot Murderbot, but they still feel like filler to a small degree. In Rogue Protocol, Murderbot heads to an abandoned GrayCris terraforming platform so that it can figure out what the full extent of GrayCris’ illegal activities encompass, with the purpose of sending the data to Dr. […]

Artificial Condition is the second book in the Murderbot Diaries, and stands out as one of the best because it is Murderbot’s first encounter with ART, aka Asshole Research Transport. Murderbot is hopping transports like an old time Steinbeck character hopping the railways. For the most part it’s able to parlay secret passage by offering to open its media collection to the AI bot pilot transports who handle transit and freight. That is, until it accidentally encounters a bot pilot who is a super-intelligent AI, […]

System Collapse is the latest in the Murderbot Diaries. I plan to reread all of these this year, so I’ll be brief in this one. Suffice it to say, this is the best sci-fi you can read right now. It is wildly human, using the speculative nature of a robotic brain learning how to be a real boy to explore living with neuro-divergence. On top of that, Murderbot would do anything for his humans (it’s baked into his nature), would rather be watching media than […]