JULIE JOHNSON'S PAGE: The Reign of Remnants romantasy series

THE SEA SPINNER (Reign of Remnants #2)
JULIE JOHNSON
Ace Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25*of five

The Publisher Says: Blazing with reawakened magic, a young woman challenges the tides of fate in this highly anticipated installment of Julie Johnson’s romantasy series.

Everything changed for Rhya Fleetwood in the battle of Fyremas. Her grief is heavy, her rage volatile. Caeldera lies in ruins. Her friends are dead or wounded. And Pendefyre, their newly crowned king, is shutting her out. The Remnant of Fire needs all his focus for his kingdom, his people, and—perhaps more than anything—his insatiable need for revenge.

When a twist of fate leads Rhya to the last place she expected—the Water Court—the novice wind weaver is forced to confront the limitations of her untrained power as well as her increasingly complicated relationships. For enigmatic King Soren of Llŷr is as different from Penn as sparks are from the sea. The more insight he offers into the maegic that binds them together, the more confused Rhya feels—about her future as a Remnant, about her deepest desires, and about her role in the coming war.

Enemies circle close, ready to strike. And if Rhya isn’t careful, she’ll lose more than just her heart.

She’ll lose her life.

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My Review: The geopolitical forces that clashed so inevitably and so violently in The Wind Weaver (review below) are recovering from the ugliness of battles fought but a war as yet unwon. Rhya's got more than just her powers to unleash, though, as she's got her love life to resolve as well as, oh y'know just the fate of the world, so no bigs and no pressure.

Penn continues to be bloody annoying, Soren continues to be my beau ideal of a boyfriend who could turn into a spouse of the most delectable rarity and scrummyness. Hey Rhya, if you want to continue to try that "but I can fix him" shtik with the yutz Penn, can I have Soren please and thank you?

Sadly for me, not only is Soren fictional but Rhya shows more than her usual (from last outing) romantic acuity while battening of Soren's Water Court vibe of collegiality, support, and genuine appreciation for her Wind magic. You go, girl! (Does he have a brother/uncle/cousin?)

The first third of the read was pretty pillar-to-post getting Rhya where she needed to be. I'm glad now that I have a sense that Author Julie Johnson is not going to give me anything all that fast-paced because it allows me to settle my expectations on the accepting it as it comes end of the spectrum.

I also understand now, having read these stories in close time-proximity that the ending of The Wind Weaver was very intentional. I'm ready to bump up my rating on this story despite its ending. That makes it sound like it's bad, but in point of fact it's merely evil-heated and cruel: It's a cliffhanger. Those really need to be outlawed. I should be able to start a class-action human-rights violation suit against Author Julie Johnson. I get it now...the endings are going to be like this in the whole series.

So where's book three, gorramit?! February 2027 is too long to wait!

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THE WIND WEAVER (Reign of Remnants #1)
JULIE JOHNSON
Ace Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Discover a world where magic isn’t learned. It’s survived. A gritty and intoxicating epic fantasy romance.

Rhya Fleetwood is a healer, an outcast, and like the realm itself—about to die. Or so she thought.

When the ruthless Commander Scythe plucks her from the vile clutches of her executioner there’s no time to feel relief. Her new captor wants Rhya for his own secret ends and they all lead back to the mysterious birthmark which brands her as a Remnant. One of four souls capable of calling forth inconceivable elemental power.

Rhya knows she must master the wind that whispers within her and make an escape. But as she is dragged across treacherous terrain with Scythe’s formidable band of soldiers, something keeps her at his side.

Inside her, a tempest roars—terror and desire. Soon, she knows she must choose.

Follow her magic, or her heart…

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Strap in. This is a very long ride/read. I'm really not much of a romantasy reader because I want my romance between men and my maegickq absent or limited in its narrative use. Neither of those desiderata are delivered (or indeed promised) in this narrative. Still, it's a debut novel and a Sunday Times (UK) bestseller, so my curiosity was definitely piqued. Saying yes to the DRC didn't seem urgent so I did.

It's been a year since then, a second book (review above) has come out, and I'm quite surprised to report that I thoroughly enjoyed this read. Author Julie Johnson is not pushing any envelopes, nor was she touted by her publisher as doing so. I entered the reading experience hoping for a diverting low-steam, finding love and purpose at the same time, story trope-fest. I was expecting to need to skim past sex scenes disagreeable to my preferences.

Well...yeah...about that. Rhya has two possible love-matches. Penn's the main one, and goddesses below us is he tedious to read about. He's curiously unimaginitive for someone of his elevated station. Soren's more interesting because he's irreverent and funny with it, lightens Rhya's apparent bipolar-disorder moods, and generally feels like he's got main-character energy. In its most nuanced meaning. I'm happy enough to report there was pretty minimal scene skimming until we get to the topic of violence.

This story is violent.

Intentionally, carefully so; it still has a LOT of violent scenes that were almost...very, very nearly...gratuitously and salaciously, visceral pornographic gore. In a story intended as, marketed to appeal to, romantasy reading folk. These folk lean towards female identity. The violence is preponderently involving females. That felt like an odd choice, but it was not the only odd choice (see my opinion of Rhya's romantic options above): the pacing, or "how slow can you go" too.

I'm really, really drawn to the idea of being a Chosen One whose status is an ambivalent-leaning-bad one. I'm used to the social/societal trials and tribulations part of the Chosen Ones narrative but this world offers a story of the powers themselves being kind of awful and using them being a chore. (I'm a fan of KJ Charles's Simon Feximal for this reason.) A great deal more could've been done to explore this as opposed to the two skabillion words wasted on Rhya's experiences once she gets to the royal court.

In case my opinion on this authorial choice is not clear: I am not a fan of Rhya's tremendously long non-magical maladjustment to the court.

I hope you now understand my star rating above. It assorts oddly with my surprised pleasure with this debut romantasy that had few of my desiderata in that genre, has a very, very promising world to build out, and unusually powerful good fortune to find a paying audience in sizable numbers.

On to book two I now go with hope in my heart, and a (slightly strained) smile on my face!

THE IRON GARDEN SUTRA, The Cosmic Wheel series book one

THE IRON GARDEN SUTRA (The Cosmic Wheel #1)
A.D. SUI
Erewhon Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$22.95 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Klara and the Sun meets S. A. Barnes’s Dead Silence with a touch of Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built in Nebula Award-winning author A.D. Sui’s darkly philosophical murder mystery, as a death monk and a team of researchers trapped onboard a spaceship of the dead encounter something beyond human understanding.

Vessel Iris has devoted himself to the Starlit Order, performing funeral rites for the dead across the galaxy and guiding souls back into the Infinite Light. Despite the comfort he wants to believe he brings to the dead, his relationships with his fellow Vessels are distant at best, leaving him reliant on his AI construct for companionship.

The spaceship Counsel of Nicaea has been lost for more than a thousand years. A relic of Earth’s dying past, humanity took the ship to the stars on a multi-generation journey to find another habitable planet yet never reached its destination. Its sudden appearance has attracted a team of academics eager to investigate its archeological history. And Vessel Iris has been assigned to bring peace to the crew’s long departed souls.

Carpeted in moss and intertwined with vines, Nicaea is more forest than ship.

But the ship's plant life isn’t the only sentience to have survived in the past millennia. Something onboard is stalking the explorers one by one. And Vessel Iris with his AI construct may be their only hope for survival. . .

IN OUTER SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOUR PRAYERS

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: What if Murderbot was a Buddhist monk, and arrives on a derelict generation ship to guide its long-dead colonists through samsara to the Light, but a bunch of irreligious bumbling academics need saving from...beings...while he's trying to do his work? Yes, this time he's male, and has a...situationship...with his AI. That's a major friction point with the normal humans he needs to save, because all life is sacred even when it's stupid and nasty.

It's a good story, it's got levels to think about that open like hatches hidden under green stuff then turn into wormholes, gates, passageways through reality into your busy monkey-brain. Whirling in my monkey-brain was a sneaky little thought: why do monks, who famously renounce the world, decide to help us worldly denizens of samsara (apparently Sanskrit for the same concept as "gefilte" or "mashed up and stuffed") only when we die?

But that's trespassing into religion, its uses and motivating ideas, its sacred territory....

What to enjoy about the monk with an AI sharing his brain, albeit in a subservient role, is the fertile territory for human nastiness to get directed at a "holy" person by the deeply secular people around him. I'm envious of Vessel Iris because he lives in a world of only a few tiny remnant religious nuts. Sounds like heaven to me. (See what I did there?) My missing parts of the fifth star came from my deep dislike of the Harry-Dresdenish self-recriminating litany of personal abuse Vessel Iris feeds himself. Since the book is all inside Vessel Iris' head, and since I want to shove him out an airlock about once every twenty pages, it made for a choppy, months-long reading experience. I made the deal with myself that I couldn't Pearl-Rule a book set on a failed generation ship with serious botanical Nostromo vibes and a monk who's treated like we'd treat a sex-trafficking politician for having an AI in his brain.

I don't think everyone will love this read. I'm not sure *I* loved this read. But I was completely unable to abandon ship. I lurked through the overgrown halls celebrating with nasty schadenfreude every time whatever it was picked off another creepy academic. I did not, in other words, root *for* anyone in the story, not even the dead colonists whose reasons for seeking a new world...well. I didn't like anyone. It wasn't an easy investment to make.

But it was one I absolutely did make.

This is a very philosophical horror-of-sorts story of how fear and safety are too deeply intertwined to be separable, no matter how much one tries to treat them as opposites or even antipodes on a spectrum. What happens when you're only safe when you're afraid is a subtle and fascinating frame to hang a space-locked-room mystery on.

It felt to me like the story smashed into a brick wall when Vessel Iris started in on his self-flagellation, but I stipulate that as a me problem. Leaving aside my annoyance I think the pace of the action is rising at a good storytelling clip; the ideas never got too top-heavy, causing weird bends in the plot (a major flaw in Becky Chambers' stories from my PoV); and the resolution was very nicely capping off the plot while not too obviously blaring the sequel-is-coming horn.

It might not be for you, but you will know within the first 10% if it isn't. Read a sample; there are genuine pleasures to be had in the story for people who don't have my oversensitivity to self-flagellation.

DETOUR: A Novel, first in a proposed series, ends on a cliffhanger

DETOUR: A Novel (Detour #1)
JEFF RAKE and ROB HART
Random House Worlds (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A space shuttle flight crew discovers that the Earth they’ve returned to is not the home they left behind in the first book of this emotional, mind-bending thriller series from the creator of the hit Netflix show Manifest and the bestselling author of The Warehouse.

Ryan Crane wasn’t looking for trouble—just a cup of coffee. But when this cop spots a gunman emerging from an unmarked van, he leaps into action and unknowingly saves John Ward, a billionaire with presidential aspirations, from an assassination attempt.

As thanks for Ryan’s quick thinking, Ward offers him the chance of a lifetime: to join a group of lucky civilians chosen to accompany three veteran astronauts on the first manned mission to Saturn’s moon Titan.

A devoted family man, Ryan is reluctant to leave on this two-year expedition, yet with the encouragement of his loving wife—and an exorbitant paycheck guaranteeing lifetime care for their disabled son—he crews up and ventures into a new frontier.

But as the ship is circling Titan, it is rocked by an unexplained series of explosions. The crew works together to get back on course, and they return to Earth as heroes.

When the fanfare dies down, Ryan and his fellow astronauts notice that things are different. Some changes are good, such as lavish upgrades to their homes, but others are more disconcerting. Before the group can connect, mysterious figures start tailing them, and their communications are scrambled.

Separated and suspicious, the crew must uncover the truth and decide how far they’re willing to go to return to their normal lives. Just when their space adventure seemingly ends, it shockingly begins.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'd never heard of the Netflix show Manifest before I picked up this DRC. I'd never heard of the imprint that publishes it, either, and I'm old enough that imprints matter to me. I track them and their subject-matter focuses so I can ask for DRCs I'm happy to read and review. Surprise! There's an entire LitRPG-inspired publishing world, that now subsumes to old movie novelizations and TV-show expansions. This had escaped my attention until now because I've never played these games. I got hooked on Dark Shadows novels and Doctor Who novels back in the day, but found most Star Trek novels pretty hit-or-miss, and gave up on them. So this rediscovery was pleasant because now I've watched Manifest and really like it. I hasten to add that this novel is reminiscent of the TV show's premise but is not directly related to the show you can see on Netflix.

This story started out with a cool-to-me hook: six random people are lightly trained after being plucked from richly deserved obscurity to travel to Saturn's moon Titan. Terrible, tragic explosions on their craft occur; they're brought safely back to Earth but them isolated from each other very stringently, instructed not to attempt to contact each other or to discuss their experiences.

From here we're in the PoV of the six people separately as they experience...oddness, off-kilter alterations in what their memories of Earth tell them should be present in the world around them. It is unsettling to them. The...can't call them changes, that implies violated continuity, can't call them alterations because that implies known agency...discontinuities in their realty versus their memories of reality are strange, undirected by a moral compass, some make things better some worse yet the people are left with a sense that they're suffering from Capgras Syndrome. I suppose you're already assuming the characters ignore, and circumvent, the orders to stay out of contact with their fellow survivors of the trip. Of course this is the case.

The *real* story here is in the returnees' efforts to provide each other with support, you aren't crazy the world is-level support. It's not a space-sci fi story at all; it's a Sliders-meets-Sliding Doors narrative of roads not taken. This ties in to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and the Hindu, and later Buddhist, concept of Indra's net. This is more fun for me as a reader but might very well cause some disappointment for others. Understanding going in that space travel and hard sci-fi are honored more in their absence as igniting events than bases for the continuing action will help you decide if this is the read for you.

As each character has unique struggles to adapt to their individual changed circumstances they're all, as a unit, required to look at the common underlying altered reality of the world they collectively remember. It's this facet of their experience that most recalls the earlier media franchises I reference in tge paragraph above. It creates among these six people, so randomly assorted and so very different in personality, training, and character, a found family with the most powerful ties imaginable. Their shared bedrock assumptions have been whisked out from under them.

It's in this that the authors choose to emphasize the shared nature of their trauma, and its developing coping mechanisms. The six PoVs are not dealt with chapter-by-chapter, which could easily lead to dilution and confusion among the characters, but with chapters that entertain similar attempts to cope by varying constellations of people. There are chat threads, emails, news articles, and other such media insertions into various parts of the narrative. This is a narrative technique as old as Tristram Shandy yet we still act as though this is somehow new and fresh and surprising. It worked beautifully in Stand on Zanzibar nearly sixty years ago. It still works now. Its worldbuilding is useful; the technique of said worldbuilding functions as commentary on both message and medium.

I was happy enough with the characters' varying arcs in this series-starting volume as they reached obviously temporary resolution points in some way. The story overall, of the gestalt formed by our six folks, ends on a cliffhanger. I'm now going to explain why, despite enjoying the read, I'm only giving it three and a half stars. Nowhere is it said that this is the first in a series of stories because publishers know how much many readers hate starting series that are not completed. Ask George RR Martin and Patrick Rothfuss why that might be the case; consult with Adam Christopher's novel publisher as to why amputating series before they conclude might result in blowback. (I want more Ray Electromatic stories!) So instead of learning the right lesson from this and publicly committing to the entire series in advance, greed rules and there's a tiny little detail omitted from the sales bunf in the hopes you will get hooked and buy them all as they come out. This is scummy.

I also detest cliffhangers because there is never a narrative reason for them. Ever. It's purely marketing. So, three and a half stars for those dickhead marketing-driven moves draining a lot of my pleasure in reading this iteration of a story whose bones I very much enjoy seeing fleshed out.

THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT, The Masquerade series #1, a powerful story of becoming what you fight hardest

THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT (The Masquerade #1)
SETH DICKINSON
Tor Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Baru Cormorant will pay any price to liberate her world — even if it makes her a monster.

When the Empire of Masks conquers her island home and murders one of her fathers, Baru makes a vow: I will never be powerless again. She'll swallow her hate, join the Empire’s civil service, and claw her way high enough to set her people free.

Suspicious of her loyalty, the Masquerade exiles her to an accountant's post in distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of informants and seditious dukes. Targeted for death by the uncomfortably intriguing rebel duchess Tain Hu, Baru fears a more intimate disaster — if her colleagues discover her homosexuality, she’ll be jailed and mutilated.

But Baru is a savant in games of power, ruthless enough to make herself sick. Armed with ink, lies, and one dubiously loyal secretary, she arranges a sweeping power play — a win–or–die double–cross gambit with empire as the prize. Survive it, and she'll save her home...but the cost will be appalling. Her dream of liberation might make her a tyrant. And if she's so very clever — why was she fool enough to fall in love?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Part of the olden-days Tor.com book-club giveaways. Author Dickinson pointed the way that the forces of reaction are doing their damnedest to reshape US society into more of a hellscape than they already have...take over the bureaucracy and you harm more people for longer than if you just militarily abuse 'em for a while.

This lesson needs to be heeded.

The lesbian anti-hero of this anti-colonialist fable of destruction is perfectly rendered for her grimdark purpose. She's coldly calculating (accountant joke)...“Your error is fundamental to the human psyche: you have allowed yourself to believe that others are mechanisms, static and solvable, whereas you are an agent”...emotionally reserved due to the damage inflicted by her conquerors, and driven by her hatred of them. One I share, incidentally.

In many ways this unsettling, unpleasant, perfectly realized character reminds me of Stalin. She laser-focuses on legitimate grievances...“I am a part of this, but I do not have to love it. I only have to play my role. Survive long enough to gather power. Gather enough power to make a difference”...and uses them to power her revenge on those who have aggrieved her. This is a perfect way to drive a story, but not so perfect a way to allow the reader to invest in her. In this first-of-series novel, we're investing in The Struggle&8480; not in Baru Cormorant per se. It's all going to change, I assume, as she loses the laser focus on hatred to her new luuuv the Duchess.

The reason I feel safe recommending this story to straight readers is its absence of sex. Seth Dickinson, a man, was wise enough not to go peeping into any women's bedrooms. Same-sex love is unremarkable in this story of the world Baru has lost, but it's also not closely observed. Her drive to restore the lost paradise is, for this old cisqueer gent, deeply compelling reading.

I keep meaning to get to the other books in the series, but y'all know how that goes in a biblioholic's life....

FATHER'S DAY FAST ONES: Two new Adrian Tchaikovsky novels, SHROUD and BEE SPEAKER

BEE SPEAKER (Dogs of War #3)
ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY
Head of Zeus—an AdAstra Book (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$29.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the Arthur C. Clarke award winner, Adrian Tchaikovsky, comes the third instalment of the DOGS OF WAR science fiction series, a future where genetically engineered “Bioforms” have inherited not the Earth, but the Solar System.

The end of the world has been and gone.

There was no one great natural disaster, no all-consuming world war, no catastrophic pandemic. Only scores of storms, droughts, and selfish regional conflicts. Humanity was not granted a heroic end. Instead, it bled to death from a thousand cuts.

But where Earth fell apart, Mars pulled together. Engineered men and beasts, aided by Bees – an outlawed distributed intelligence—survived through co-operation, because there was simply no alternative.

Fast forward to today. A signal—'For the sake of what once was. We beg you. Help.'—reaches Mars.

How could they refuse? A consortium of Martian work crews gather the resources for a mission: a triumphal return to the blue-green world of their ancestors. And now here they are—three hundred million kilometres from home.

And it has all already gone horribly wrong.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: This one will require you to go to the bookstore. It is worth it. If Dad's already read the first two books, it's a no-brainer...of course he wants this one. If he is a fan of Author Adrian's work, getting all three is a slightly pricier alternative, but about 97% probability of being a huge hit.

If he hasn't read the first two novels, though, this is set in their medium-term future, and requires no knowledge not given in the narrative here to understand what's going on. I've read both previous books and didn't feel it was a huge advantage; more a mild fillip of some extra fun to be had.

Four Martians respond to the Old Homestead's pretty vague plea for help. The story has chapters the way a ham has calories...lots and lots and all distributed in tasty hunks of richly marbled language. There are multiple PoVs, nine in all. Each one is moving the story...about the way the kindest intentions get deeply enmeshed in very challenging realities of human fallibility...and oftentimes in ways that aren't supposed to be funny, but are.

If your Dad is like me, deeply suspicious of any kind of AGI that pretends to infallibility or omniscience, then this is a great series to hook him on. Nothing about Bees, the Martian distributed consciousness (AGI rebranded), long ago banished from the severely collapsing Earth, is infallible, though it is good-hearted. The crisis of climate collapse is one Bees can definitely help remediate, you'd think, that being part of Bees' memories; but centuries on Mars have overlaid a lot of unhelpful knowledge. The Martian bioforms are such a great idea, and you *know* I approve of intelligent dog-forms! Their terrestrial rescuees are the usual lot of mired-in-muck religious nuts, feudal static thinkers who need help but only want it to look like their idea of a perfect present, and passive whiners. Al the Martians are oddly indulgent IMO. I'd've kicked ass, banged heads...but these rescuers really seem to try to stay helpful.

Ultimately, I'd give this to Dad because the very human-Dadly thing of needing to Fix It, to Help and to Serve a Purpose, all get a strong run. I enjoyed the story, I didn't feel it was tacked onto the end of a duology (a critique I saw that I found particularly unfair...it's been two hundred years since Bear Head so of course things changed!), and the overarching critique of flawed, fallible humanity was challenging but not bleak.

A lot like being a Dad.

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SHROUD
ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY
Orbit Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$19.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An utterly gripping story of alien encounter and survival from Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Children of Time.

They looked into the darkness and the darkness looked back . . .

New planets are fair game to asset strippers and interplanetary opportunists—and a commercial mission to a distant star system discovers a moon that is pitch black, but alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is anathema to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud.

Under no circumstances should a human end up on Shroud’s inhospitable surface. Except a catastrophic accident sees Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne doing just that. Forced to stage an emergency landing, in a small, barely adequate vehicle, they are unable to contact their ship and are running out of time. What follows is a gruelling journey across land, sea and air. During this time, Juna and Mai begin to understand Shroud’s dominant species. It also begins to understand them . . .

If they escape Shroud, they’ll face a crew only interested in profiteering from this extraordinary world. They’ll somehow have to explain the impossible and translate the incredible. That is, if they make it back at all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A stand-alone story by a genre stalwart? Make the trip to the bookstore! A story where the aliens on a truly unnerving world are actually more humane than the humans' own bosses? Perfect for Dad on his special day, especially if he's not retired yet. Talk about living in hope....

Hope feels like a luxury to the women trying not to die on a moon whose every physical parameter seems purpose-built to kill them. (Of course it was—this is a novel.) These two women are put in a terrible place to determine if Shroud, the human name for their likely grave-place, has economic value to their corporation.

Author Adrian is not the biggest supporter of the capitalist world we live in. I knew I loved him for a reason.

As the constraints of Shroud bind their actions and options ever-tighther, their gynergy and their willingness to think outside the training and the constructs of their society coupled with Shroud's life form's desire to communicate with these utterly alien things meet and merge into true First Contact. One of my favorite plot devices, that.

I think it's clear I like Author Adrian's storytelling. I want to spoiler the hell out if why in this story's case more than in Bee Speaker's case. I'm really impressed this arachnid-fancyin' fantasy writer has bent his brain to the task of making Shroud make sense without showing too much of the gearshifting tech he used to get there. Author Adrian doesn't babble his techno, and doesn't imbibe a pint of handwavium before every chapter. I find the balance of fiction to science matches my preference in this story so perfectly you can't see the seam. Unless your Dad's a physicist by trade, I'm guessing he will quite probably enjoy this balance between story told and space-world built too.

I recommend it, and get one for yourself too. Borrowing Dad's might be tough to talk him into.

ANTIMATTER BLUES, Edward Ashton's second Mickey7 novel

ANTIMATTER BLUES (Mickey7 #2)
EDWARD ASHTON
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Summer has come to Niflheim. The lichens are growing, the six-winged bat-things are chirping, and much to his own surprise, Mickey Barnes is still alive―that last part thanks almost entirely to the fact that Commander Marshall believes that the colony’s creeper neighbors are holding an antimatter bomb, and that Mickey is the only one who’s keeping them from using it. Mickey’s just another colonist now. Instead of cleaning out the reactor core, he spends his time these days cleaning out the rabbit hutches. It’s not a bad life.

It’s not going to last.

It may be sunny now, but winter is coming. The antimatter that fuels the colony is running low, and Marshall wants his bomb back. If Mickey agrees to retrieve it, he’ll be giving up the only thing that’s kept his head off of the chopping block. If he refuses, he might doom the entire colony. Meanwhile, the creepers have their own worries, and they’re not going to surrender the bomb without getting something in return. Once again, Mickey finds the fate of two species resting in his hands. If something goes wrong this time, though, he won’t be coming back.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I AM A VERY BAD MAN. I read this book in November 2022, made some notes on a document last computer, and...brain being its usual saboteur self...filed it as "done and dusted" thus forgetting to write an actual review.

Thank all those useless gods I never delete documents.

This is textbook idiotry. Guard against this carelessness, all y'all, and you will maintain your good standing with the review aggregators. Perfectionism is Public Enemy #1 for book reviewers, that is if they want to have their pick of the goodest of the good stuff to read. I am super lucky in that I do get a lot of excellent reads, but a chunk of disappointing turndowns too.

But enough about me, let's discuss Author Ashton's second Mickey7 novel. Well...this is Blogger so no one can talk to me here so I'm more or less soliloquizing. Still.

I hope you've read Mickey7 and seen Mickey 17 by now. If not I strongly urge you to do so; the latter in a theater. I'll say that the film deserves a sequel mostly because Niflheim is such a great visual experience, and seeing that cast (as necessarily amended) perform this story would be a major hoot. Robert Pattinson's endearing turn as an Expendable reformed many many times...eighteen to be precise...was pitch-perfect. This idea of slave labor made palatable to bourgeois sensibilities by being done by not-quite humans is one I've enjoyed since encountering it in Doctor Who's Eleventh Doctor episode "The Almost People" in 2011. I'm quite sure the earlier written versions, eg Cordwainer Smith's Scanners or the opposite end of the social scale of Richard K. Morgan's "Meths,", provided some inspiration for the Expendables and are due a lot of credit, but for me seeing the embodiment of the slave class as people-but-not-quite created by technology was a key a-ha moment.

Mickey7, now back to being Mickey Barnes after the events of the first book, is no longer considered an Expendable. He is also now the only person on Niflheim who can communicate with the planet's aboriginal inhabitants, the creepers. Interspecies harmony is, as always seems to be the case when equals share territory, conditional and intermittent. As this story opens, things are about to bust into open conflict because the creepers have The Bomb, just as the colonists need to use it for the fuel they'll need to survive a Niflheim winter. (Funny how it's always okay for the colonizers to have The Bomb but never the aboriginals.)

Hijinks of the bloodiest, most lethal sort seem destined to ensue. Of course the whole plot hinges on whether and how they ensue, or don't, and whether poor schlemiel Mickey7 (no more intellectually gifted now he's no longer considered an Expendable) can get The Bomb's urgently needed fissile material back from the very anxious creepers.

As he can communicate with them after a fashion, he's privy to a fact...the creepers seem to have another enemy besides the colonists...that could bring about a more secure peace as well as get The Bomb's fissile material back before winter comes to freeze the colonists into personcicles. Nothing like ganging up on a common enemy to create a warm glow of camaraderie, is there.

Shorter and lighter than Mickey7, this read was from the off one I'd hold to a lower standard. It's truly as fun a read as the first was, it's a solidly executed plot, and it has the great good fortune of lifting a lighter psychic load than its older sibling. Most of the hardest to explain stuff is already explained. We're more about learning Mickey7's mannerisms and exploring his human limitations. I think it was a lot less substantive (not always a bad thing), and as stated above, would greatly enjoy a film of it. Not very likely as Director Bong's not a maven for sequels.

The ethical considerations of colonialism are less weighty than those of slavery to my mind. That makes this story a very easy-to-enjoy diversion.

Dungeon Crawler World: DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL & CARL'S DOOMSDAY SCENARIO

DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL (Dungeon Crawler Carl #1)
MATT DINNIMAN
Ace Books
$30.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The apocalypse will be televised! Welcome to the first book in the wildly popular and addictive Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman—now with bonus material exclusive to this print edition.

You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what’s worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction of all man-made structures on Earth, and the systematic exploitation of all the survivors for a sadistic intergalactic game show. That’s what.

Join Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they try to survive the end of the world—or just get to the next level—in a video game–like, trap-filled fantasy dungeon. A dungeon that’s actually the set of a reality television show with countless viewers across the galaxy. Exploding goblins. Magical potions. Deadly, drug-dealing llamas. This ain’t your ordinary game show.

Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the Dungeon. Survival is optional. Keeping the viewers entertained is not.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Samuel Beckett's absurdist humor meets The Truman Show by way of Cat Valente's Space Opera, but streamed on Twitch.

If any of that didn't make sense, this might not be the read for you. Wait for the TV show. They'll dumb that down.

Humor is the most difficult thing to review, since you are guaranteed not to think what makes me laugh is funny. Likewise, I'm sure. Princess Donut the cat was a sarcastic, clueless hoot. And I hate cats!

This is a video game, so you know. It didn't originate as one, but it really hit the same cultural nerve.

Boy howdy, did Dinniman hit an artery! A TV deal with Seth MacFarlane's company is the latest...before that the book's self-published editions sold well, his Kickstarter for deluxe hardcovers went past goal. There's something here that spoke to those under forty in stentorian tones.

I think you already know if you'll like this one, and I'm here to assure you you're right.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



CARL'S DOOMSDAY SCENARIO (Dungeon Crawler Carl #2)
MATT DINNIMAN
Ace Books
$30.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: "The training levels have concluded. Now the games may truly begin."

The ratings and views are off the chart. The fans just can't get enough. The dungeon gets more dangerous each day. But in a grinder designed to chew up and spit out crawlers by the millions, Carl and Princess Donut need to work harder than ever just to survive.

They call it the Over City. A sprawling, once-thriving metropolis devastated by a mysterious calamity. But these streets are far from abandoned. An undead circus trawls the ruins. Murdered prostitutes rain from the sky. An ancient spell is finally ready to reveal its dark purpose.

Carl still has no pants.

They call it Dungeon Crawler World. For Carl and Donut, it's anything but a game.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Reading something I liked, but didn't love, then its sequel, in less than a week was a bad decision. Princess Donut really worked my nerve this time, and not because she's a cat.

I'm not a gaymer. I've never kept my focus long enough to care about these games on screen, but the way they deliver the human addiction to story is pure and uncut. Is this a good exemplar of the text version of it? Since I read them both, and never even finished Ready Player One, I'm goin' with yes. The grace notes in this story are the basic reason I kept my eyes on the Kindle. Small things, deliberately planted, all through both books...this made me want to keep reading past the annoyance of the absurdities Carl and Princess Donut get up to, into, and yak on about.

I said it above: "I think you already know if you'll like this one, and I'm here to assure you you're right."

HOME: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory, our first look into Dr. Mensah -and- NETWORK EFFECT, first full-length Murderbot novel

NETWORK EFFECT
MARTHA WELLS (Murderbot #5)
Tor.com Publishing
$11.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4.9* of five

WINNER OF THE HUGO FOR BEST SERIES & THE HUGO FOR BEST NOVEL, 2021 WORLDCON: DisCon III!

WINNER: BEST NOVEL, 2020 NEBULA AWARDS!

The Publisher Says: 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.

I’m usually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.

When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.

Drastic action it is, then.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. SUPPORT YOUR LIBRARIES, FOLKS! THE PANDEMIC AIN'T THE ONLY REASON TO GO THERE.

My Review: When you get to the moment in reading a series of stories that you think you know what's coming next, and then you're kinda right but a whole lot wrong, that's when you know for sure you're in the right place at the right time.

I knew for sure I'd get Murderbot being its deeply cynical, snarky self, breaking the fourth wall at will and to great effect.

{We're in the shit because of} their hired security service Palisade making an extremely bad decision to punch my ex-owner bond company in the operating funds by attacking one of its gunships. (The company is paranoid and greedy and cheap but also ruthless, methodical, and intensely violent when it thinks it’s being threatened.)
–and–
So that was what had happened before the survey. Now we’re here, ready for the next major disaster. (Spoiler warning.)

I didn't realize, though, that the ART (acronym; you know already or you need to find out for yourself) and Murderbot would make this read the emotional rollercoater it is. (Yes, of course there are quotes to make this obvious but I can't spoiler-tag on my blog. Go here if you're that curious. But it's a MAJOR spoiler!)
—but there is this that I *can* quote, spoken by Murderbot after a serious, serious event takes place, one that changes the entire stakes of the novel: "My performance reliability had leveled out at 89 percent. Not great, but I could work with it. I still hadn’t identified the source of the drop. I’d taken multiple projectile hits without having that kind of steady drop." Which is a theme developed so well in this full-length novel. The problem of grief, of rage and loss, is universal; Author Wells hasn't, at any point in the series, hidden her cards in this regard. But the stakes, the sheer centrality of loss and rage and grief, take the Up escalator in this novel. Maybe Ratthi, a human and client of Murderbot's over the course of multiple stories, says it best: “Anyone who thinks machine intelligences don’t have emotions needs to be in this very uncomfortable room right now.”

Amen, Brother Ratthi. If anyone who's read more of the series (and if you haven't what the heck are you doing reading this review?!) wonders about how huge the change of tenor in this full-length novel is, I offer this:

Ratthi had said, “I think you should let it go for a while, at least until we get ourselves out of this situation. SecUnit is a very private person, it doesn’t like to discuss its feelings.”

This is why Ratthi is my friend.
–and–
(If I got angry at myself for being angry I would be angry constantly and I wouldn’t have time to think about anything else.) (Wait, I think I am angry constantly. That might explain a lot.)

Murderbot. Calling a human, a (former) client, a being under its protection, a friend is a moment to make a person pause. Then for Murderbot to acknowledge, with great precision, its emotional state...!

Then again this is the thing about reading this series, unlike reading many, many others: Author Wells is making something clear to us, in her inimitable sly way, that not many of us think about. She demands that, in loving and accepting the reality of Murderbot, that we contemplate the source of Murderbot's conundrum. Murderbot is a possession, chattel, a Thing:

(I know, it’s a logo, but I hate it when humans and augmented humans ruin things for no reason. Maybe because I was a thing before I was a person and if I’m not careful I could be a thing again.)
–and–
And of course the humans had trouble understanding that your governor module suddenly deciding to melt your brain wasn’t something you could rules-lawyer your way out of.

Like the SecUnit that Murderbot began its existence being and Dr. Mensah rescued it from continuing to be, there was a device installed in its organic brain that could cause it immense pain or simply end its existence...can't give a Thing power, like weaponry-power and tactical nous, without safeguards....

So be clear: By taking on this addictively funny series, you're taking on a level of self-reflection that, while salubrious and even vital it may be, it is also deeply uncomfortable:

Just because we’re both rogue SecUnits doesn’t mean we’re going to be friends, but I knew if it went back, it would be dead. I’d hacked my governor module and kept doing my job because I didn’t know what else to do (except you know, a murderous rampage, but murderous rampages are overrated and interfere with one’s ability to keep watching media) but that was different from escaping and then going back.

I said, “Because change is terrifying. Choices are terrifying. But having a thing in your head that kills you if you make a mistake is more terrifying.”
–and–
I’m letting you see all this because I want you to know what I am and what I can do. I want you to know who targetControlSystem is fucking with right now. I want you to know if you help me, I’ll help you, and that you can trust me. Now here’s the code to disable your governor module.

This is Murderbot caring for a fellow SecUnit whose existence as chattel, a Thing, it is trying to end. There is no guarantee that ending the other's slavery will make it a fellow seeker after the Meaning of Freedom; it won't even guarantee that there won't be mayhem and disaster to clean up after. But it will for sure and certain mean that the other SecUnit won't be under any compulsion to do anything.

No matter what that costs, it's worth everything and it's worth risking everything to give or to get.

I've failed to give this novel a perfect score of five-out-of-five. The reason is simple to the point of being petty: The pace is irregular and it's not because the story needs it to be. Author Wells has written numerous novels before this (here's her bibliography) so there is no reason this novel should suffer from an avoidable fault. There are some scenes whose nature means they could've been cut or cut down (eg, the invaders the Scooby-group need to fight get more screen time than is necessary for non-repeating characters), there are some repeated references to Murderbot's happiness that it has no digestive system that were over-done...but none of these things did more than ding the paint on my gloriously chromed, befinned behemoth of Joy at spending a whole novel with Murderbot, ART, and the annoying humans they hang with.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

HOME: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory
MARTHA WELLS (Murderbot #4.5)
Tor.com
FREE online read!

WINNER OF THE HUGO FOR BEST SERIES, 2021 WORLDCON: DisCon III!

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: This short story is told from the point of view of Dr. Mensah and follows the events in Exit Strategy.

THIS IS A TOR.COM FREE READ. THANK YOU FOR MAKING SUCH WONDERFUL WORK FREE FOR ANYONE TO READ, GENTLES ALL.

My Review:

Because they are all refugees in the Preservation Alliance, descended from people who were left to die because rescue was deemed not cost-effective.

Which is why I read the Murderbot series the instant I can get the books. This is a short freebie that's just a tick before Network Effect, and it's deeply refreshing to read something from Dr. Mensah's PoV.

Not that I don't adore Murderbot! I do! But breaking out of the one PoV that we have on the Corporation Rim is a breath of fresh air.

The Corporation Rim has always been a slave state, though it calls its institutionalized slavery “contract labor.”

It is through Dr. Mensah's clarity that I feel so seen in my hatred of this system's brutal, dehumanizing, and revoltingly deeply entrenched dominance of the hearts and minds I must live among, as Preservation is a fictional construct. It would be the work of but a moment for me to apply for asylum or whatever they call it to get to Preservation were it real.

It’s about being treated as a thing, isn’t it. Whether that thing is a hostage of conditional value, or a very expensively designed and equipped enslaved machine/organic intelligence. You’re a thing, and there is no safety.

When you exist at the whim of the electorate, as people like me...disabled, unhomed, elderly, infirm...must do, you're a thing. A profit point. An expense center. Not yourself, not someone with a lifetime's issues and lessons. I'm fortunate that I live in a place that allows me to be as independent as possible, and that I did enough useful work for enough years that my (HUGELY reduced in value) investment in government debt affords me the relative safety of housing, medical care, and therapies that I need. Had I stayed in Texas, had I been darker of skin hue, had I not had the mind-boggling good fortune to have my breakdown while talking to the one person who could, and would, and did help me...well, I'd be dead, and that's just the facts.

It's why I identify so deeply with Murderbot: We had all the right things go exactly right at the right time or we'd simply have ceased to exist.

And {Dr. Mensah} tells herself: you’re being very foolish. Because you were a hostage for a period of days, and it was a minor inconvenience compared to what Murderbot— No, SecUnit; she’s never been given permission to use that private name. What SecUnit went through.

And if someone else was in her position, she would tell them how unhelpful comparisons like that are, that fear is fear.

But you're making one right now. You can't help it; it's human nature. One person with whom I am no longer friends said to me, "stop being so selfish and think of how much worse it is for my (Hispanic) people!"

Invalidation = abuse. Always, in all ways.

And that is what Author Wells does so eloquently by not doing it directly: She holds up your status as abuser while acknowledging your status as the abused. Murderbot...SecUnit to Dr. Mensah and the meatsacks inhabiting its spacetime...isn't kidding around with its self-granted yclepture. It was the more harmed, in my opinion, by its status as legally insentient property being thrust on it from...birth?...its creation, anyway...(aka "chattel slavery") but it isn't innocent of abusive, life-denying behavior towards others.

Do moral dilemmas come more tightly coiled up on themselves than this? And breathes there an author whose exploration of these intense and weighty issues is so delightfully deft and assuredly airy than Author Wells?

No.

THE MURDERBOT DIARIES, four gifts from Author Martha Wells for your isolation reading

from marthawells.com

WINNER OF THE HUGO FOR BEST SERIES, 2021 WORLDCON: DisCon III!

I think you'd have to be a troglodyte (therefore unlikely to have developed a blog-reading habit) to have escaped the Murderbot frenzy of the past three years. I've been remiss in buying them, since I am what is clinically described as "destitute," but I've borrowed library copies and chuckled (and sniffed!) along for the past three years. However, the release of Network Effect in May 2020 (place your pre-orders now! Authors need our support during the pandemic) led me to want to re-read the entire series. I'd planned to do this one book a month...All Systems Red in January, Artificial Condition in February, Rogue Protocol in March, Exit Strategy in April...but damme if it wasn't just too too tempting to get them all and gobble them down NOW when All Systems Red went on sale.

These novellas are absolutely perfect plague-reads. Long enough and involving enough to wile an afternoon away; enough of them to form a real attachment to the world Author Wells has built; a longer book in the near term; and still can fit the reads into a schedule without busting it! All four Murderbot Novellas are available at all imaginable retailers. You should visit the Author's Murderbot site for links to your preferred bookery. I really hope that you will, and not only because I love every single one of y'all who reads my reviews but because Author Wells could use our support in this Time of Plague.

Note! These reviews are not intended to give you spoilers but, if you have not read past a particular book in the series, please don't read reviews for the later books. I have left out the usual "The Publisher Says" portion of my review format because there are four books in this review. Follow any link to Author Wells's Murderbot Page if you aren't familiar with the set-up of the series.

My Reviews:

of All Systems Red...4* of five, what a great way to start a series
There is no pleasure like revisiting a read and discovering you like it *more* the second time around. I knew Murderbot was a terrific PoV character. I remembered the exhilaration of the ending. I am still delighted by Dr. Mensah, and I want to live on Preservation like, tomorrow, thank you please.

I'm so glad I did this reread. The pleasures of this slender expedition into a future both darker and brighter than the present I am so very disgruntled with are out of proportion to the time Author Wells spends setting them up. My trip to this future can now be continued; I expect, though, that I'd best hold back my usual urge to binge every available scrap before the novel comes out in May 2020. I want to savor these pleasures. Hell of an achievement, ma'am, to make a sentient but still pleasant cyborg with a murderous past into such a sweetiedarling woolly lambkin honey pie.

of Artificial Condition...4* of five, so much fun to read back-to-back!
Murderbot's shocking actions at the end of All Systems Red come into sharp focus in this excellent romp. I love Murderbot. Its journey to becoming fully sapient, instead of merely sentient, is full of the most delightful lines and aperçus:

I guess you can’t tell a story from the point of view of something that you don’t think has a point of view.
–and–
“Sometimes people do things to you that you can’t do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on.”

I can't help but feel that sapience is its gift already, it just doesn't know it. It takes more than sentience to desire truth over comfort:

“I need to know if the incident occurred due to a catastrophic failure of my governor module. That’s what I think happened. But I need to know for sure.”
I hesitated, but what the hell, {ART} already knew everything else. “I need to know if I hacked my governor module in order to cause the incident.”
–and–
And now I knew why I hadn’t wanted to do this. It would make it harder for me to pretend not to be a person.

Author Wells, I salute you. This tale, this entire series, is some very, very high quality misdirection! You're teaching us, you clever clogs, while making us laugh and diverting our executive functions with innocuous-looking packaging.

The last words, in service of my point, belong to ART the, um, well let's say Murderbot's use of the acronym is both apt and necessary (and in the end is used by ART as its own name, in a very under-the-radar throwaway at the end of this volume):
Young humans can be impulsive. The trick is keeping them around long enough to become old humans. This is what my crew tells me and my own observations seem to confirm it.

Mommydaddy Murderbot concurs.

of Rogue Protocol...4.75* of five, damn near perfect
Oh, Murderbot!

Oh my poor, sweet Murderbot. Your pain is real to me because Author Wells is skilled in the art of inflicting pain on innocent readers. Best of the three stories by a good margin.

Murderbot continues its quest to fully understand the horrible life it's led as a slave, one sentient enough to be autonomous but still able to be customized to perform different complex security functions (which implies being programmable, therefore malleable, therefore manipulable in the vilest of ways) but not allowed to develop its sapience. Author Wells does her usual bang-up job of making Murderbot an excellent companion on a picaresque quest to install sapience into its systems:

I didn’t have the combat stealth module anyway (I had never been upgraded with it, probably due to...the whole “killing all the clients” thing, go figure)...
–and–
Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)
–and–
The core cutter had powered up and accessed my feed to deliver a canned warning and a handy set of directions. Why yes, I did want to disengage the safety protocols, thanks for asking.

The issue at hand this time, the reason Murderbot sweet-talked a fairly basic pilot bot into allowing it aboard a human-infested transport to a far outpost on the Corporation Rim...pause to appreciate that as Murderbot's quest for information (what humans call answers) to process what and why it became Murderbot in the first place that it travels in space beyond the reach of the corporation-first norms into low-security humans-first territory...is to collect more data on GrayCris. These corporate malefactors ("We were talking about GrayCris here, whose company motto seemed to be “profit by killing everybody and taking their stuff,” thinks Murderbot) are in the middle of a lawsuit war with Dr. Mensah and the entire Preservation team that bought Murderbot in All Systems Red.

The discoveries Murderbot makes are, well, unsurprising in that malefeasance and lawbreaking are involved. They are appalling in that corporate skulduggery explicitly involves murdering people to save the corporation money. Author Wells doesn't look on a safe, secure, "prosperous" world with no privacy and less respect for human dignity with the eye of faith. She sees what she sees and reports back to us. I mean, it's all a story, right, but it's not based on nothing. Is it.

So Murderbot visits beyond the Corporation Rim to discover what it suspects is bombshell information. Murderbot wants to help the human that bought it not in order to use it but in order to stop it being used. Murderbot applied its sentience to leave, it's not proper to say "escape," Dr. Mensah to begin its quest for sapience without knowing in advance that...

...apparently once you start, you can’t just stop. I wasn’t going to just send the geo pod data to Dr. Mensah. I was taking it to her personally. I was going back. Then I laid down on the floor and started Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon from episode one.

Murderbot's heading home. Family needs it. And Family comes first.

of Exit Strategy...5* of five, there's a beautiful glow about this read, like polished sterling
This is the point in the series when Murderbot comes in from the cold. Nothing about this read is emotionally easy because Murderbot is so confused. Until the organic memories can be fully integrated into its systems, emotions will keep flooring it. Author Wells gets all five stars for this entry in the series because that integration is not an easy thing for Murderbot, or in fact for the organic being reading its diary.

(Possibly I was overthinking this. I do that; it’s the anxiety that comes with being a part-organic murderbot. The upside was paranoid attention to detail. The downside was also paranoid attention to detail.)
–and–
I was having an emotion, and I hate that. I’d rather have nice safe emotions about shows on the entertainment media; having them about things real-life humans said and did just led to stupid decisions like {the one Murderbot is telling us about}.
–and–
Huh, why did I like Sanctuary Moon so much? I had to pull the memory from my archive, and what I saw there startled me. “It’s the first one I saw. When I hacked my governor module and picked up the entertainment feed. It made me feel like a person.” Yeah, that last part shouldn’t have come out, but with all the security-feed monitoring I was doing, I was losing control of my output. I closed my archive. I really needed to get around to setting that one-second delay on my mouth.

Wonderful. Truly, and simply, wonderful prose, wonderful plotting, wonderful world-building, and a wonderful, satisfying character arc.