Summary [courtesy of Goodreads]: Murderbot Diaries #6–When Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it knows it is going to have to assist station security to determine who the body is (was), how they were killed (that should be relatively straightforward, at least), and why (because apparently that matters to a lot of people—who knew?) Yes, the unthinkable is about to happen: Murderbot must voluntarily speak to humans! Again!
Boy do I love Murderbot. I love Murderbot when it’s kicking all manner of evil corporate ass. I love Murderbot when it’s snarking quietly yet viciously in the corner. I love Murderbot when it’s grudgingly learning to accept its growing found family. I particularly love Murderbot when it’s interacting with other sentient bots, reading them for filth but then becoming their ride-or-die (even if Murderbot itself would never admit such ‘feelings’). Though to be truly honest, I MOST love Murderbot when it’s bingeing TV shows and fanbotting out, which is also when I most relate to Murderbot.
So, given this hierarchy of my favorite Murderbot activities, this novella was a bit of a mixed bag. It’s still excellent–I still gobbled it up in one sitting, as I have almost all of the other books in the series (including the full-length novel, Network Effect)–but it was not my favorite entry, because the bot-to-bot interactions were at a lower level than sometimes.
Yes, we do get introduced to the fabulously self-named JollyBaby, whose nickname–an in-joke among spaceshuttle bots–causes Murderbot infinite chagrin (“It’s name is not JollyBaby… Tell me it’s name is not JollyBaby.”) And we get some good-old-fashioned Murderbot existential-angst-turned-snark (“All I wanted to do was watch media and not exist.” HARD SAME sometimes, Murderbot.)
But really, Murderbot spends the bulk of its time interacting with annoying new humans because, for the first time, Murderbot’s a detective! Watching Murderbot solve a murder without its full array of surveillance information was certainly fun, and of course being in its head is always a neurodivergent delight, but it was more a playful romp (with admittedly serious themes and stakes at the periphery) than most of the other entries.
SPOILER TERRITORY
That being said, I LOVED the reveal/climax, when all of the bots (led by my new favorite JollyBaby–we stan you, JollyBaby) rally to Murderbot and help it defeat the true big bad, a corporation-loyal Combatbot. Was it cute as hell while also being inspiring? Yes. Did I cry? To paraphrase Murderbot, leave me alone.
As for the detective plot…this is some seriously effective inadvertent copaganda, I will say. To be fair to Wells, the human detectives are from a pacifist planet and have no guns or other projectile weaponry, so they’re inherently less violent than real U.S. cops. Furthermore, the main detectives are…less than effectual, shall we say. And they’re dicks to Murderbot, so you KNOW we’re not supposed to sympathize with them. By the end, of course, though, they come around and we even get the suggestion that Murderbot might do more freelance crime-solving in the future, so it’s not as anti-cop as it could be. All I can say is this must be how abolitionist fans of Law and Order: SVU feel: Murderbot makes a damn appealing detective, and I kinda want to live in a world where it’s enacting justice.
