Network Effect

By -

 Network Effect, by Martha Wells

OK, I love the Murderbot Diaries series.  It's fantastic.  This novel didn't disappoint and was so good -- and also set up for a good long run of Murderbot stories in the future, so yay!

Murderbot, known in public as SecUnit, now works for Dr. Mensah on the independent planet of Preservation.  On the way home from a research mission with some of Mensah's family members, the ship is attacked and Murderbot, plus the teenage Amena, are kidnapped by some strange grey aliens.  It turns out that an old friend is in trouble, and so Murderbot is pulled into a very complicated hostage situation...

It's a lot of action, thrills, angst, and weird alien remnants, plus Murderbot's difficult feelings.  It's nice to be with people who treat it like a person, but also that means they want to talk about feelings and....hug.  Ack.

I love how Murderbot isn't a human, and really, really doesn't want to be one.  It's always kind of bugged me that so many non-humans in SF want to become more human (I'm looking at you, Data).  I mean, sure, one of SF's big things is examining the human condition, but still.

This is a great series, and I'm happy to see that there's another installment being published in April!



Comments

  1. Jenny @ Reading the EndNovember 24, 2020 at 4:45 AM

    Poor Murderbot! Constantly being forced to make friends even when it really REALLY doesn't want to. How I adore and cherish it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. IzaBzhNovember 24, 2020 at 5:55 AM

    I bought the first book recently, I'm so happy to read it soon ! Thanks for sharing :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. JeanNovember 24, 2020 at 9:57 AM

    Yay! Everybody loves MurderBot. Who would rather they didn't. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. THE ONLY TRUE HACKER IN THE WORLD ®November 29, 2020 at 10:41 PM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more