Christian’s Subsection of the Internet

System Collapse continues where Network Effect left off, and neither the action nor the peril lets off. Fortunately, System Collapse is a little bit easier to follow. Murderbot, along with their companions on ART, find themselves - somewhat incidentally - having to save a while bunch of people. Not wanting to spoil anything, but… things happen. Things not exactly according to plan. Murderbot isn’t quite operating as normal though. Something has happened to them. Something confusing, and almost human. Something making them doubt their ability to do what they need to do - what people expects them to do. There seems to be some characters development going on. How will this change Murderbot? I’m looking forward to finding out!

Fugitive Telemetry was a very fun pallet-cleanser between the more substantial drama going on in the other books in the series. Confusingly, this book isn’t in the order of the other books as they are released (I’m assuming it takes place some time before the previous book in the series) - but it’s a break from the, somewhat stressful, main story that I didn’t know I needed! It takes the form of a bit of a whodunit, in which out favourite Murderbot gets to apply it’s skills as a detective, as it tries to find out why Preservation Station suddenly has a dead body lying about. The book has all the enjoyable elements that make up a good Murderbot story - snark, sarcasm, dry humour, and a type of humanity that you can - oddly - only get from a being who is in the process of discovering, questioning, resenting, and holding on to their own humanity. There are a lot of funny books, even with this style of humour, but the way it works when combined with Murderbot as a character has something magical to it, and no less so in this book. And while the highlight of the book is definitely how the story is told, the story itself is solid. The Murderbot series has become a regular feature on my list when people ask me for general book-recommendations. Fugitive Telemetry does nothing to change that.

I enjoy these Slough House short stories. The Drop was not particularly action filled, not particularly thrilling, but it serves as a nice little interlude between the novels. And through the event, we get to see how an incidental character in this story, who popped up as the new character in the previous Slow Horses, ended up being sent to Slough House. As this point I would say that anyone who’s reading the Slow Horses books should be reading these short stories as well - but I’m sure they already are.

I came back to this book after taking a bit of a book-reading-break where much of my reading time has been consumed by news and magazines. So what better way to return than to dive into the familiar world of the Frontiers Saga? “Who Takes no Risk” takes, or rather continues to take, a turn toward the futile and sad. There’s a darker, more desperate, atmosphere hanging over this book than what has been the norm so far, and even though we still get a fair share of plot-powered improbable successes, the feeling of “this is a series where things will generally go well” is being gradually dismantled. Which is a good thing. There’s also a couple of really great sub-plots in this book, and it’s almost a bit of a pity that they’re bundled in with such a substantive main plot. They don’t exactly serve to add much levity, but I found the sub-plots more emotionally engaging than the main plot. They gave me time to digest what was happening, rather than being a full-on series of events that were thrown at me. This book has flaws. Some, if not all, of the main set pieces feel a bit dragged out, and once it’s obvious what is going to happen, it takes too long for it to actually happen. But while this series took the leap from being a joyously superficial, feel-good space opera to a more emotionally absorbing story many, many, books ago - this book definitely serves to affirm that fact.

When I started reading the Slough House series, I assumed that it would be different stories based around the same template. Nothing wrong with that: I’m perfectly happy to read books which are built using the same formula, as long as that formula works. After London Rules I’ve stopped thinking that the author is trying to find a formula, and have started thinking that these books will just continue being fresh and new every time. This book is very different from the preceding ones, and it’s my favourite one yet. It’s not that it doesn’t start with action - it does - but we don’t really partake in it. The story takes place without (anti-)heroes trying to track down an apparent group of terrorists, and trying to stop them committing further acts of terrorism. It’s very, very, light on action compared to the previous books - with the majority of the focus being on the processes behind the scenes in trying to find them. Despite the lack of shooty shooty stuff, I was gripped. This book also got the humour just right - it’s still a book with a joke dropped into every other sentence, but in an improvement from parts of the previous books, this time it felt completely effortless, and I didn’t get the feeling that the humour was being shoehorned into a serious story. The story kept all of it’s gravity, while also keeping me smiling. Hopefully the series will keep me smiling for many books to come.