Written by Martha Wells

Number 7 in The Murderbot Diaries

Publisher: Tor Publishing Group
Pages: 245
Genre: Science Fiction
Published: 2023-11-13
Original Language: English

Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse. Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back. Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize. But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast. Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.

Read from 2024-08-11 to 2024-08-31
Read in English
Rating: 4/5
Review: 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!