System Collapse

Finished reading System Collapse by Martha Wells. This is the 7th book of the Murderbot series (the first few as novellas), and I think this is the one that will end the series for me. Might have some Spoilers, I’ll try to warn you!

Synopsis

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! (From Amazon)

Review

Martha Wells is a great writer. The fact that Murderbot fights with both human experiences and machine experiences is well blended and a great subject to present. Unfortunately, since these stories have gone from novellas to novels, they’ve become bloated and filled with boring sections. I also think that due to the length, there’s early plot points and situations that feel forgotten about and left with no payoff later in the book. The initial setup of the situation was well structured and engaging. Murderbot’s battling emotions and feelings his machine side cannot connect with, and it sets itself up for a gripping internal as well as external struggle (with Barish-Estranza).

Unfortunately, we’re given hundred pages of filler with discussions with the colony’s inhabitants and systems. The brief back and forth with BE’s people isn’t very engaging because the motivations of both sides are well known to the reader, and therefore, not very interesting. It’s just hard to make something like that interesting with you already know what and why people are doing things. Then when it came to the more interesting and gripping scenarios at the end, there’s a twist out of nowhere. You would think this would redeem the earlier exposition, but instead is unsatisfactorily resolved (in the way we all knew it would) and the most interesting aspects (BE Exec and new SecUnit) are written off and we’re left with a “back where we started feeling”.

Honestly, I have felt that this series should have remained as novellas. The early ones were concise and only included what you needed. Wells was fantastic and getting everything in in that short length, but in these longer novels it feels she doesn’t know what to do with the extra page count. Overall, I think I’m done with this series moving forward. Gave both the novels a try and feel pretty let down by them. I will move on to other things. Giving this a 3.5 or 4 out of 10.