“System Collapse” by Martha Wells

System Collapse by Martha Wells

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Murderbot is not okay. I repeat, Murderbot is (very much) not okay.

I was different. It wasn’t just the alien contamination. What came out was, “Something in me broke.”

It’s easy to think of our former “mindless killing machine” with a soft spot for media entertainment and – brace for it – humans and a certain Asshole Research Transport as amazingly invulnerable, save for a bit of severe social anxiety and awkward difficulty adjusting to accepted personhood after existence as basically a disposable weapon, and now certainly PTSD. But Murderbot is not invulnerable, and emotions happen, and trauma – as much as it would like to keep that part [redacted] – wreaks its consequences on our favorite bot/human construct.

(“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I had told Mensah. “I think you might know,” she had said. “You just don’t want to talk about it.”)

Set immediately after the end of Network Effect, System Collapse is a direct continuation of that storyline in the quest of Murderbot and a few of its favorite humans (and ART, or rather ART-drone) to rescue the abandoned colonists on the planet suffering from alien contamination from becoming indentured servants for a greedy corporation. Oh, and it’s a story of mental health struggles (but done non-didactically and non-annoyingly, which is much appreciated) and a critique of rampant capitalistic approach to life (again, somehow non-annoyingly, which quite a few authors can learn from).

But since the thing that happened I don’t think I’ve had an emotion that wasn’t the visual equivalent of a wet blanket crumpled on a floor.

And by now you’re either an established Murderbot fan or a strange person who picked up book 7 in a series without loving the hell out of its snarky supposedly misanthropic protagonist that would annihilate you if you threaten its ever-expanding list of “its” humans ( “(It was weird to have so many humans I had to give them group names.)”

I suppose what I’m saying is — I expect you’ll love it, too.

4.5 stars, rounding up (saving that half-star for eventual narration by Kevin R. Free; I can’t wait to hear his rendition of Murderbot/ART banter).

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Thanks to NetGalley and Tordotcom for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

He turned to me. “It was a sexual discussion.”
ART said in our private feed, I told you that you didn’t want to know.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I had an expression (I couldn’t help it) and involuntarily retreated two meters back down the corridor.

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