What an incredibly good book this was! This was the 7th book in the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. Every book has been a joy to read, as I described in my post about Fugitive Telemetry. But this one was something else entirely!
For starters, it just kept going and going. There were 2 moments where I had the feeling it would be the end of the story (with an e-reader you can’t feel how thick the book still is), but it turned out to be the beginning of a whole new arc instead.
This book took me 41 days; the previous two each took me 19. Not a chore though — halfway through I found myself hoping the ending was still very far off, because it was such a pleasure to read.
On top of that, Murderbot was very much occupied with his feelings (not by choice!), which was portrayed convincingly and with real strength. It fits his character perfectly and was entertaining, endearing, and at times touching. He suffers a great loss and has emphatically no grief about it, because he is not human. His statistics and sensors seem to be suggesting that his functioning is affected nonetheless — a new dimension in his life.
The reader had long known that more was happening inside his head, however hard Murderbot tried to deny it to himself.
This story takes that space away from him entirely.
What an absolute must-read!
