REVIEW: Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries 8) by Martha Wells
Everyone’s favorite lethal SecUnit is back in the next installment of Martha Wells’ bestselling and award-winning Murderbot Diaries series.
Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.
After volunteering to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realizes that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn’t know.
Including human children. Ugh.
This may well call for… eye contact!
(Emotion check: Oh, for f—)
Dear Ms. Wells,
Well, I and countless others have been eagerly waiting for the next Murderbot Diaries installment and, in the end, it does not disappoint. At the beginning … I felt as if I were in a fever dream and reliving moments when I was reading “System Collapse” but at about the 20% mark things took off and rarely stopped to even gasp for a breath before taking off again. (Emotion check: Good, actually. Really good)
I’m going to plump up the publisher’s blurb just a bit. Trying to rescue some of Dr. Mensah’s family, Murderbot leads them across a “it could be better” planet station and deals with its new “feelings.” And we all know what Murderbot thinks of “feelings.”
Yeah so, readers, brace yourselves for a little bit of Murderbot telling us about this place where some of Dr. Mensah’s family members have been “diverted” to, on their way somewhere else, and where Someone has gotten them out of the equivalent of a (Barish-Estranza) holding cell. Now Murderbot just needs to find them and get them to the shuttle and blast off. Easy peasy. Except that doesn’t happen. Instead, Murderbot and Farai, Naja, and Sofi must now traverse a platform over a mined out planet (it’s actually got hunks of it missing which makes Sofi sad) to locate others who need to be rescued, all while chased by Barish-Estranza security (cheap ass, in Murderbot’s estimation, but still there). (Emotion check: Not happy)
Does Murderbot want to go after these others, thus putting Farai, Naja, and Sofi in danger? No, no it does not. But it’s also finding out that it … cares that its charges don’t hate it so (sometimes doing an internal sigh when no human is there to be annoyed by the sound) it will ferry them all across various zones, some of which are being actively contested, some which are off the grid (so to speak) where people go to hide, and always keeping the coms and feed monitored to locate the others and doing threat level checks. Good thing that Murderbot has seen some shit (at least on Sanctuary Moon) and stays ready for all kinds of shit to go down. Because it does.
At least it hasn’t had any redacted though it gets annoyed with its emotion checks. Oh, but it does have some fun fending off bandits! Those motherless shits FAFO’d. Murderbot also gets to mentor a little. By the end, Murderbot realizes that perhaps it has been a little too free and easy with letting Three make its own decisions. Hey, being a personnel manager is never easy, right?
Be ready for some exposition and description at the beginning before things settle into almost nonstop tension and action and enjoy Murderbot uneasily shrugging on its new feelings. (Emotion check: I’m done, I’m so done. I would rather fight a CombatBot than spend another hour on this fucking torus.) B+
~Jayne
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I started and finished PLATFORM DECAY while flying east to west. Reading a brand new and eagerly-anticipated book is my new method for making air travel less frustrating. The audio book is waiting for me, too.
I wish I could be less biased, but I loved this book, no reservations. The initial scene made sense after reading further, and then I started all over again when I reached the end. The entire story was satisfying on every level — dare I say emotionally? Pregame warm-up of re-reading NETWORK EFFECT and SYSTEM COLLAPSE may not be a bad idea; I complete forgot about redacted.
(Emotion check: So very good.)
@Darlynne: Reading a new Murderbot novella does sound like a good way to get through air travel. I hope you didn’t have any fights break out on your flight.
I will be back after I’ve read this, which I fully plan to do!
I also thought the beginning was a bit confusing, and I missed ART, but otherwise I really enjoyed it. I would love to see Murderbot watch Honor Princess Detectives with Sofi.
I really enjoyed this, particularly the audiobook version. However, will say that it feels like a carbon copy of prior books. Yes, Muderbot has a mentee now and yes Murderbot is working on its emotions, but that stuff seems to be happening mostly off screen. Do I think the old formula still works really well and a delight to read? Yes I do. But I would absolutely love to read about Murderbot’s further growth, maybe in another full length book (please pretty please, Martha wells?)
@Misti: Yes! I was hoping Murderbot would say something about downloading a season or two of Honor Princess Detectives. ART makes any Murderbot book a bit better.
@Li: I’m not much of a fan of audio fiction books but I’ve just listened to the sample of this one and I … didn’t hate it. Maybe at some point I’ll go back and listen to the series. ☺
@Jayne: IMO the narrator does a good job of expressing Murderbot’s ennui especially at the beginning of the series before MB makes friends and loosens up a little.
When I listened to book one for the first time, I was a little taken aback by the flat delivery until I realized that, yeah MB would sound like that.
@Jayne: I am a little jealous of your getting to experience this in audiobook form for the first time, it’s that good in my opinion! I find a lot of pleasure in revisiting old favorites by “rereading” the audiobook (if I click with the narration, admittedly tastes vary on this front). Sometimes it can bring new understanding/appreciation and depth to the story. For example, I love the audiobook versions of Laura Kinsale’s books narrated by Nicholas Boulton.
Finished! I agree with Li that the book doesn’t offer something signficantly new, especially in terms of the plot, but also with you, Jayne, and Darlene, that it was a satisfying, entertaining book. I kind of loved that the setting was a planetary ring, like Saturn’s, if I understand correctly. I wanted a bit more of an epilogue, something that would tell me where Supervisor Leonide’s kids end up going to.
I disagree a bit, Li, that Murderbot’s emotional growth is mostly off page. We wouldn’t have seen MB letting a child cling to themself in the early books, or get as angry as MB does in this book (they used the F word a lot more). I also wonder what will happen now that (slight spoiler) a bunch of SecUnits have the code to crack their governor modules.
Martha Wells has said that the book after this one may be the last (sadface) — she feels that MB’s growh arc is near-complete. While I agree with her that there isn’t that much more to add in terms of MB’s path to being okay, I will miss the character and the series.
I would be happy if she wrote a spin-off series from the POV of a different Murderbot Diaries character, Ratthi maybe. This universe feels like it has more to offer. She said, in the same interview, that she doesn’t have plans for a spin-off at this time, but a reader can hope, right?
@Li:
This is my issue with audiobooks.
@Janine:
Double sad face. But I’d rather an author call it a day with a series than let it dwindle into sad reruns just to milk it some more. I could get behind a Next Gen humans (Mensah’s daughters?) dealing with a world of SecUnits who have now hacked their governor modules. And yes, readers can hope.
@Jayne: could get behind a Next Gen humans (Mensah’s daughters?) dealing with a world of SecUnits who have now hacked their governor modules.
Yes, I thought of that after I posted, that Amena would also be a good character to follow.