What's on the Reading Radar? #read #obsessing #cantputdown #givemethenextonenow #adventuringwithmurderbot

 Sooooo..... I don't think that I have ever dedicated a Reading Radar to a series before. But seriously, it's necessary... imperative... to use all this space to talk about my latest obsession, The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Let's just put the cover and info up before I get all wordy. Also, there might be possible spoilers in the 'My Thoughts' part, so if you don't want that, then just skip it. (that is also the reason I put my thoughts below the book info)

Title: All Systems Red

Series: Murderbot Diaries, 1

Author: Martha Wells

Length: 156 pages

Genre: Sci-Fi / Action Adventure

Blurb: Winner: 2018 Hugo Award for Best NovellaWinner: 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novella
Winner: 2018 Alex Award
Winner: 2018 Locus Award
One of the Verge's Best Books of 2017
A New York Times and USA Today Bestseller

A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial Intelligence.

"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.

But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.

But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

My Thoughts

I have so many thoughts about this and they are all over the place. This is the part where I needed to sit down with a group of people and discuss this series... for hours. I'm not even kidding about that. 

All week I've been trying to decide how to approach this so, 1) I don't give away spoilers, and 2) I don't want to say something that will chase people away from the series. I binged this series, which I never, ever do. I get really disappointed when I binge something, so I don't, but as I cautiously started each book right after I finished the one before, that disappointment didn't come. I devoured all six books in three days. Something to note: I have the audiobooks, but there are some issues with that because Murderbot is a bot and not human. It doesn't identify as male, female, or even non-binary because it is not human and has no wish to be human. As it stated in one of the books, "Gender: N/A". With the audiobook, the narrator is male and that does color the perception so you might want to just read it so that you can form your own voice for Murderbot. Also, the narrator was not particularly good at making other voices. You would think he'd get better over time, but by book three in my relisten of the series, he didn't.

There are six books in the series. The first four are novellas that follow an arc, but each are also self-contained so you don't have to worry about hitting a cliffhanger. Book five is a full length novel while six is a novella. In my opinion, book six's timeline follows book four. It doesn't mention anything that happened in book five, so you could read it before five just fine. I wish I had. 

I'll start my thoughts with the easy stuff first. This is not a romance but it is a story about relationships and the struggle to define those relationships. There are queer characters, POC, and polycule households (side characters). There is a lot of action and adventure. There is suspense and some mystery. But mainly, this is a character driven story. Oh, and the world building is phenomenal. 

The series is about all sorts of relatable struggles from identifying the emotions you feel and how to deal (or not) with them. Struggling with being overwhelmed while hiding it (or not). Not knowing what you want and the revelations that follows when you basically run away. How media is a stress reliever, in this case it's serials (i.e. TV series), and how it influences the person. I probably should stop here, because I really don't want to give away things.

I love this series and it wasn't until I finished that I realized I had emotions about it. Like, I would be washing the dishes, thinking about the story, and I would be sniffly and teary-eyed. Murderbot touch me in ways I struggle to identify, and in that, I feel a kinship with Murderbot, which sounds really, really weird, I know, but I'm just too old to care. This story has so much heart that it's hard not to be emotionally involved. There are other bots throughout the story, Three, ART and Micky, and I loved them in different ways, and if I wasn't trying to keep this from having spoilers, I would so go into depth over my thoughts about them.

I'm not sure that I can start a different book/series at this time. This is probably a book hangover, but I'm just not interested in moving past it yet. I restarted the series and I'm already on book four again. I would recommend this to everyone I know. This would also be a good read for young adults. Even if you haven't tried sci-fi, give it a go. You won't regret it.

Thank you for stopping by and reading!