Genre: Sci Fi
Good Reads meta-data is 256 pages rated 4.40 by 5029 litizens
DNA: USA.
Verdict: Decaying.
Tagline: SecU is back.
The return of the nameless A.I. Security Unit, part man, part machine, all diarist, as well as full-time couch potato media consumer is back, but his energy seems to be flagging.
The mission is to extract hostages with the subtlety Murderbot is known for. It seems almost too easy, and this is because it is. The ante is upped, and apple cart tipped. Much of the dialogue is SecU talking to himself, largely about the idiocy of humans, a subject without end, but also musing about his own growing emotional reactions which are not in any program module. This lets him to say ‘What the fuck a lot!’ Too much. More than 90 times by my count, thus about every third page. Any effect is blunted by repetition.
We are also in for preaching about sexuality and family. This is number #8 in the sequence, but the zip, zest, and zing are long gone, leaving only the sermons. The bastardy of corporations is rehearsed…again…and again. I got the message the first ten or so times.
AppleTV+ has a Murderbot series derived from these books, but I haven’t had either the heart or the stomach to see how many light years it is from the original. No doubt it will be aimed prepubescent boys with arrested development since they made it.