🤖🤖🤖🤖 4/5 Murderbots – I’ve never related so much to a literal killing machine.
Format: Audiobook (Spotify)
Read: September 2024
Murderbot has been in my radar for years but the incredible price of the eBooks always put me off. I checked again today and it is more reasonable now! You can get the 7 book collection for £30 which isn’t bad, whereas last time I looked the first one was pretty cheap but subsequent in the series were £9-15 for less than 300 pages of reading. Too steep for ebooks!
Anyway, I found the audiobooks are actually on Spotify! And they’re each under 4 hours each which added you to the exact time I had left on my monthly allowance after finishing Funny Story – it was like it was meant to be!
These are so good as audiobooks too! Kevin R. Free does such a good job with Murderbot’s largely emotionally, deadpan voice which makes me really happy that this was how I finally accessed these books!
1. All Systems Red
Murderbot introduces himself with perfectly minimal world building. It’s future space sci-fi shit, human scientists are researching stuff on a dangerous world. There are robots, augmented humans, and part synthetic and part organic clone “constructs” like our Murderbot. You get it.
Murderbot is actually a security unit, essentially a piece of equipment rented from The Company to do the job of keeping the humans who pay for it safe. The name “Murderbot” is how it refers to itself, nobody else calls it that.
Murderbot is different to other security units because they have a hacked “governor module” which means they have autonomy and don’t have to obey commands. But mostly they use the hack to download and watch as much media (TV shows) as they can.
Murderbot is wonderful, and so relatable! They’re sarcastic, a little morose, and bored with their job. They hate conversation and just want to be left alone to watch TV shows!
2. Artificial Condition
The second installment follows a newly freed Murderbot and they set out to investigate their past. I really loved ART and their reluctant friendship! Figuring out the human disguise was also fun.
And I do relate to rewatching favourite episodes of TV shows to calm down!
I enjoyed the first book a lot but in this one I definitely felt myself more invested in the fate of Murderbot.
I can’t wait for my Spotify hours to reset so I can listen to more!
Murderbot is such a fun read. Glad you like it. I’ve only read the first novella and need to continue with the series.