All Systems Red

Everything about this book was completely out of my comfort zone and not at all what I would gravitate towards, but I enjoyed it so much. The protagonist was more endearing than most other protagonists I've read, despite being part-robot. The storytelling was solid, and the plot was such a breath of fresh air. This is a 4 to 4.5* read for me, with the only thing stopping it from being a 5* simply being that I zoned out sometimes during the more sci-fi-ish bits, which was sometimes quite dense for a sci-fi layperson like me.

This is a pretty short book, but it took me probably more than half of it to figure out exactly what was going on in terms of the world, the plot, and even just the names for everything (I'm just not used to so much sci-fi and tech jargon in my books). Despite that, the book still managed to be engaging enough almost right from the start, primarily due to the the protagonist's engaging voice - it might be a Murderbot, but it's also just a really shy, introverted entity that just wants to hide behind its opaque face shield thing all day, watch the amazing amount of TV serials it's downloaded, and not have to talk to humans, especially not about its feelings. Honestly, kind of relatable.

Murderbot (it doesn't really have an actual name, so we'll just call it that) is contracted out to a group of scientists and explorers, presumably in some spacefaring civilisation. It's actually a SecUnit (a security unit) that is rented out to these expeditions to protect people from hostile alien lifeforms (or other humans, I suppose). We kinda sorta get to know the scientists in Murderbot's group and they play a big role in the actual plot of this particular story, but the book being as short as it is means that we don't get the time to actually know these characters very well. While I'd love to hear more of them in the subsequent instalments, the main attraction of the story really is Murderbot and its perspective so I wouldn't say this at all detracts from the beauty of the book.

The group and Murderbot discover another expedition of scientists brutally murdered, and then it's a rollercoaster ride from there as they try to figure out who's behind that massacre before the culprits catch up with them to do the same.

What I particularly liked about the storytelling is that, even though we get the events from Murderbot's perspective, we can't help also feeling a little distrustful of Murderbot and wondering if it might be an unreliable narrator. Does that mean I'm siding with the humans over the non-human, even though we are seeing the story through the latter's eyes? What makes Murderbot, who is only part-robot with “organic parts” (i.e. human bits, since it has an actual face and other human organs, which it is able to regenerate when injured or even regrow when it's completely blasted off), different from the augmented humans in this story, when both of them are able to access feeds and information systems presumably via their brains alone? Tl;dr this is a sci-fi story but I find that it made me ask a lot of pretty interesting questions about the nature of robots and artificial intelligence, especially when juxtaposed with human emotions. And the book didn't bald-facedly ask those questions, just set things up so that readers might be provoked into asking these for themselves. That's damn good writing there.

Overall, highly recommended for anyone, especially if you're a sci-fi fan. But even if you're like me and not familiar with sci-fi at all, this still remains a great read.