Artificial Condition

Executive Summary: This book seemed to have less high stakes, but I think in many ways I liked it better. Definitely another great entry in this series.

Audiobook: Kevin R. Free once again does a good job at portraying Murderbot. He nails the sarcasm very well. This book definitely works well in audio.

Full Review
I really enjoyed the first book of this series, but I struggle with the rise in popularity of novellas. I've become so spoiled by 20+ hour audiobooks that a 4 hour book feels like a bad deal.

I managed to get this book as part of a buy one get one sale, and realized that despite it's short length it's one of the best series of the last few years. I feel like the stakes of this story wasn't quite as high as the last book, but I really enjoyed the relationship between Murderbot and the Research Transport ship.

It was this kind of slice of life aspect to the story that endeared Murderbot to me even more than the first book.

That isn't to say there isn't any action. Murderbot takes a job protecting humans who just can't help but get themselves in trouble. Luckily our sarcastic TV loving robot is here to save the day!

I enjoyed this so much I decided to just bite the bullet and buy the rest of the series. I'm eagerly looking forward to the final two novellas and to see where things go from here.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first book of The Murderbot Diaries, so I decided to immediately continue with the second book, Artificial Condition. I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed. This review will be shorter for a couple reasons: it's a short book, and it's a sequel. I don't want to spoil the first book.

We continue to follow the narrator, a “murderbot.” In this book, they give themself the name of Eden and they're trying to pass as an augmented human rather than just a murderbot. I won't explain how or why they got there.

The events of the book are rather slow, and virtually no action happens until the last few pages. Because of that, it felt like a real filler episode. Eden has to get from the end of book one to wherever they're going next once they do this one specific thing. That one specific thing is the goal of this book, but of course a few things get in the way. Once that thing is accomplished, and it takes about 150 pages to dance around it getting accomplished, the book has to end.

I guess you could see the goal, the reveal of certain information, was very important, and I could see why a whole book would focus on it. But overall, it just felt like a set-up between plot points. I have no idea what's going to happen in book three, Rogue Protocol, but it seems Eden had to do this thing in order for those events to happen. I don't see why Artificial Condition couldn't be tightened up and possibly combined with book three.

With that said, I obviously finished the book and wanted to see what would happen. I like our main character. I like how they think and act. I like the humor of the book. I was happy to follow Eden along. I'm not really one to ask for lots of action, but it really felt like nothing was happening except filler.

I will continue the series, but not just yet. I'm going to pick a different book to read next.

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I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory  issues. Read them at your peril! 

Murderbot gets himself into an another fine mess. Same funny, charming, sometimes violent, interactions between the narrating cyborg and everyone /everything else it meets. It's a space thriller, with both naive and bad humans causing trouble for MurderBot again.  He's trying to get back to the planet where he apparently went rogue and murdered 57 humans. On the way he hitches a lift with a very powerful transporter bot whose motives are unclear. 

I loved this story. As it's a novella, there's no baggy world building or side plots. Murderbot gets into trouble and out of it pretty quickly. 

Another enjoyable entry in the Murderbot Diaries series! I actually enjoyed the first book just a bit more than this one, but I loved that our Murderbot friend is doing things of his own volition and looking for answers to the big questions he has about his past. It almost feels a bit like a footnote in this book though, as most of the plot centers around Murderbot's interaction with a group of down-on-their-luck workers trying to get their IP back.

There's a lot going on in this book, and while it's all fun to read about, in novella form everything feels like it happens so quick. That's really my only minor hangup about this one, but it's still an entertaining read regardless.

I don't know why people find this series so interesting. I listened to the first two audiobooks, hoping the second would be better than the first. They were so boring, I found it hard to focus on. The story made very little sense, it doesn't flow smoothly, it felt like there was a ton of world building missing, and the narrator was terrible.
I give it two stars because the story feels like it could be so much more, and I almost wanted to like it, but just couldn't.

This is the second in the Murderbot Diaries. All Systems Red is the first one and on the strength of that one, I decided I needed to read the whole series. (So far they're pretty short, about 150 pages each, but I understand the fifth one will be full length.) In this one, Murderbot takes on a consulting job as a way to view the scene where the original atrocity happened that inspired it to name itself Murderbot. Zipped through this in two days.

I am loving this series. It brings some reflections regarding human x robot and what makes as human, but that is very thin, the story is mostly focused on the adventures. A new character was added, Art, which I loved, and I hope Art will be back on the next adventures, their partnership was amazing.

Short version: More Murderbot! Yay!

Slightly longer version:
On a quest to find out more about THE INCIDENT when it went rogue, my favorite Murderbot finds an unexpected ally in ART, a research transport bot, and needs to take on clients as a security consultant to blend in.
This quote sums it up nicely:
“Yes, the giant transport bot is going to help the construct SecUnit pretend to be human. This will go well.”

While I enjoyed meeting ART and getting to know Murderbot better, somehow I din't love this second instalment quite as much as I did the first. I'm still looking forward to more Murderbot in the future, though. :)