Rogue Protocol

4.5/5. The Murderbot Diaries sets a high standard but Rogue Protocol kinda squeezes above that benchmark and does things even better than its predecessors.

The titular Murderbot is just a little bit more sarcastic and sharp-witted, just a little bit more human, and the plot is just a little bit tighter and more satisfying to read.

Here, we see our favourite rogue SecUnit (security unit for the uninitiated) decide to go upon a mission to collect evidence to prove wrongdoing against some Big Bad Corporation, GrayCris. It leads him to what is ostensibly an abandoned terraforming facility, but is actually an abandoned illegal mining operation. To collect evidence he has to sneak aboard a team shuttle going down to assess the facility, but soon finds himself doing what he's always told himself he's done doing - protect humans.

There is so much to love about Murderbot, I don't know where to start. Is it his reluctance to get attached to humans? Is it his hermit nature and love for soap operas? Is it him blanking out half way through an intense suspenseful moment and deciding to instead spend those 6 minutes watching the TV show he had on pause in his mental feeds? It's probably all of these things.

Miki, the robot introduced in this installment, provides the perfect foil for Murderbot. It's a perfectly docile, innocent, child-like pet robot that believes wholeheartedly in the goodness of human beings, an attitude that Murderbot is simultaneously jealous of and nauseated by (”I didn't have a stomach so I can't vomit”).

I am endlessly amused by how offputtingly technical the titles of these Murderbot stories can be sometimes - All Systems Red, Rogue Protocol, etc. It calls to mind a story exceedingly burdened with technical and scifi jargon. While there is definitely some of that here, Murderbot is so relatable and so human-like that arguably I've not seen a better example of how blurred the line can be between AI and a 21st century human being.

If you haven't read Murderbot Diaries, you should. Now. It doesnt matter whether or not you are a fan of scifi because this is a protagonist anyone can identify with and enjoy.

In this episode of Murderbot: the delightful foil, Miki, who is a friendly and social bot. Also, perhaps my favorite of the adventurous romps against an entire evil factory. In the second book, I spent some time worrying about whether each book was truly going to be episodic and isolated from the characters of the last. In this book, the glory of the structure became clear. Wells has written these each like a TV episode with a standalone arc and set of characters, but an arching metaplot. (With a reading speed of 100 pages/hour, I also finished these off in only trivially more time than a standard television episode.) This feels like an adorable callout to Murderbot's favorite hobby. As much as Murderbot learns about its world by watching soap opera, we learn about this world (and by extension our own society and the interaction between people and corporations) through Murderbot.

Well I seem to be on a Murderbot Diaries binge but what can I say, these books have found a way into my heart and I don't wanna let go yet. So I started off this third installment as soon as I was done with Artificial Condition and I'm so happy I did.

I definitely found this book more interesting because there was an important plot, even though the tropes felt a bit similar to the previous novellas. I also enjoyed the way the author tied back the story in this one to the mystery of what happened in book one, and I'm very curious to know what more revelations are in store in the next one. I also found this to be more action packed and high stakes, making me quite worried about the consequences. The author managed to make this thrilling and mysterious while also not letting go of the sarcastic nature of Murderbot, and I thought that was seamless execution. There are also quite a few moments which tug at your heartstrings and I had tears in my eyes towards the end, and what more could I have wanted.

Murderbot has only grown on me over the course of these books and I'm enjoying its sarcasm which it basically uses to hide its underlying anxiety. It's almost become hard to remember now that it is actually a construct, and not human because it has started having more feelings, is forming connections with humans and is utterly incapable of acting selfish. We are also introduced to another pet bot called Miki this time and it was the most adorable ever. Miki loves the scientists to whom it belongs to and they love it in return, and their relationship was such a lovely thing to watch - I found it very sweet but it was also kinda sad to see Murderbot realize that it had never been treated like a friend before. Miki and Murderbot's interactions are very revealing in the sense that they starkly show us the difference between them, and I think that contributes a lot to how Murderbot is changing even more. We don't get to know any of the humans in detail except Abene, and she was a smart and kind scientist who just wanted to get to the truth and keep her people safe. I love that the author gives us a great group of humans in every novella who treat Murderbot kindly and change its perspective about humans.

In the end, this was as fun as the previous novellas but I thought it was a touch more emotional, which is all for the better. I'm delighted to be binge reading this series and I know I'm gonna start Exit Strategy right away because I don't wanna wait. And if you wanna have some sci-fi fun with supposedly killer bots who turn out to be not so murderous after all, what are you waiting for... just go ahead and pick up this series and get ready for a joyride.

As usual from the MurderBot series: excellent, fresh and entertaining.

I felt like the story dug deeper into MurderBot's character, anxiety and it's attempt to understand it's feelings.

Definitely feels like this third book is pulling together an overarching story that will be concluded in book four - which I can't wait to read!

Ah, murderbot, the most human of literary AI's. Our favourite introverted AI continues its quest to find out what led to its current situation. Again our AI has adopted some humans that find themselves out of their depth, this time whilst investigating a terraforming station that has been abandoned. Finding it less abandoned than initially thought leads to a nice level of tension and danger. This is probably the tightest plotted of the Murderbot stories I have read so far.

Ultimately, it is the extremely sympathetic portrayal of our protagonist that wins through. Our murderbot really would rather nothing else than sitting on their own watching dodgy TV serials, but events keep on causing them to be the hero. A supremely human portrayal of AI

I love this series so much. If you liked books one and two, I'm sure you'll enjoy this also.

Book two focused on Murderbot's friendship with ART, and this story focuses on a friendship between a different kind of robot and a human, which Murderbot has a lot of complicated feelings about. The new characters are engaging. It's amazing how well-developed they are, in such a short book.

Once again, Kevin R. Free's audiobook performance is top-notch. I am still so delighted that one of my favorite narrators does one of my favorite series!

Mild spoiler: I've been hoping that Murderbot would eventually see Dr. Mensah again, and it seems that will happen in the last book. I can't wait!

Another fantastic instalment in this series of tales about the security unit that keeps helping people despite a burning desire to sit quietly watching TV.

A very exciting installment. I'm empathising more and more with this particular SecUnit. It keeps finding reality annoying because it gets in the way of watching TV. I'm feeling the same way, but instead of TV I want to sneak off to read these books.

Our third adventure with Murderbot takes a little while to get going, but the action/tension really ratchets up in the back half of the novella. Once again, Murderbot finds itself protecting a group of unwitting humans while also unmasking a deeper conspiracy in an unforgiving environment. This seems to be the magic formula for each of these stories, but it works quite well. Since Murderbot seems to make a clean break at the end of each book, we don't get to revisit the great side characters we've met in previous books, but luckily that sounds like it will not be the case in the fourth and final novella.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

With this story, we leave introductions behind and make a start on some serious business; although this story can still be seen as a preparation for the next one.

Murderbot goes on a mission on its own initiative to gather evidence against GrayCris. During the mission, it gets involved with another group of vulnerable humans whom it feels obliged to protect.

I've come to the conclusion that this is the Murderbot story that I like least. The quality of writing is up to the usual standard, and the action is quite exciting, but the underlying plot is not very interesting, the human characters are just names, or little more than names, and there's less humour than usual.

I reread it only because it's part of the series, and another chunk of Murderbot's life. It's not a story that I actively enjoy.

The third in the series of novellas is essentially a continuation of the second story, as Murderbot continues to dig into his past. In that respect, it could have been the second part of a longer novel, but the fact that all the characters, other than the protagonist, are new here means that would have felt rather odd. There is, nonetheless, more of a sense of the ongoing plot arc than before, and this story relies more on having read the previous ones than either of those did.

Here, Murderbot's quest leads him to an abandoned planetary research station with a human investigatory crew and a cheerful robot. The latter serves as another look into the complexities of human/AI interaction in this universe, with its relationship with its owners being quite different from what we've seen before - which also provides a glimpse into a broader cultural background. The bulk of the story consists of Murderbot trying to save the humans from the danger they find on the station, a set of fast-paced action scenes that nonetheless do a good job of exploring the various characters. Which, considering that the narrator doesn't fully understand (let alone like) humans is quite an achievement.