white_hart (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
white_hart) wrote2020-06-04 06:38 pm
white_hart) wrote2020-06-04 06:38 pm
Entry tags:
Reading: Network Effect
I love Martha Well's Murderbot novellas, so I was thrilled to hear that a full-length novel was in the works. Network Effect has all the things I loved about the series to date: found families; gender, race and sexual diversity; anticapitalism activism IN SPACE; and, above all, Murderbot's wonderfully snarky view of the world. It sees Murderbot and some of its humans kidnapped by sinister grey-skinned individuals on the way back from a survey mission, and re-encountering an old acquintance as they try to work out what is going on and how to escape and get home.
I'd forgotten just how much the plots of the Murderbot series depend on considerably-more-than-mild peril and some moderately graphic violence which I found a bit difficult at a time when the horrors of real life are sufficient that I don't have the capacity to also deal with Bad Things in fiction. Between that and pandemic-brain inability to focus I did have to put this down about 60% of the way through and read something else, but I got on with it much better when I came back to it; I loved seeing more of Murderbot's development as a person, and really enjoyed the novel's exploration of its developing relationships with the people around it and its feelings about that. And I'm also delighted to see that another novella is scheduled for publication next year.
I'd forgotten just how much the plots of the Murderbot series depend on considerably-more-than-mild peril and some moderately graphic violence which I found a bit difficult at a time when the horrors of real life are sufficient that I don't have the capacity to also deal with Bad Things in fiction. Between that and pandemic-brain inability to focus I did have to put this down about 60% of the way through and read something else, but I got on with it much better when I came back to it; I loved seeing more of Murderbot's development as a person, and really enjoyed the novel's exploration of its developing relationships with the people around it and its feelings about that. And I'm also delighted to see that another novella is scheduled for publication next year.