Reviews and Comments

This short story in the Murderbot universe was released recently, and can be read online on Reactor. Delightfully, it's from Perihelion's point of view after its encounter with Murderbot in Artificial Condition.

I'm not sure that the bones of a story about sneaking into a corporate rim structure had quite enough going on for me, but the underlying delight of this story for me is getting to hear just how affected ART was by its encounter and connection with Murderbot. I think there's just such a power differential between ART and Murderbot, that I'm not sure I ever would have expected it to be so affected if you had made me guess. Getting to hear these feelings (and hear them avoided) from Perihelion's point of view is quite good.

Also, Martha Wells is here making extra sure that you know explicitly that Murderbot is a story about trauma through and through. This is maybe a snarky aside from me, but given that this story was released at the same time as the end of the first season of the television show, I wonder how much of this is a deliberate poke or a reminder to new audiences. I'm still working through the first season but this critical element seems quite sidelined.

This is my favorite Murderbot novella. What stands out the most to me is the prickly but endearing not-friendship between ART and Murderbot. I also love seeing Murderbot taking on its first clients (by choice) and feeling just as invested in doing a good job in protecting them. My delight in this book is probably why I also like the novel Network Effect so much, as it feels like a thematic expansion of all the best bits of this book (plus ART).

I think it's also easy to read this book as such a queer and trans story (only metaphorically, as it would be horrified at this comparison). It really gets into how fraught physical change for the purpose of passing is; it's something that Murderbot feels it needs to do for safety as rogue SecUnit, even as it feels emotionally unsafe to do. And also it's Murderbot having to navigate this change with the (extremely pushy but supportive) help of ART.

This book also gets into some of Murderbot's traumatic history in its investigation of Ganaka Pit. On a reread, I think I was surprised at how little reaction this gets from Murderbot in the moment once it has unraveled a core mystery of its past. But, at the same time, trauma is unevenly distributed, Murderbot is not the best at feelings, and it certainly catches up later in conversation with ART and Tapan.

I've been watching the recent tv show and thought I'd give the books a reread so I could ground myself in the text again. Also brains have been bad, and Murderbot is such short grippy comfort fiction. I think what makes me come back to this (personally) is my empathy for Murderbot's exhaustion and horror around being asked to be a person.

Murderbot also epitomizes the mortifying ordeal of being known (but simultaneously the even more mortifying ordeal of being loved). There's so much joy for me in the grumpiness of the internal monologue. If I had to come up with a one sentence emotional arc for each book, this one would be Murderbot moving past apathy and learning that it does in fact want to protect (some) humans.

Confession time: I don’t actually know where we are

On a reread, I had also forgotten the level of indifference that Murderbot has, in terms of not even knowing what planet they're on. It's an aspect that comes through so much stronger in the original text.

I didn't realize this (very) short Murderbot story existed until very recently. It's a prequel to All Systems Red and can be read online in WIRED. It reads a bit like a microcosm of the entire series, a journey from apathy to protecting humans to musing about being protected itself, but in 1000 words rather than a handful of novellas and a novel.

It’s not like I haven’t thought about killing the humans since I hacked my governor module. But then I started exploring the company servers and discovered hundreds of hours of downloadable entertainment media, and I figured, what’s the hurry? I can always kill the humans after the next series ends.

I don't want to talk about the tv show too much, but it's hard not to think about what the books are doing differently. It's really interesting to me how much the opening line of this prequel story but also the opening line of All Systems Red both having Murderbot ostensibly considering killing people. Honestly, this particular feeling lines up more closely with the opening of the first tv episode than I was willing to give it credit for at the time.

I wonder sometimes if too high expectations make me more likely to be disappointed in a book. I feel like the Mossa and Pleiti series should be my jam: it's lesbian scifi detective fiction set on an Oxford-esque Jupiter space habitats. This one was pretty good, but the first book is still my favorite.

The details of the mystery in this book are the most solid of the trilogy, and (in some ways) I like Pleiti getting a chance to try to do some investigating on her own. Unfortunately, the romance angle suffers from acute "please just talk to each other" syndrome where they each worry on their own about what the other is thinking and feeling.

This is also maybe a minor and petty opinion, but it felt like this book over-did loan words from other languages; arguably, in universe this could be part of the academic study of past earth so I can give it a little bit of a pass. However, it feels like a :chart_with_upwards_trend: from the first book which had none (to my poor memory), to the second book with a few, and this third book where it was so frequent as to almost become jarring. I could believe in the adoption of words like chisme or pues or klopt, but ... chiacchierare? chismoseando?

One might contend that things don't happen that way, that adults do not simply wake to Power. But one might consider this: adults often wake up to terrible things, like they have thrown their back out while sleeping or they have cancer or someone they know has perished in the night. Why shouldn't it be something nice for a fucking change?

This is a trans-centered magic novel about a found family of trans witches (gender inclusive) who try to help other newly awakened magic users find their way in the world; they find themselves up against a malicious AI, who feels like the embodiment of boundary trampling and privacy invasion. This book was exactly what I needed right now.

A few caveats: this story is told in the present tense, in an almost overwhelmingly omniscient perspective that dissects everybody's emotions and even the way their choices affect their potential, untaken futures. In some ways, the book feels incredibly rooted in a specific place and time, but in others ways is mostly turned inward-looking about relationships and feelings. The book's language is also quite therapy-brained, sometimes explicitly but mostly in the way that it talks about trauma and feelings and vulnerability. Mostly I leave these caveats because I know folks who would probably bounce off this story for these reasons, but for me, all of this was catnip.

A handful of incredibly small minor details that delighted me: * the trans phrase "a gentleman of alto experience" * the parallel of the fear of being unknowable and illegible to others due to magic as well as already due to gender * the first person pronoun reveal, especially the one here that also explains the present tense * the fact that all of the major characters are trans in some way * casting spells built around community and vulnerability and emotional intimacy * there is nothing like a queer guy calling a they/them person "bud" (affectionate) to make me miss Brian Jeeter from The Strange Case of the Starship Iris (edit: holy shit season 3 is here) * the antagonist texting "smile" and "no :)", which is a precise hit in my own raw spot left by shitty dudes on the internet * the magic spell to infuse a rock with love, when everybody involved doesn't believe they know what love is, in their own broken struggling way

There’s no continuity and the world I have come from is utterly foreign to me. I haven’t heard its music, I haven’t seen its painting, I haven’t read its books, except for the handful I found in the refuge and of which I understood little. I know only the stony plain, wandering, and the gradual loss of hope. I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct.

Highly recommended from me. This book is sort of a melancholy post-apocalyptic coming-of-age survival story, but with a dreamlike tint. It's uncompromising in not giving any pat answers to any of its questions. Why are these women here? Where has everybody else gone? Is this even earth? I feel like it explores a lot of ideas around trauma and knowledge and purpose, but at its heart I feel like it's really getting at what it means to be human when you are disconnected from past social structures but also disconnected from hope for the future.

This is a short story in the Ancillary universe that gives a small piece of Breq's history in the Itran Tetrarchy, which is alluded to in other books. These tetrarchs use a religious ball game (which seems an explicit reference to Mayan ball games) to determine who will be the next leader, with the opposing captain being executed.

I think this would be a pretty good short story in its own right about backroom politics mixing with religion. But, in my mind, it suffers from including Breq, who appears too large on the page and we learn too few details about. I came into this with expectations that this would fill in a piece of Breq's past, but the extra details we learn are incredibly scant. I wonder if this would have been more satisfying if it had been stretched out to a novella with an additional point of view for Breq so that we could see her thoughts.

I will say it is also weird for this story to give pronouns for Breq in non-Radchaii language and to have Her-Breath-Contains-The-Universe describe Breq's body. On the other hand, what is gender to a several thousand year old part of a spaceship that used to have many bodies. Breq even says that she's "gotten used to be being called by whatever pronoun seems appropriate to the speaker", so I don't know that I'd read much into this. I was just surprised.

It's always hard for me to separate what happens in Ancillary Sword and what happens in its sequel. Both books are set on the same station, deal with the same themes, and this book would feel incomplete without its sequel.

“I know that Ship appreciates it when you act for it, and your ancillary façade lets you feel safe and invisible. But being an ancillary isn’t something to play at.”

“No, sir. I can see that, sir. But like you said, Ship appreciates it. And Ship takes care of us, sir. Sometimes it feels like it’s us and Ship against everyone else.” Self-conscious. Embarrassed.

It's funny to me to turn to military scifi for feelings of found family, but what endears me to this book is the relationships between Ship and Breq and its crew. The human crew acts like ancillaries, which previously was a way of dealing with a jerk captain but also is a way for the Ship to cope with no longer having ancillaries itself. Ship helps Breq deal with her own losses by sending her images and data from the ship and crew as if she were still one of many ancillaries herself.

Really, I love the way that the omniscient nature of Ship here allows the reader to see into the hidden emotional state of characters and to show moments that are "off camera" from the main narrative.

It's comfort reread season over here. This book has enough reviews and awards it doesn't need another general review from me on the pile, so mostly I'm wondering about what makes this book a comfort reread for me (and many others)?

Partially it's that thematically it hits really strong notes. It's a story about justice, and revenge against an empire. It's about not trusting empires, no matter who is running them at the time. But it's also about second chances, leaning on friends, finding new ways of being, and the value of small actions even when you can't solve everything.

And even if the tyrant’s protestations were insincere, which they ultimately had to be, no matter her intentions at this moment, still she was right. My actions would make some sort of difference, even if small.

The first time I read this book about revenge on an empire at war with itself, my expectations were that the next book would be some sort of escalation, but instead it went much smaller. In retrospect, I'm not sure the worldbuilding and the stakes could have been escalated without it becoming a heroic arc for Breq (or somebody else) defeating an empire and saving the universe. It just isn't that kind of story.

Instead, this book feels much more about the value of small and local actions. The mutiny at Ime is a news story in the background, but it carries so much thematic (and worldbuilding) weight and feels like part of a through line for the trilogy. In a world where I continually despair of my lack of leverage to make the world better, this message about doing what I can where I can is one I continually need to hear.

Twenty years of habit overtook me, and for an instant I despaired of choosing the right pronouns, the right terms of address. But I didn’t need to do that here. I could drop that worry, a small but annoying weight I had carried all this time. I was home.

I am always a sucker for a story with some gender in it, so I know this is part of why I come back to this book. I love the humor about Breq not understanding other culture's gender and getting it wrong. The quote above resonates for me in the trans sense of being in a space where you can drop the mental worry about people misgendering you; it's a reversed feeling of observer vs observee from the quote, but the mental relief at removing the mental gender work feels tangibly similar.

The first time I read this book, I could tell that my brain had to defend itself against bringing in extra gendered baggage for the she pronoun. I don't know if it's because this is a reread or if I've been tested by the much more gender adversarial Too Like the Lightning, but this time around my internal observation was that I didn't feel like I parsed "she" any differently than "they".

When times are tough, sometimes you need a comfort reread of fantasy books from 1990. This book still resonates well for me, but it's hard for me to know how much of that is nostalgia having read it so many times. I suspect I am biased for this one and for GGK in general.

Tonally, this book can sometimes feel overwrought and full of told-not-shown sentimentality. That said, it's also a book about grief and memory and tyrants, and I think its style is not out of place for what it's trying to achieve. There's a few lines that jar me as a reader thirty years later, but on the whole I think it stands up better than I would have expected.

I quite enjoy its fantasy politics and scheming, but I also really appreciate the fact that the clash between Alessan and Brandin is specifically about two very similar proud leaders who are too stubborn and unwilling to forgive sins from the past. They each have plenty reason to hate the other and not give up their fight, and it makes them both believable and imperfect characters in their own way. I like that this is not a book about military battles but rather an angry, grief-filled sorcerer who erases memories of the country that killed his son so it can't be spoken of again.

I still never know what to think about Dianora. I do think she makes for a very interesting character in terms of her inner conflict and the way her perspective humanizes one of the potential villains of the tale; on the other hand, she's the only significant woman point of view character, and she has incredibly limited agency. The end result is that her character arc is not particularly satisfying to me and I wish she had a better goal that her actions were aiming towards. I also think Caterina might have been a better point of view character than Devin.

This plot-driven scifi book about the power of memory felt better suited to be a beach thriller or a movie (which apparently it might be). Largely, the character arcs feel flat and other than a neat core idea, I'm not sure that the plot machinations hold up that well for me.

Some minor negatives: the time loop-esque conceit of future selves saving past selves, which always falls flat. It's also hard for me to suspend my disbelief about the idea of perfect memory, when it is always intermediated and misremembered. I also give a huge side-eye to this British author using Australian Aboriginals and their mythos as context for some plot elements.

On the positive front, for a story about memory, I appreciate that it is structured as a frame story where one person forces somebody else to recount their own memory of events, in which the story can nest further into other memories. I also appreciate the foreshadowing of the pick up artist who asks enough people out through persistence until somebody says yes. There's also a few good SCP-esque lines in the Lazarus Institute that made me laugh. But all of this was not enough to carry it for me.