Exit Strategy, Martha Wells
This is, really, what the three previous novellas have been building up to, so it’s suitably epic. I’ll try not to say too much, given that spoilers for this book kind of spoiler the others as well, but suffice it to say that Murderbot returns to help out their humans (mostly meaning Dr Mensah, but also her team), gets shot at a lot, has emotions a lot, and tries not to get hugged or anything truly dangerous like that.
It’s obvious that something like this was coming from the build-up, at least in terms of the reunion, but it’s satisfying all the same to watch it happen. Murderbot is still Murderbot, but it has done a bit of growing and a bit of soul-searching. It might not know what it wants in the long term, but in the short term it has some pretty ironclad priorities. It might complain about its own competence constantly, but it gets the job done.
It’s surprising to me how satisfying I found this series as a set of novellas; normally I find novellas a bit frustrating, with a few exceptions, but I think Martha Wells planned things out well here and made the novella structure work. I’m glad that Network Effect is up next, though: I’d like to spend a bit more time with Murderbot.
