Spy games in space
Mar. 6th, 2023 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileNext up: Rogue Protocol, otherwise known as “the one where Murderbot does corporate espionage on GrayCris even though nobody asked it to.” After digging into its own background during the events of Artificial Condition, Murderbot sees a newsburst indicating that a new company has picked up where GrayCris supposedly left off at a terraforming facility that it had abandoned. Rumors were abounding that GrayCris had actually been mining the planet in question for illegal synthetics and not actually terraforming at all, which meant that the company that had bought it was now well positioned to discover if something was off about this “terraforming” facility. This is where Murderbot comes in, sneaking its way onto the facility to look for evidence of GrayCris’ malfeasance, and portraying itself as a secret extra security person when it is discovered.
In this book, Murderbot’s journey of self-discovery is largely helped along by a friendly little bot called Miki, who is basically the human researchers’ pet robot. Murderbot doesn’t want to be a pet robot but is nonetheless subjected to having many emotions about the degree to which Miki and the humans seem to actually care about each other. Murderbot’s journey of corporate malfeasance discovery and data retrieval is also helped along by Miki, who talks the humans into trusting Murderbot for long enough to let it help, and even tries to fight the combat units that GrayCris left behind to cause trouble. The action sequences are thrilling and cinematic and all that stuff you want out of a space opera about cyborgs doing corporate espionage in space. Since this is my second read I know that Murderbot has now basically made the rounds meeting people enough that further books will involve in going “home” in various ways (i.e. running into them again) so I don’t even have to be too critical of the sad lack of ART in this one, especially since ART clearly lives on in spirit under Murderbot’s skin basically all the time.
In this book, Murderbot’s journey of self-discovery is largely helped along by a friendly little bot called Miki, who is basically the human researchers’ pet robot. Murderbot doesn’t want to be a pet robot but is nonetheless subjected to having many emotions about the degree to which Miki and the humans seem to actually care about each other. Murderbot’s journey of corporate malfeasance discovery and data retrieval is also helped along by Miki, who talks the humans into trusting Murderbot for long enough to let it help, and even tries to fight the combat units that GrayCris left behind to cause trouble. The action sequences are thrilling and cinematic and all that stuff you want out of a space opera about cyborgs doing corporate espionage in space. Since this is my second read I know that Murderbot has now basically made the rounds meeting people enough that further books will involve in going “home” in various ways (i.e. running into them again) so I don’t even have to be too critical of the sad lack of ART in this one, especially since ART clearly lives on in spirit under Murderbot’s skin basically all the time.