![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileExit Strategy is the fourth book in the boxed set of the Murderbot Diaries, bringing this particular story arc to a close. Having retrieved a bunch of incriminating data against GrayCris in Rogue Protocol, Murderbot plans to bring it to Dr. Mensah–except that the newsbursts seem to indicate that something fishy is going on re: Dr. Mensah’s whereabouts. GrayCris seems to think that she sent Murderbot to the “terraforming” facility deliberately, and in retaliation, has outright kidnapped her. This leaves Murderbot with two risky decisions to make: Where to send the data, and where to send itself.
In a fit of heroics, Murderbot sends the data to Dr. Mensah’s marital partners on the non-corporate political entity Preservation, and then charges deep into enemy territory to rescue Dr. Mensah itself. Teaming back up with several of the humans from the planetary survey in All Systems Red, Murderbot has to deal with the twin horrors of multiple murder attempts from GrayCris and its contracted security company Palisade, and of interacting with humans who insist upon liking it and caring about its feelings and generally treating it like a real person, albeit one who is kind of an asshole (especially to Gurathin, who for some reason Murderbot is convinced still dislikes it. Gonna guess it’s because their personalities are too similar). All in all it’s a very satisfying little conclusion to this story arc, in that GrayCris gets its ass handed to it and Murderbot doesn’t die despite a nearly self-sacrificing bout of battle rage at one of GrayCris’ CombatSecUnits. Murderbot gets to use skills it has learned over the course of the earlier books from sources other than watching Sanctuary Moon, including facing down some higher-level challenges to its well-practiced hacking skills, and copying a dangerous trick or three from ART (still sadly absent in this volume) to stave off a killware attack. After bravely almost sacrificing itself to heist Dr. Mensah from the jaws of GrayCris, Murderbot is fucked up enough that it has to stick around long enough to be told that none of the Preservation crew are trying to imprison it or tell it what to do, it’s just allowed to stay on Preservation with them until it figures out what it wants to do. Murderbot hates the feelings it has about this nearly as much as it hates being told what to do, but it doesn’t run away again, which IMO constitutes a satisfying amount of character growth for one story arc. I’m trying to wait a couple of days before rushing headlong into buying Network Effect.
In a fit of heroics, Murderbot sends the data to Dr. Mensah’s marital partners on the non-corporate political entity Preservation, and then charges deep into enemy territory to rescue Dr. Mensah itself. Teaming back up with several of the humans from the planetary survey in All Systems Red, Murderbot has to deal with the twin horrors of multiple murder attempts from GrayCris and its contracted security company Palisade, and of interacting with humans who insist upon liking it and caring about its feelings and generally treating it like a real person, albeit one who is kind of an asshole (especially to Gurathin, who for some reason Murderbot is convinced still dislikes it. Gonna guess it’s because their personalities are too similar). All in all it’s a very satisfying little conclusion to this story arc, in that GrayCris gets its ass handed to it and Murderbot doesn’t die despite a nearly self-sacrificing bout of battle rage at one of GrayCris’ CombatSecUnits. Murderbot gets to use skills it has learned over the course of the earlier books from sources other than watching Sanctuary Moon, including facing down some higher-level challenges to its well-practiced hacking skills, and copying a dangerous trick or three from ART (still sadly absent in this volume) to stave off a killware attack. After bravely almost sacrificing itself to heist Dr. Mensah from the jaws of GrayCris, Murderbot is fucked up enough that it has to stick around long enough to be told that none of the Preservation crew are trying to imprison it or tell it what to do, it’s just allowed to stay on Preservation with them until it figures out what it wants to do. Murderbot hates the feelings it has about this nearly as much as it hates being told what to do, but it doesn’t run away again, which IMO constitutes a satisfying amount of character growth for one story arc. I’m trying to wait a couple of days before rushing headlong into buying Network Effect.