After four excellent novellas, Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries series gets its first novel-length instalment with Network Effect, which offers everything that makes this series so much fun…just more of it! Their research mission completed with only one minor incident of life-threatening drama, Murderbot and its human charges return to Preservation space, only to come under attack from a mysterious enemy ship. When several of its humans – including members of Dr Mensah’s family – are kidnapped during the attack, Murderbot puts its media consumption aside and goes immediately on the offensive. Passing through a wormhole and encountering both suspiciously alien-like enemies and the unexpected presence of an old sort-of-friend, Murderbot quickly finds that the situation is stranger and much more uncomfortable than it could possibly have expected.
If you’re familiar with the Murderbot Diaries already then you’ll pretty much know what to expect here – the further exploits of an android that was built for unquestioning violence but has found itself in the tricky situation of needing to make its own decisions and deal with all manner of troubling emotions. Having hacked its governor module, gone rogue from its parent Company, had various adventures and fallen in with a group of people who treat it with much more respect and decency than it’s used to, Murderbot is essentially free, but is still getting used to its newfound status. Shooting, bludgeoning and hacking its way through enemies and enemy systems would be easy enough for Murderbot, except it’s also wrestling with uncomfortable personal dilemmas such as what it really means to be part of someone else’s life, and what the implications are of friendship.
This is pretty much a direct continuation of the events of the first four novellas, taking advantage of its greater length to incorporate a slightly more complex plot, introduce a few new characters, and dig deeper into the emotional conundrums that Murderbot is facing. It really is more of everything that makes Murderbot so much fun – the unique voice, the dry wit, the remarkably human problems and the predilection for dealing with emotions through the judicious application of extreme violence – and fans of the series will find an awful lot to enjoy here. With its longer read time it does perhaps lose a little of the tight urgency that the novellas have, and becomes a bit harder to follow in places, but those are minor concerns when the story itself is this much fun – and let’s face it, any opportunity to spend more time with Murderbot is welcome!
In theory you could use this as a starting point for the series, and over the course of the story Murderbot does briefly refer back to some of the prior events that led up to this point, but really this works best if you’ve already read the novellas and are familiar with the characters. Not only are the previous instalments in the series tremendous fun and very much worth reading, but they also provide a lot of world building for Wells to build upon here. As a continuation of those earlier stories this really hits the spot, expanding upon and developing existing themes and ideas, offering humour and emotion in equal doses over the course of a breathless, action-packed adventure. As if it was still in question, this truly confirms that Murderbot is one of the great characters of modern sci-fi.
See also: my review of the first four Murderbot Diaries novellas.
Buy Network Effect on Amazon* – also available as an audiobook*
If you enjoyed this review and would like to support Track of Words, you can leave a tip on my Ko-Fi page.
*If you buy anything using these links, I will receive a small affiliate commission – see here for more details.