Prompt 18 – A Book Set in Space

Sci-fi and fantasy as my least preferred genres – if I am being completely honest, I only ever read them for reading challenges! For this prompt I have taken the advice of the Goodreads chat group who have repeatedly recommended All Systems Red by Martha Wells.

What it’s about?

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid–a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.

What I think:

I am probably not the best person to give a review on this.

I found it both a quick read and quite slow.

It’s a short book so I did feel like I got through it quite quickly, but I found it repetitive at times which slowed it down.

The book throws you straight into the action with little explanation so the reader picks everything up as they go along.

The story is told through the eyes of Murderbot is an AI being who is the security for a corporate mission to explore another planet. It soon becomes apparent that the team are in danger although from what and why is not initially clear.

Murderbot has hacked their own systems so that they can act with a degree of autonomy that other bots do not have. This makes them potentially dangerous as they cannot be controlled. However, it can also be an advantage as they have the ability to see through some of the network systems and identify the real nature of the threats.

There are a lot of characters in this book. the teams of people is large and to be honest, with the exception of the leader they do not stand out as individuals. Any of them could have been killed and I would not have really cared.

This seems to be a book, and indeed series, that people really love so don’t let my opinion put you off! This wasn’t for me, but I’m glad I read it.