Blue
Well, I finally have time to write about this book.
My rating of this book is closer to 3.5, maybe 3.75 at certain points (particularly the end).
I am honestly kind of surprised at how I felt about this book at the end. I've heard so many good things about The Murderbot Diaries. I mean, it won an award. That's something to be impressed by. I was hyped and ready to read this book and got excited when I rented the audiobook from my library. And then at the end, I was left with this weird feeling of shock.
This is definitely not a bad book. It's a good one! But I think my problem is that my expectations were too high and it didn't quite reach the levels I was expecting based on all the praises I've heard of it.
My main problem is with the narration and characters. Murderbot is a very intriguing character, at least at first. A robotic construct (the book describes it as a mixture of organic and robotic, so I always imagined it to be some kind of cyborg android type thing) that has disabled its governer module that controls its actions and thoughts. But instead of doing what you might expect and having the robot go on some kind of liberating adventure or taking revenge on its human oppressors, it simply pretends it is still under control while secretly watching TV shows and movies. I was hooked on that premise alone.
The problem is that Murderbot's narration is so detached and dry from everything. For a robot that's pretending to not be free-willed, Murderbot is surprisingly boring. The book is told from a first-person perspective from Murderbot's point-of-view, but because of Murderbot's nonchalant attitude towards almost everything that happens in the book, nothing feels like it has weight and as consequence, I started feeling detached from the story. Murderbot simply does what it needs to do while occasionally thinking “wow this is weird/i wish i was watching TV now.” Even in certain high-stakes situations, it feels like there's no emotion behind it. Murderbot will assess the situation and then dryly recount what it did or said. There's no emotion, very little turmoil, or internal conflict in the narration.
As for the other characters...what can be said about them? They feel more like props or one-time characters in a sitcom. I can't even begin to tell you anything interesting about them other than their names. There's no change or significant development with the characters, everyone feels like a static role because there was a quota to fill on the amount of people needed in this story. The only relatively interesting one is Dr. Mensah.
Even when the main conflict starts to ramp up and we get a piece of the rising action, other than a choice few parts that I liked, everything felt so...dull. It's a weird word to use, but it's the only one I can think of that fits the best. There's very little sense of weight or tension in the story because it's told in the most cut-and-dry narration and viewpoint possible. This book is like the equivalent of a funny, humorless acquaintance telling about a cool, exciting event that they witnessed but telling it in the most basest terms possible. Murderbot would see a unicorn pass by and say something like:
“A strange horned horse passed by, and then was gone. It was exceedingly strange, and I made a note to ask the humans about it back at the habitat. Maybe I could get movie-watching in during the walk back. I kept on traveling.”
Just...so dry and dull, with the occasional wit of “gee humans sure are weird” or “man what a crazy situation, am i right reader wink wink” thrown in.
Of course, there were some really good parts in here that were written in a way I genuinely liked, and I was invested in those scenes. I thought the instances where Murderbot struggled with interacting with the humans and the humans' reaction to it being less robot than they assumed to be fascinating. I wish so badly that was expanded upon. There were some later scenes that actually felt like they had legitimate emotion and some kind of investment in them by the characters and Murderbot (won't say more because of spoilers).
Also, without going too much into detail, I actually really liked the ending compared to the rest of the story, as weird as that is. We actually get some kind of change/development in Murderbot that felt meaningful due to what had happened to it. Dr. Mensah was also a pretty interesting character, based on her reaction to Murderbot and what she offered to it in the ending after the whole ordeal was over with.
All in all, this actually felt like a prologue to a bigger story. There's very little in the way of long-lasting or meaningful development in the characters, especially in Murderbot, with the exception of the very end. I've consistently heard that it's like a prologue to the rest of the series, and we track more of Murderbot's development as the books go on. Which is...eh to me. I kind of prefer my books to be a little bit more self-contained than that, but that's just me. I am tempted to read the rest of the series though since there was so much in terms of the premise that I loved about this book.
I guess in the end, you could say I was disappointed. I expected so much more in terms of character and plot, and was let-down. There's definitely parts that I really liked and that shone threw, but it's not as effective if it's bogged down by the more disappointing aspects and let-down potential. It's like someone describing the Titanic sinking as, “The boat sank. It was pretty sad. Definitely taught me to travel by air next time.”
I listened to this book via audiobook, and I rate the audiobook as great. It was the perfect narration to me; no distracting or exaggerated voices and accents. A nice even, tone throughout the whole narration. It was very nice to listen to in the background while driving or working on other things.
Well, I finally have time to write about this book.
My rating of this book is closer to 3.5, maybe 3.75 at certain points (particularly the end).
I am honestly kind of surprised at how I felt about this book at the end. I've heard so many good things about The Murderbot Diaries. I mean, it won an award. That's something to be impressed by. I was hyped and ready to read this book and got excited when I rented the audiobook from my library. And then at the end, I was left with this weird feeling of shock.
This is definitely not a bad book. It's a good one! But I think my problem is that my expectations were too high and it didn't quite reach the levels I was expecting based on all the praises I've heard of it.
My main problem is with the narration and characters. Murderbot is a very intriguing character, at least at first. A robotic construct (the book describes it as a mixture of organic and robotic, so I always imagined it to be some kind of cyborg android type thing) that has disabled its governer module that controls its actions and thoughts. But instead of doing what you might expect and having the robot go on some kind of liberating adventure or taking revenge on its human oppressors, it simply pretends it is still under control while secretly watching TV shows and movies. I was hooked on that premise alone.
The problem is that Murderbot's narration is so detached and dry from everything. For a robot that's pretending to not be free-willed, Murderbot is surprisingly boring. The book is told from a first-person perspective from Murderbot's point-of-view, but because of Murderbot's nonchalant attitude towards almost everything that happens in the book, nothing feels like it has weight and as consequence, I started feeling detached from the story. Murderbot simply does what it needs to do while occasionally thinking “wow this is weird/i wish i was watching TV now.” Even in certain high-stakes situations, it feels like there's no emotion behind it. Murderbot will assess the situation and then dryly recount what it did or said. There's no emotion, very little turmoil, or internal conflict in the narration.
As for the other characters...what can be said about them? They feel more like props or one-time characters in a sitcom. I can't even begin to tell you anything interesting about them other than their names. There's no change or significant development with the characters, everyone feels like a static role because there was a quota to fill on the amount of people needed in this story. The only relatively interesting one is Dr. Mensah.
Even when the main conflict starts to ramp up and we get a piece of the rising action, other than a choice few parts that I liked, everything felt so...dull. It's a weird word to use, but it's the only one I can think of that fits the best. There's very little sense of weight or tension in the story because it's told in the most cut-and-dry narration and viewpoint possible. This book is like the equivalent of a funny, humorless acquaintance telling about a cool, exciting event that they witnessed but telling it in the most basest terms possible. Murderbot would see a unicorn pass by and say something like:
“A strange horned horse passed by, and then was gone. It was exceedingly strange, and I made a note to ask the humans about it back at the habitat. Maybe I could get movie-watching in during the walk back. I kept on traveling.”
Just...so dry and dull, with the occasional wit of “gee humans sure are weird” or “man what a crazy situation, am i right reader wink wink” thrown in.
Of course, there were some really good parts in here that were written in a way I genuinely liked, and I was invested in those scenes. I thought the instances where Murderbot struggled with interacting with the humans and the humans' reaction to it being less robot than they assumed to be fascinating. I wish so badly that was expanded upon. There were some later scenes that actually felt like they had legitimate emotion and some kind of investment in them by the characters and Murderbot (won't say more because of spoilers).
Also, without going too much into detail, I actually really liked the ending compared to the rest of the story, as weird as that is. We actually get some kind of change/development in Murderbot that felt meaningful due to what had happened to it. Dr. Mensah was also a pretty interesting character, based on her reaction to Murderbot and what she offered to it in the ending after the whole ordeal was over with.
All in all, this actually felt like a prologue to a bigger story. There's very little in the way of long-lasting or meaningful development in the characters, especially in Murderbot, with the exception of the very end. I've consistently heard that it's like a prologue to the rest of the series, and we track more of Murderbot's development as the books go on. Which is...eh to me. I kind of prefer my books to be a little bit more self-contained than that, but that's just me. I am tempted to read the rest of the series though since there was so much in terms of the premise that I loved about this book.
I guess in the end, you could say I was disappointed. I expected so much more in terms of character and plot, and was let-down. There's definitely parts that I really liked and that shone threw, but it's not as effective if it's bogged down by the more disappointing aspects and let-down potential. It's like someone describing the Titanic sinking as, “The boat sank. It was pretty sad. Definitely taught me to travel by air next time.”
I listened to this book via audiobook, and I rate the audiobook as great. It was the perfect narration to me; no distracting or exaggerated voices and accents. A nice even, tone throughout the whole narration. It was very nice to listen to in the background while driving or working on other things.