Exit Strategy
Ratings847
Average rating4.3
I've greatly enjoyed every volume of this series and I loved this last book in the first set of novellas. Just like the others, it's funny, exciting, and emotionally moving, without ever being maudlin. The reason why Murderbot's favorite show is its favorite actually made me a cry a little, but this book also made me laugh out loud several times. I was very sorry to reach the end, and I eagerly anticipate the Murderbot novel that's planned for 2020.
In addition to the continuing themes of identity and finding a place for oneself, the anti-corporate theme is central here. We see a little bit of Dr. Mensah & her associates' home society, and it's pretty much fully automated luxury gay space communism, which I probably don't need to say is extremely appealing to me.
Kevin R. Free did another amazing job narrating the audiobook, perfectly capturing Murderbot's cynical but innocent personality. I liked the voices he performed for the other characters also.
This was a surprisingly heartfelt and poignant end to the Murderbot saga.
Murderbot would have hated it.
In all seriousness, though: this was a great end to the series of novellas. Things come full circle, and we see the ways in which autonomy and culture have made Murderbot more “human” than it was at the beginning. Which is thought-provoking about how we define humanity, although Wells writes it in such a way that those themes aren't explicitly brought to the forefront. Good reads all around, though.
