PLATFORM DECAY by Martha Wells

5 stars

This great novella, the eighth outing in the Murderbot series, has Murderbot and SecUnit Three volunteering on a risky mission to rescue high-stakes hostages on a space station run by a powerful and evil corporation, Barish-Estranza. The gigantic space station, called a planetary torus, rings an entire planet and has been divided into byzantine sectors all ruled by different communities and corporate entities. To get around means clearing endless border checks and navigating differing military presences.

Murderbot is a highly skilled robot killer unit that has hacked its governor module, living in Sanctuary in the peaceful Preservation Colony, and struggling with the forming of emotions generated by being immersed with humans. It’s also tinkering with its programming from running new “walk like a human” code to becoming increasingly frustrated with its risk assessment module, which at one point simply comes back to Murderbot with a shrug icon. Murderbot’s reacton to this shared in his emotion check that the risk assessment is a “piece of s—t.” Yes, lots of swearing and dropping of F-bombs by Murderbot in struggling to express frustration and articulate emotions.

This becomes particularly acute and hilarious as Murderbot has installed a mental health module that requires frequent check-ins on emotions. Cranky from having to deal with unpredictable humans and sharedin brackets, (Emotion Check:  ), MurderBot comes up with some doozy reactions such as : Oh, for f—), “This sucks.”

Earlier, Murderbot had given SecUnit Three the code to liberate itself from its governor and is still the early stages of sorting out its individual identity and mostly avoiding humans.  SecUnit offers much comical relief as it struggles to appear human, cannot resist passing on the hack code to every other SecUnit it encounters- ensuring much havoc in future episodes.

True to form, Murderbot must save the humans in its protection, both valuing key relationships with important humans in its life and being a curdmugeon when it comes to interacting with them.

Thanks to Tor Publishing Group and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

Stacy DeBroff

Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.com and social and digital consultancy, Influence Central, is a social media strategist, attorney, and best-selling parenting author. A sought-after expert for national media, she trend-spots regularly with national brands and speaks frequently to national and international audiences on a wide range of subjects, including influencer marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and consumer trends. A passionate cook, gardener, reader, and tennis player, she adores this new chapter of post-college-age parenting.