It’s been a long, long time since I’ve posted anything, let alone a book review. It’s not that I haven’t been reading. It’s more that I just haven’t taken the time to learn the new formatting options here. About two weeks ago, I finally picked up All Systems Red by Martha Wells (science fiction, 149 pages).

“In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. 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 are 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, all it really 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 their Muderbot to get to the truth.”

I bought and read this book, as well as the five follow-on books, in one day and then proceeded to binge the entire series in about two-three days. This book is such an easy, enjoyable read that I’ve actually read it several more times since I binged it just over a week ago. I also found the book to be hilarious and Murderbot is one of the single most relatable characters I’ve read in a long, long time. What’s really interesting to me, though, is how much anxiety Murderbot has and how the back of the book blurb makes this seem like such a serious book about an android finding itself when really it’s about an android who could easily go around killing everyone and everything but instead is annoyed because it wants to just watch its serials and not have to deal with people.

It’s actually pretty hard for me to write up a review for this because I have so many positive things to say about it but I don’t want to ruin the book/series for anyone who hasn’t read it yet. So I will say that this book is easily a five (out of five) on my rating scale. I am extremely glad I own a copy of this book and will likely buy it and send it to everyone I know to inflict it on them, as well 🙂