Visual, audio, or text media could actually rewrite organic neural processes. Bharadwaj had said that was what I’d done with Sanctuary Moon: I’d used it to reconfigure the organic part of my brain... it could and did have similar effects on humans. [loc. 2020]
In which Murderbot, along with ART / Perihelion and assorted humans, deal with agricultural robots, ancient contamination, mutiny, lost colonies and PTSD.
I'm not going to go into the plot too much: it's a perfectly good adventure novel with some excellent characters (old and new), and the usual sarcastic, distinctive narration. I've been trying to work out why I found the novel unsatisfactory, and I think it's primarily because Network Effect was such a gamechanger, in terms of Murderbot's interpersonal relationships and found family. At the end of that book, Murderbot was considering joining ART's team and travelling through the wider universe, and this seemed like the beginning of a whole new phase. And then: not.
The human parts of Murderbot (and I don't just mean the cloned tissue) are definitely coming to the fore, and the events of Network Effect are causing unexpected and unwelcome repercussions which interfere with Murderbot doing its job. For much of this novel it's separated (by circumstance) from most of its support network. It forms new relationships -- notably with Tarik and Iris, who are part of ART's crew -- and begins to deal with the aftermath of trauma.
It's not at all a bad novel, but I suspect my expectations were unrealistic. I did enjoy it more the second time around, after skimming Network Effect (a stratagem I highly recommend, since there isn't much in the way of recap) and reminding myself of what had happened in that novel.
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