Murderbot Q1. Overall impressions

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These were a couple of novellas, a change of style form our usual approach. And the books were light, breezy action-adventure stories. What did you think of the overall? Are these good books? Are you interested in reading any more books in the series?

Are there any good parts or bad parts that stood out for you?

Comments

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    I totally enjoyed the novellas! Very good stories with interesting characters in interesting situations. I will definitely be reading more! The development of the main character is fascinating for me.

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    I also rather enjoyed them. Well, I like the stories, I liked the Murderbot character and what Wells did with shem. The only thing I didn’t really like was the prose style. Worldbuilding - mostly implied, so not much to like or dislike.
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    Overall I think they were quite enjoyable. Packed a lot of punch, and were still light and readable, in so few pages. I think that what impresses me the most is that Wells is able to do all of those things at once in such a short book/s. Should it have won an award? I don't know. Always though to know how to answer that.

    On a second reading I only thought more of the first book. I read the entire series and got a little tired of them by the end, but that's pretty standard of most series I think.

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    > @kcaryths said:
    >
    > On a second reading I only thought more of the first book. I read the entire series and got a little tired of them by the end, but that's pretty standard of most series I think.

    Yes, I can see that happening. Even the first two have a lot of similarity. But that's something that makes series successful: giving people what they want.
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    This is a tough question. I think they're good, the way a candy bar is good, or that extra piece of pie and ice cream with a little liquor. In other words, good but also not good. The longer it goes, the less good it is. Probably by the end it is actively bad.

    @NeilNjae As you say, when we talk about success in books we mean quantity of sales, and sales increase when the seller doesn't confront the buyer with anything uncomfortable. They promote the thing to produce some feeling in the buyer the buyer will enjoy while buying, and immediately after. It's easier to recall a feeling than create a new one, and hard working is not the desired outcome of success. Success is characterised by easy working.

    @kcaryths The kind of good they're selling becomes a satiety, which is not good. So it's a circulation of not goods. So I guess I'm going with not good, but pleasing for many people.

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    I've read a couple of Martha Wells books before but never any of her SF - I think of her as a competent writer who has good ideas, but her prose style leaves me kind of cold. I can't exactly articulate why this is, but something about the style just drifts past me without getting me excited about the created world. And so it was with these two - the basic idea was, I thought, a very interesting one, and well worth exploring, but the way it was told didn't grip me in the way I thought it should.

    Now, that said, I read both novellas at the end of last year, and have just finished rereading the fist one ahead of this discussion, and enjoyed it more the second time (I think @kcaryths has said something similar).

    As a broad generalisation, I also liked the second novella more than the first, largely because the introduction of the AI transport and (presumably) other similar devices opened up the bot world rather more, and this increased detail worked for me. I suppose the first one was kind of getting into the stride of the concept, and the second one dealt with it more substantially.

    I'm not sure that I'd go on to read the whole series, but I can easily imagine myself dipping into it every so often, if only to see if the murderbot is eventually reconciled with the original survey team. And it has had the effect of making me more enthusiastic about retrying some of her other books, which I probably wouldn't have done without this selection.

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    Good point about her other books. I might be more tempted to try something else by her other than the Murderbot books based on these ones. If only to see how a different story structure works with her writing style.

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