On Network Effect

This is the best of the Murderbot books so far, and also the longest — and the length works in its favor. Most of the entries are novellas, and there are some very good ones, like Rogue Protocol; Wells had been balancing depth against brevity and doing it well, since part of the draw is how quick and punchy they are. But Network Effect is a much slower burn, a layered book that works in three acts, beginning in space opera and ending closer to Neuromancer than anything else in the series, taking up hauntings, contagion, and ghosts in the web. The added length lets the suspense and the questions build — we’re left wondering what became of ART (introduced in Artificial Condition) and who these “targets” are, and we learn about an abandoned corporate colony, an alien intelligence, and the dynamics of infection.

There’s a lot to say about the alien here. Wells’s version has a fair amount in common with hiveminds like Star Trek’s Borg — or so it seems — and the alien elements are genuinely cool; I hope she goes further into them in later books. As with the others, there’s a lot of good writing on human social relations. SecUnit clearly struggles with social anxiety, and I find him endlessly relatable: he can’t talk about how he feels, even when it matters, while other characters manage it better — it seems to run along a spectrum. I was so glad ART came back. His first appearance was brief, though it clearly left a mark on SecUnit, who keeps referring to him across the other books; now he’s back at full strength, and you can see what a great character he is. He’ll surely turn up again, and I’m pleased about that. The remaining books are much shorter, so I’ll fly through them, but the deep dive Wells gave us here was well worth the length.