On System Collapse

This installment of the Murderbot Diaries was a bit disappointing, especially next to the past two or three. It was never going to top Network Effect, but it couldn’t outdo Fugitive Telemetry either. The biggest issue is that the story is essentially incomplete. Our team, SecUnit included, makes its way to the separatist colony on the planet from Network Effect to talk about the alien contamination and ask permission for research expeditions while assuring the colonists of their rights — but the Barish-Estranza Corporation arrives first and tries to convince them to leave, which would effectively make them contract-laborer slaves on whatever mining project B-E has planned. Things escalate between the Preservation group, our heroes, and Barish-Estranza; we learn there are factions within the company, a mutiny breaks out, and the heroes become consumed with getting off the planet and protecting themselves.

The main characters do make a documentary that convinces the separatist colonists not to go with B-E, but we never see their stories play out — after the team escapes, we learn in the final chapter, entirely through exposition, that Preservation came out on top, and it ends on a sense of the fractures spreading through the Corporate Rim. The story simply ends; there’s no real tying-up of loose ends. We discover, for instance, that SecUnit has developed PTSD from the contamination in Network Effect, and we see it affect him once and hear it mentioned a few more times, but it never feeds the story’s progression. Maybe future novellas will return to it — but that isn’t fair to the reader, since there’s no guarantee we’ll read them, and what’s raised in this book should be dealt with in this book. The central conceit is that SecUnit can’t rely on drones or video imaging, nor on ART’s overpowered scanners, so he has to face problems as a human would. That would be a neat intervention if it hadn’t already been done in Fugitive Telemetry, where he isn’t allowed to use the public systems and is just as blind as he is here.

The book also isn’t as emotionally attuned as the earlier ones. The side characters recede, and there’s little of the human dynamics that made the series so compelling; this volume falls short on exactly that front. It’s a competent sci-fi action novel, but action was never what made the Murderbot Diaries great — what’s missing is the emotional thrust. I just saw that Wells is releasing a new entry in the spring, and I’m hopeful she won’t repeat these missteps. Part of me suspects she’d simply gotten tired of this story, having worked on some interesting fantasy novels in the meantime; maybe they reinvigorated her and she’s come back to this one with new life. Fingers crossed.