Artificial Condition

Martha Wells
Completed 4/21/2021, Reviewed 4/21/2021
4 stars

This is the second book in the Murderbot Diaries series.  It’s another novella, as was the first one, All Systems Red.  That book I didn’t care for, but this one, I loved.  Like the first, it’s fast, taut, and really well written.  It’s told in first person by Murderbot.  It starts out a little slower than the first and for some reason that engaged me more than the high action opening sequence of the first book.  I guess it gave me time to finally settle in with the main character.  This book won the Hugo for the novella category in 2019.

The book begins with Murderbot sneaking aboard a human-less transport to try to get back to the mining planet where it supposedly murdered a large number of humans in an attempt to figure out why it did it.  Its memory has been wiped, so it’s trying to piece together the past.  Aboard the transport, it is befriended by the ship’s primary AI, ART, much to Murderbot’s consternation.  But it eventually trusts ART and together they come up with a plan to get it to the planet.  It involves getting a security job (it once was a Security Unit) in order to obtain access to the planet.  Murderbot gets a job protecting some former subcontractors trying to get their data back from a shady mining company.  It leads to some pretty great action, as well as back to the site of the original murders it committed.

In the first book, I didn’t care for Murderbot.  It’s rather misanthropic, despite being compelled to protect humans.  It would rather watch soap operas than be around humans to begin with.  But this time I really got into Murderbot’s personality as ART tries to befriend it.  ART brings Murderbot out of his comfort zone a bit, and Murderbot introduces ART to the joys of soaps.  

I was also less perturbed by the jargon the author throws around in her prose than in the first book.  Despite it being two years since I read the first book, I found myself pretty comfortable with the it.  It’s rather hard science fiction writing but it’s very well done.

I really don’t have that much else to say about the book, it being only 158 pages.  If I say to much about the details of the plot or the other characters, I would be giving away spoilers.  Suffice it to say it’s well-paced, well-written, and introspective.  I give this book four stars out of five.  I’m looking forward to reading the next two novellas, culminating in a Hugo and Nebula nominated novel.