Disclaimer: This is a review, and as such will contain opinions, spoilers and (often) general shit talking. (If you talk about what you don’t like about a work, you learn a lot. When you think through a work with the stakes presented to you by the creator, by the context of the work, you learn a lot. I review things, not because I love to dislike things, but because dislike contains rich and vital information for the process of experiencing something, but I cannot access it without interrogating it.) So, if you don’t want to have this thing spoiled for you, or don’t know how to behave when a person on the internet, that you don’t know, has opinions that don’t line up with yours, this review is not for you. It’s also not for the author/creator of the work. Please and thank you.
After finishing All Systems Red, I was eager to see what was next for Murderbot. What was it going to do with its new freedom?
Murderbot is still its cynical, acerbic self and no longer confined to pretending to be just another SecUnit on the line, while really watching media.
The last book was about Murderbot having a secret. This book is more like a secret about Murderbot being kept just out of reach for Murderbot.
What’s a Muderbot to do, besides disguise itself as an augmented human and head for the station where the events that led to it titling itself “Murderbot” took place? As far as it knows, at least, since most of those memories have been erased.
On the first leg of its journey, it hitches a ride on an empty cargo transport ship, offering hours and hours of media as payment.
This transport turns out to be far more sophisticated than your typical bot pilot. Soon, Murderbot finds itself in an extremely vulnerable position as the ship takes a keen interest in who and what Murderbot really is.
A.R.T. is nosy, curious and extremely powerful, and the two form a reluctant friendship. Reluctant mostly on the part of Murderbot, who still just wants to be left alone.
“I’m not your crew. I’m not a human. I’m a construct. Constructs and bots can’t trust each other.”
It was quiet for ten precious seconds, though I could tell from the spike in its feed activity it was doing something. I realized it must be searching its databases, looking for a way to refute my statement. Then it said, Why not?
I had spent so much time pretending to be patient with humans asking stupid questions. I should have more self-control than this. “Because we both have to follow human orders. A human could tell you to purge my memory. A human could tell me to destroy your systems.”
I thought it would argue that I couldn’t possibly hurt it, which would derail the whole conversation.
But it said, There are no humans here now.
I realized I had been trapped into this conversational dead end, with the transport pretending to need this explained in order to get me to articulate it to myself. I didn’t know who I was more annoyed at, myself or it. No, I was definitely more annoyed at it.
As A.R.T. gets into Muderbot’s business at every turn, it starts to help Murderbot achieve its goal. But being a construct, Murderbot needs an excuse to get to its destination.
On A.R.T.’s suggestion Murderbot – now better equipped to hide in plain sight as a human – takes on a contract as a security consultant for a group of workers heading to the right station. They need to retrieve some data from a former employer and fear they’ll be short-changed without some backup.
While this contract is the perfect excuse for Murderbot to go dig up the hidden parts of its past, it also finds itself, again, faced with being responsible for stupid, impulsive humans.
And we get to see how the personality develops as our favourite SecUnit is faced with hard choices and finds it’s hard to be emotionally indifferent when you choose to get involved.
As it tries to navigate the choices and personal responsibility that comes with freedom, the killing machine goes from simply trying to create behavioural patterns to being socially inept at navigating the human world with its human relationships.
And it’s hilarious.
And so very relatable to someone who’s introverted and autistic.
While I don’t have the processing power of Murderbot, I’ve said before how relatable I find the way Murderbot interprets the world. It can seem calculating and emotionless to some people, but to me it just feels comforting to know I’m not the only one who sees the world like this!
And I love that A.R.T. is another non-human who is just as personable as Murderbot, and their relationship – as well as their banter – is just the best.
Finally, Murderbot has met its match!
Murderbot is prickly, A.R.T. is even pricklier.
Murderbot is sarcastic, A.R.T. is even more sarcastic.
Murderbot is dangerous, A.R.T. makes it clear from the get go it could delete Murderbot while attending to a thousand other tasks and not lose an iota of processing power.
And through all this, A.R.T. has an impact on Murderbot.
Once it has to deal with actual humans in real time (while freaking out about it), Murderbot employs some of the tactics A.R.T. has spent many conversations employing against it, with:
I phrased it as a question, because pretending you were asking for more information was the best way to try to get the humans to realize they were doing something stupid. “So do you think there’s another reason Tlacey wants you to do this exchange in person, other than … killing you?”
It’s so lovely that these two snarky, sarcastic non-humans get to be snarky and sarcastic together.
Artifical Condition pumps up the sarcastic action and is just as easy to read as any other book in the series.
The story is even more exciting and funnier than before, because we get to see the very beginnings of Murderbot starting to flourish as a mostly-free being, who can start to explore what life is like when you don’t have to hide quite as much as before.
Sure, freedom is still an ill-fitting shoe and humans are as baffling as ever, but Murderbot has moved beyond simply keeping up the appearances of the past.
Murderbot is now choosing to get involved. This is due both to experiencing an emotion and often the source of experiencing many more emotions.
What I love about the Murderbot Diaries is that this isn’t a series that follows a formulaic path, with every book being the same story arc, but just in a different way (as is The Saint of Steel series).
Instead, each novella is the next leg on a long journey towards ultimate self-fulfilment, if I’m going to be downright Maslowian (even if he himself admitted that his pyramid was flawed).
Artificial Condition gives a new setting with new characters (since Murderbot walked away from the ones we met last time), showing new facets of Murderbot even as we explore its buried past.
Funny, charming, and warm, this book takes us on the journey as Murderbot develops its value system – with a lot of that signature eye rolling and grouchy grumbling.
And it’s full of wisdom from someone who scores high on the systematising scale and has to deal with people on the regular (eugh!).
“Sometimes people do things to you that you can’t do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on.”
— Murderbot
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