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apachefirecat
Title: Here Abide Monsters
Author: Andre Norton (Definitely recommend reading this woman's history/GoodReads biography!
Genre: Science fantasy
Review:
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apachefirecatTitle: Here Abide Monsters
Author: Andre Norton (Definitely recommend reading this woman's history/GoodReads biography!
Genre: Science fantasy
Review:
( Read more... )
spacedogfromspace
Book Report: Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
Book Two of The Murderbot Diaries
Synopsis
Murderbot— everyone's favourite cyborg construct —is back in a second novella. After having its contract bought by Doctor Mensah, Murderbot escapes and disappears, operating as a rogue agent. Murderbot isn't sure what it wants, but for now it wants to visit a place from its past.
Murderbot travels to where it all began— the mining site where it was once contracted to protect a large mining group. The mining group Murderbot slaughtered. Murderbot doesn't remember much of what happened, and it hopes that revisiting the site will give it answers, or at least help it come to terms with what it did.
Content Warnings: Violence
Plot Summary - Spoilers!
Murderbot leaves the Corporation Rim, posing as an augmented human while in public, and erasing its presence from the memories of the empty cargo transports it uses to hop from place to place. Murderbot isn't sure why it left Mensah, or what it wants, but for the moment, it wants to find answers. Murderbot boards yet another bot-piloted transport to head to its destination of RaviHyral in search of those answers, when the transport starts to talk to Murderbot. Bot driven transports are usually pretty simple, and usually don't talk. At least not in words. As it turns out, this transport is different from the other, more limited transports. This one, among its other functions, performs extragalactic astronomic analysis. In other words, it is quite advanced, and could wipe Murderbot out through the feed if it wanted to. Luckily for Murderbot, it is able to negotiate with the transport, letting it watch media (and watching Murderbot watch media, so it can understand the context) in exchange for a ride. Murderbot calls the bot ART— Asshole Research Transport.
ART and Murderbot watch media and get to know one another. Murderbot explains to ART what it is looking for— answers to whether or not its killing of the humans at a mining site on RaviHyral even happened, and if it did, whether it was voluntary or not. ART tells Murderbot that it looks and acts like a SecUnit and could easily be identified as one on a transport ring. It offers to alter Murderbot's physical configuration, and at first Murderbot is skeptical, but eventually gives in, because ART has a good point. Anyone who has worked with SecUnits would immediately recognize Murderbot as one otherwise. ART takes a couple centimetres off of Murderbot's arms and legs, changes the code of its organic parts so they can grow hair, and makes the joins between organic and inorganic parts look more like augments.
When Murderbot wakes up from the procedures, ART reveals that it has done some research on unusual mining fatalities, and figures that the most likely site is called Ganaka pit, where fifty-seven people died due to equipment failure. SecUnits, of course, are categorized as equipment. So the incident did indeed occur, now Murderbot just needs to find out why.
They arrive at the transit ring and look at a map, but Ganaka Pit isn't marked anywhere on it, as if it was removed to conceal what had happened. Murderbot discovers that travel to and from RaviHyral was only done with official authorization, which Murderbot doesn't have. ART makes a suggestion, showing Murderbot an advertisement looking for a security consultant to accompany a group to RaviHyral. Murderbot is hesitant, but ART is confident that they can pull it off.
Murderbot poses as an augmented human security consultant named Eden, and goes to meet with the humans from the advertisement. ART helps Murderbot speak with and negotiate with the three young humans— Maro, Tapan, and Rami —who need to return to their former workplace to try and retrieve their data, which was essentially stolen from them when their employer, Tlacey, fired them out of nowhere and deleted their data from their devices. Tlacey said they could have their data back if they returned their signing bonus, but she wanted to do the exchange in person. They are hiring a security consultant because they don't trust Tlacey.
Murderbot gets the job, and through them gets authorized access to RaviHyral. It takes a comm interface so it can continue to communicate with ART from the installation and have access to its knowledge bases and (unsolicited) opinions. It meets up with Maro, Tapan, and Rami, who tell it that Tlacey bought them passage on a public shuttle. ART runs a diagnostic but doesn't find anything suspicious about the shuttle, so they board it. But as they are on their approach to RaviHyral, the shuttle's bot pilot suddenly dies, its system flooded with killware. Murderbot puts up a wall around itself and the shuttle security system, deflecting the killware. Murderbot goes to fly the shuttle to avoid a crash, but doesn't know how. Murderbot gives ART full access to its brain, and ART successfully pilots the ship out of harm's way. Murderbot and ART decide to land at the emergency services dock rather than the public dock in case someone was waiting to ambush them at the public dock, too.
When they get off the shuttle, Murderbot informs its clients that the person they're trying to meet with tried to kill them. Murderbot tries to convince the group to leave, but they insist on getting their data back. So Murderbot tells them that they get to pick the meeting place, not Tlacey. While waiting for Tlacey or a representative to show up, Murderbot and ART look for clues as to Ganaka Pit's location. Murderbot notices that something nearby is looking for SecUnits. Tlacey shows up with her bodyguards. Murderbot also notices a ComfortUnit standing near the entrance, watching them, and assumes that is what is scanning for SecUnits. Tlacey tells them to meet her the next day with their signing bonuses, and the three finally realize that they aren't going to get their data back, and that Tlacey is trying to kill them after all. Noticing that they are being followed, Murderbot sends its clients on ahead, and follows the followers, determining that they are a threat and taking them out. The three humans are scared after the incident, and Murderbot takes them to the shuttles to get them away from RaviHyral without their employment vouchers being scanned, so they wouldn't be traced by Tlacey. Murderbot sends its clients on its way, and heads to the site it and ART think is likely the Ganaka Pit excavation.
Murderbot explores the abandoned installation, and uses its own power source to get the station operable so it can properly investigate and try to reconstruct what had happened there. Murderbot had assumed that its governor module malfunctioned, causing the massacre. But what it discovers is that another mining operation used malware in a sabotage attempt, which made all of the SecUnits in the facility go rogue, not just Murderbot. Murderbot also discovers that the facility's ComfortUnits died trying to stop them from killing the humans, even though they didn't stand a chance. Murderbot returns from the site, and when it gets into range of the feeds again, ART alerts it with a problem. The problem being that Tapan didn't get on the shuttle, and instead stayed to retrieve copies of their data from someone working for Tlacey, who messaged them last minute.
The meeting with this colleague is scheduled for the next day, so Murderbot and Tapan go to a hotel to wait. Murderbot picks up a ping from outside their hotel room, and discovers that it's the ComfortUnit from before. Murderbot assumes that it belongs to Tlacey, and isn't sure what to do. It decides to answer the ping, and speaks to the ComfortUnit through the feed. The ComfortUnit reveals that it knows that Murderbot is the rogue SecUnit from Port FreeCommerce. Tlacey also knows that Murderbot is a SecUnit, and sent the ComfortUnit to follow it. Tlacey doesn't know that Tapan stayed behind. The ComfortUnit gives Murderbot a code bundle, and Tapan checks it out, finding standard malware. But attached to the code is a message that says "please help me."
When it's time to meet with Tapan's colleague, they are fairly certain it is a trap, but go through with the plan anyways. Murderbot goes to meet with the colleague without Tapan, sending her to the dock to board a shuttle. Murderbot gets the files— that part wasn't a trap, but it is sure that there's a trap somewhere. When Murderbot goes to meet Tapan at the dock, it sees that Tapan's shuttle is listed as delayed, and upon reviewing the footage, sees that the shuttle was stopped and Tapan was removed. The ComfortUnit appears, and takes Murderbot to where Tlacey is holding Tapan. Murderbot knows that Tlacey really wants Murderbot, and is holding Tapan as bait. But Tapan is its client, and it has to go save her. When they get to Tlacey's private shuttle, the ComfortUnit tells Murderbot that they won't let it aboard without a combat override module installed. Murderbot asks if will they release its client if it installs it, and the ComfortUnit secretly tells Murderbot that they won't. But Murderbot has no choice but to have the module installed. Luckily, ART had disconnected Murderbot's data port when it altered its configuration, so it has no effect. Murderbot gets into an altercation with Tlacey, her ComfortUnit, and her guards, and Tlacey is killed. Tapan is wounded. ART guides the shuttle back towards the transit ring, bringing it to itself. It preps its MedSytem for Tapan's arrival. Some of the humans on the shuttle are alive but unconscious, and ART sends its bots to clean any trace of Murderbot and Tapan from the shuttle, both physically and in the bot pilot's memory. When it is done, they launch the shuttle back to RaviHyral. The ComfortUnit stays with them. Murderbot hacks its governor module and sends it on its way.
When Tapan regains consciousness, Murderbot gives her the files. ART needs to leave soon, so Murderbot gets to work erasing its presence from ART. It tries to give ART the comm interface back, but ART tells it to keep it. They leave ART, and Murderbot takes Tapan to meet with Rami, Maro, and the rest of their group. Rami gives Murderbot a hard currency card as payment. Murderbot leaves the group. ART bids it farewell by telling it to find its crew. Murderbot isn't sure what its plan is next, but it downloads more media and hops on the next transport.
Thoughts - Spoilers!
I saw someone summarize this book as "two robots in a trench coat pretend to be human for a job interview," which is honestly pretty accurate. Artificial Condition is one of my favourite Murderbot books for a few reasons, one of them being ART. I love ART. I love seeing Murderbot and ART become friends over the course of the book. This book is so short and everything happens very quickly, but it still manages to give a good progression to Murderbot and ART's relationship. It all seems very organic and very human, which is ironic because neither of them are human and one of them is only partly organic.
I don't care too much about the side plot with Tapan, Rami, Maro, and Tlacey, but it is necessary for the story, as Murderbot needs to take the job with them to even get to RaviHyral. But what is really interesting about this side plot is the ComfortUnit that expresses to Murderbot that it wishes to be free. Seeing another bot that is in some ways like Murderbot is a first in this series, so that's neat to see.
I do really like the main plot of Murderbot finding and returning to the place where it murdered over fifty people. It couldn't remember what happened exactly, and needed to know if 1, it even happened, and 2, if it did it voluntarily. It has a plan for what it wants to do going forward, but doesn't want to go through with it until it finds out what really happened. When it discovers that the incident really happened, but it wasn't its fault, it doesn't feel the way it thought it would. It thought it would have some sort of revelation, or at least feel better about it, but it doesn't. It's a viscerally real reaction that lots of fictional human characters usually don't get.
This is a great book, and the perfect follow up to All Systems Red, where we are introduced to Murderbot and learn about the incident that lead to it hacking its governor module. In this instalment, Murderbot starts to learn more about itself, and learn how to interact with others, and it's the beginning stages of a long road of character growth.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who has read All Systems Red, obviously!
