Jason

Truly Fantastic

Reviewed: 09-18-24

I loved this book so much. It did everything that I could want from a sci-fi: it had a compelling character-driven story, it presented fascinating new ideas, it helped me to see our world in a new light. I simply cannot recommend this book strongly enough!

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Best way to listen!

Reviewed: 10-10-23

Kevin R. Free's performance of this book is expressive, nuanced, satisfying, easy to follow, and fun!

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fun, but go with the audio book rather than this

Reviewed: 10-10-23

Huge fan of the book series in print and audio. I snatched this up to have a new way to enjoy Murderbot. This story definitely benefits from a full cast! My complaints are all about the editing/production choices. 1. The edits cram audio information too close together to be easily parsed. The original audio book is much easier to understand in this regard.
2. Murderbot essentially needs three consistent voices or voice effects from its narrator: one to voice the dialogue, one to narrate the thoughts, and one to give voice to feed messages. Instead, this production chose to put effects on in-flight communications (but only on Murderbot's voice, even though there were other people on the flight talking - wth?). It was too little and too inconsistent to work for helping me to understand when Murderbot was talking out loud versus not. The original audio book's performance is able to subtly convey these voices. I had been hoping for a more obvious performance here that did not at all deliver.
3. I had hoped for sound effects that were more immersive, but they seem sort of added on timidly in the background.
I'd say pick this up if you enjoy the story already and therefore don't need to scramble to understand it. If you're new to Murderbot, go with the audio book narrated by Kevin R. Free. Their performance is great, and more easily understood. I really missed their performance of Pin Lee in particular.

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8 people found this helpful

fun listen for fans of true crime, dark humor

Reviewed: 01-19-23

If you're a fan of dark humor the writing will have you chuckling. Performances from Wheaton and Perlman could not be more perfect. The golden touch? Jokes' target: audiobook listeners. The extra layer of meta makes it that much more fun.

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Rarely Great, Often Eye-roll Inducing

Reviewed: 11-29-22

This series has one excellent twist. The author gives us plenty of hints that something is weird but doesn't give it away, so the reveal has a lot of impact. Then there are a bunch of other "twists" that they intended to have a similar impact, but you can see them from a mile away, so the characters either seem dumb or their reactions are overblown. Also, the plot armor for the main characters is THICK. It's so strong that there almost seem to be some in-world references to it, which got me hoping for some Red Shirts style 4th Wall shenanigans, but I think they just bumped up against it by accident while stumbling about. The reader does a fine job; if he had played it up like a melodrama, it might have saved the book by making it seem ironic rather than trite... but that would be an awfully bold decision for a reader to make.

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perfect expansion

Reviewed: 09-29-22

book 3 is the perfect expansion of all story threads in books 1 and 2.

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Excellent in Every Way

Reviewed: 05-17-21

I have no complaints, this is a fantastic book. It's interesting, exciting, engaging, and full of cool science. This is one of the few books that I feel I could recommend to anyone, and they'll find something about it to love.

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Excellent Performance, but a Poor Climax

Reviewed: 10-22-20

Let me start by saying that Heller gave a great performance here, really knocking it out of the park. Unfortunately, I don't think the book itself holds up its end of that bargain. It starts off well and good, introducing some fun characters and giving them strong motivation. It comes apart during the climax though, where everything in the swamp seems to suddenly be right next to everything else, people start just sitting around because the plot needs them to do so while other characters get stuff done, and generally the mechanics of the story start showing through the story itself.

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1 person found this helpful

delightful characters and plots

Reviewed: 08-12-20

The narrator skillfully performed the more than half a dozen point of view characters! Each point of view slides seamlessly into the next. Plots are a refreshing take on the Lovecraftian mythos--but, it's the theme of these stories that tops it all off to perfection.

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More of a lecture than a novel...

Reviewed: 04-14-20

The book has some interesting thoughts on scale, god, and community, but the presentation is dry and pretentious. I think that I would really like it if a modern author turned the book into a trilogy, really investing us in the characters and letting us discover the cool ideas along with them, rather than just telling us that the character had an incredible insight and lecturing us about what it was.

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