

The most endearing is ART, a wacky cross between 2001’s HAL and Mycroft Holmes, who plays to Murderbot’s Sherlock with acerbic and infinite superiority. The real discovery is not about the horrific events Murderbot may have participated in some 35,000 hours ago, but the bonds it never intended to form with beings who were no part of its plan.


Sounds like a rollicking time-which it is, but not in the way one might expect. Murderbot, a sentient artificial intelligence, is on the lam, hopping cargo transports and hacking security cameras on a quest to discover the truth of its own origin story as the villain of a massacre. Wells follows the classically tight adventure pacing of All Systems Red with a slightly disorienting shift to self-exploration, making intense moments out of data dumps and matter-of-fact narrative out of fights to the death.
