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A review by thekarpuk
Network Effect by Martha Wells
5.0
Network Effect is one of the weirdest love stories I've read in a while.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought that ART (Asshole Research Transport) stole the show in the book it was in, so it didn't shock me that the hyper intense AI came back in the first full-length book.
But that shift also made this a little harder for me. My concentration has been shot through most of the pandemic, so the bite-size nature of the first four Murderbot Diaries made them well-suited to my somewhat depressed, ill-functioning brain. Dealing with a Murderbot entry that continued on after 30,000 words forced me to actually changed how I engaged with the material.
And I'm glad I did, because the emotional pay off in this book really made all the elements in the previous novels come together in a way that was unexpectedly touching. And the series has to rely on a different set of values since half the characters they focus on have no gender and really seem to struggle with what a personal relationship even means.
There are bits related to the colonist infected with alien technology that I got a bit confused on. I couldn't tell if it was my slow reading speed, or if that plot thread was less pertinent to the author, but it didn't end up mattering because the relationships between the characters was so much more of a focus, and so much more valuable.
By the end, I left pretty pleased with the series, and excited to see where it goes both with the changed nature of Murderbots life and with the new characters that appear to be more central to the series going forward.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought that ART (Asshole Research Transport) stole the show in the book it was in, so it didn't shock me that the hyper intense AI came back in the first full-length book.
But that shift also made this a little harder for me. My concentration has been shot through most of the pandemic, so the bite-size nature of the first four Murderbot Diaries made them well-suited to my somewhat depressed, ill-functioning brain. Dealing with a Murderbot entry that continued on after 30,000 words forced me to actually changed how I engaged with the material.
And I'm glad I did, because the emotional pay off in this book really made all the elements in the previous novels come together in a way that was unexpectedly touching. And the series has to rely on a different set of values since half the characters they focus on have no gender and really seem to struggle with what a personal relationship even means.
There are bits related to the colonist infected with alien technology that I got a bit confused on. I couldn't tell if it was my slow reading speed, or if that plot thread was less pertinent to the author, but it didn't end up mattering because the relationships between the characters was so much more of a focus, and so much more valuable.
By the end, I left pretty pleased with the series, and excited to see where it goes both with the changed nature of Murderbots life and with the new characters that appear to be more central to the series going forward.