mkmcelroy's reviews
338 reviews

This book really blew me away and I’m tempted to say I liked it better than the first in the series. There were two aspects of the book that really put it over the top into 5 stars for me. The first was Murderbot’s growing self awareness. This book Murderbot’s a little more stressed, a bit more on edge. And we get to see much more of how that physically and psychologically manifests in a construct. Murderbot’s growing recognition of how it feels and the ways its “organic material” reacts was fascinating. The other highlight of the book was the introduction of ART as a character. Not only do we get to see a lot more about how AIs work/think/feel in this universe but the dynamic between Murderbot and ART is endlessly amusing. 

For anyone who’s read All Systems Red, i highly recommend this book. And for anyone who hasn’t I recommend you read both :)

An okay read but not very engaging. The characters had chemistry but romance itself felt like it had no stakes. Any tension that arose got resolved almost immediately. And the friend group came off as more caricature-ish than the first book.