Review: System Collapse

System Collapse by Martha Wells
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

At this point, after seven books of varying size, haven't the corporations of the future learned by now that Murderbot just wants to be left alone to stream intergalactic soap operas all day? Yeah, right. Corporations never learn, in the present or in the future, and in this story world, they're so dangerously close to stepping into Weyland-Yutani territory with their sheer disregard for life that they ought to just die off already. As much as I love Murderbot as a character for being so relatable in its moody attitudes, the stories that Wells tells about it are unfortunately starting to lose me as a reader. This series is just so increasingly monotonous and repetitive that the only reason I'm not giving it a real thumbs down is, again, because Murderbot is just such an on point protagonist.

But I only picked this book up because it was specially promoted on the Lucky Day shelf at the Gresham Library. I honestly had no idea it was even out yet otherwise, though I did hear that Apple is planning a Murderbot Diaries adaptation, starring Alexander Skarsgård in the title role. A bit of a strange casting choice...I've been poking through a lot of Murderbot threads on Reddit and such where other readers talk about how they perceive Murderbot's gender differently, and I have to say, I've long perceived Murderbot as female in part due to the prevalence of similar femme murderbot type characters in other contemporary works, such as Ann Leckie's Breq, or Bubbles in Questionable Content. But then again, the audiobook narrator is male, and Skarsgård has pretty good range as an actor, so who knows how well he'd do Murderbot justice.

If only I had Apple TV+ on a regular basis though...

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