What a month! I started about five different books and finished almost 0. To counteract that, I’m still, rather slowly, reading the Murderbot series and I read the next two novellas in the series.


Artificial Condition – Martha Well
Although it did not have the quickest start, I enjoyed this book a lot. The characters are great, particularly the introduction of a couple different robot characters – a ‘comfort’ bot and an extremely intelligent (and mean, but nice!) ship transport robot. I also found the human characters Murderbot encounters were different enough from book one for it to be a nice change.
The only thing I will say is that, particularly considering book 3 too, the formula of Murderbot flying around on different ships to various locations – involving shady companies who do not have memorable names – is going to trip me up, plot-wise, quite quickly.
Rogue Protocol – Martha Wells
Similar to the second book, Artificial Condition, I found this one had a slow middle. However, while book 2 picked up quite quickly, I found this one was only really gripping at the beginning and end. The premise didn’t feel very different to what we’ve seen before, although the addition of another robot character was a real gem.
Again, as always, there are moments that are very emotionally filled, and the writing itself is great. Murderbot’s character comes through as strong as ever.

The Golden Enclaves – Naomi Novik
I’m a liar, I did read a whole novel – the final in the Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik. Although I did like the first one a lot, and I also enjoyed many parts of this, it did take me a lot longer to get through than with the previous book. I’m not going to expand here, because spoilers, but I will say I at least found the ending satisfactory.
I think in November I purchased more books than I read. I really need to swap that ratio around to get any reading done.
I am glad you are enjoying Murderbot!
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