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purplepenning's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Gun violence, Violence, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Body horror, Gore, Mental illness, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Murder, and Colonisation
Minor: Xenophobia
dolores_madil's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Cursing, Deadnaming, Genocide, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders
anntharai's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Incredible story wonderfully written and phenomenal characters.
Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Slavery, Torture, Kidnapping, and Grief
Minor: Adult/minor relationship
The adult/minor relationship is entirely very minimal, it’s brief and the minor involved doesn’t get hurt (that_kid_with_the_sword's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Body horror
Moderate: Death, Gore, Gun violence, Xenophobia, Medical content, and Medical trauma
inferiorwit's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Adult/minor relationship and Slavery
kathleencoughlin's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Graphic: Murder
Moderate: Death, Mental illness, Medical content, and Kidnapping
Minor: Body horror
deedireads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
TL;DR REVIEW:
Network Effect was my favorite Murderbot story so far. I think the full-novel length gives it space to appeal to those who don’t always gravitate toward hard sci-fi.
For you if: You are a Murderbot fan!
FULL REVIEW:
Network Effect is the fifth story in the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, but the first full-length novel. It’s nominated for this year’s Hugo Award, which is what put the series on my radar in the first place.
As the dust jacket says: “Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century.” Murderbot is a SecUnit, short for security unit (so like, a badass fighter sentient robot) who hacked the part of its code that forces it to obey commands. That gives it the freedom to start really developing into a person of its own in all the ways that count (and watch as many soap operas as it can). Most of the characters in Network Effect are from the novellas, so you’ll definitely want to read those before you read this one. But if you liked the novellas (no spoilers, but especially the second one), you’ll like this one!
In fact, I liked the first four novellas, but I’m happy to say that this was my favorite Murderbot story so far. As someone who doesn’t read much hard sci-fi, the focus on how all the tech works was sometimes too heavy for me in the novellas. But this full-novel length gives Network Effect more space for narrative elements I do tend to like — development of secondary characters, a layered mystery, subplots. I hope she’ll write more Murderbot novels in the future!
Graphic: Gun violence and Violence
Moderate: Body horror and Grief
Minor: Medical content
hanz's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Grief
booksthatburn's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
As the first full novel in the series, Network Effect handles the transition from novella to novel beautifully. It expands the scope and feel of the characters while still keeping things connected to the earlier books. My favorite thing was the addition of new point of view characters, it was strange but cool to get perspectives other than Murderbot, especially since they have some very specific similarities while obviously being distinct characters. Murderbot itself was delightful as always, it’s really grown throughout the series in terms of relating to other entities and figuring out what it wants, slowly becoming proactive rather than reacting against what it was ordered to do before. As usual for Murderbot there’s danger, rescues and heist things, which were all great. It really feels like a longer version of a Murderbot book, which is perfect.
This doesn’t specifically wrap up anything from the previous books, but it does continue developing the definitely-not-friendship between Murderbot and Dr. Mensah, which is noteworthy given how little time they spent together this time around. The main storyline starts here and wasn’t present previously, it’s definitely its own story, with the main plot being pretty self contained. It’s not the last book, and at the end it clearly leaves something for later books to pick up as Murderbot starts to picture a life for itself and gets an unusual offer. I mentioned before that there are some additional narrators, because of plot reasons they have a lot of similarities to Murderbot, but they are differentiated in some cool ways. This would make sense if someone started here and didn’t know about the rest of the series. The first four novellas were a set telling a complete story, while this volume is pretty self contained. Everything you would need to know in order to understand what’s going on gets explained, partly because Murderbot has to provide some explanations since the other characters mostly were not around in the other books. That means that Network Effect technically could be read by itself, but if the plot description intrigues you you should definitely start with the first novella.
This is a great entry in a fun-to-read series about sentience, personhood, and self discovery in space and on various planets.
Graphic: Confinement, Gun violence, Violence, Medical content, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Body horror, Cursing, Death, Blood, Kidnapping, and Grief
mariebrunelm's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Gun violence and Medical content
Minor: Grief, Murder, and Colonisation