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skudiklier's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Graphic: Death and Violence
Moderate: Body horror, Colonisation, Abandonment, and Blood
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: Gun violence, Violence, Murder, Medical content, Blood, Death, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Kidnapping, Torture, Panic attacks/disorders, Mental illness, Grief, and Slavery
Minor: Adult/minor relationship
The adult/minor relationship is entirely very minimal, it’s brief and the minor involved doesn’t get hurt (evjohn13's review
- 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
Graphic: Violence and Blood
jwells's review
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
I'm not usually a re-reader but I'm thinking about reading this again right now.
Update, May 2024: According to my StoryGraph reading journal, I did reread it immediately, and I just now finished another reread, in preparation for reading System Collapse, which is supposed to be set immediately after this one. No wonder I found it easier to follow this time, if it was actually the third read. LOL. Still a page turner.
Moderate: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, and Violence
frantic_vampire's review
- 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: Body horror, Confinement, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Medical trauma, Violence, Abandonment, and Kidnapping
Moderate: Body horror, Death, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, and Abandonment
inferiorwit's review against another edition
- 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: Death, Torture, Violence, Confinement, Body horror, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Kidnapping, Medical content, and Gun violence
Minor: Adult/minor relationship and Slavery
hanz's review
- 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: Blood, Colonisation, Confinement, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Violence, and Gun violence
Moderate: Grief
knerys'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
Moderate: Blood, Body horror, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Murder, and Death
Minor: Gore, Grief, and Medical trauma
booksthatburn'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
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: Cursing, Grief, Blood, Body horror, Kidnapping, and Death
v171'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? It's complicated
4.0
As I usually say with murderbot, this is more of the same excellent writing, great characters, great pacing, and engaging story. The full length novel is just a treat. My only issue with this book in particular (and it has been a trend with each book), is that the number of named characters is starting to total in the dozens. This generally isn't a problem, but Wells tends not to devote a lot of time to a given character's physical appearance or set their voice apart narratively. It makes it very hard to keep track of who is who, and where each person is as multiple action sequences happen. I shouldn't really complain because all of the characters are lovable in their own way, and more lovable characters are always fun to encounter, but I wouldn't be mad at a smaller cast, a la 'All Systems Red' in the future.
Graphic: Cursing, Death, and Violence
Moderate: Blood