Reviews with content warning for Gun violence - Network Effect

NETWORK EFFECT finds Murderbot summoned to help various associates and not-friends who are in danger and in need of help, with lots of Targets to shoot and interfaces to hack.

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.

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mariebrunelm's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny tense fast-paced

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

The 5th volume in the Murderbot Diaries delivers like the previous episodes. This one is actually much bigger, at 400 pages, but Martha Wells manages to keep the rhythm of her novellas and provides climaxes at regular intervals to keep interest high. Our favourite cyborg faces bigger and bigger challenges, some of them being of the emotional kind. I was sometimes lost amidst the details of the plot, but the overall progression of the story was always clear. There were some great ideas in this volume, plot twists which were both unexpected and completely in keeping with the atmosphere of this series.

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reviewsandreadathons's review against another edition

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adventurous funny hopeful mysterious fast-paced

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

Murderbot is so relatable and hilarious. The action sequences were great, as were the relationships and dialogue. I just love everything about this series.

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kylieqrada's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

ART + MURDERBOT 4EVAAAAA!!!!!!! I think this was my favorite of the series so far. This is the first full-length Murderbot novel, and it did not disappoint. We really got to see Murderbot develop as a character and build relationships in this installment, as well as take on a new mentorship-type role. All hail the church of Murderbot.

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