Review by beefthedwarf - All Systems Red [Dramatized Adaptation]

beefthedwarf 's review for:

All Systems Red [Dramatized Adaptation] by Martha Wells

4.25

adventurous funny tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

4.18 — can’t wait to read more!

I’ll preface this by saying I was in a reading slump while reading this book and put it down for long stretches of time. This isn’t really great for a novella, so I’ll keep my criticisms light. I definitely didn’t enjoy this book the way it was meant to be enjoyed.

The Murderbot Diaries: All Systems Red was a very fresh and fun story. Murderbot itself was everything I love in a character — sarcastic, depressed, and full of love (to its chagrin). I really enjoyed its humorous internal dialogue and the small hints to a larger story sprinkled throughout the book. There was a lot packed into such a small story, and not all of it was needless exposition. I love worldbuilding that speaks for itself!

However, I will say I struggled to connect to the human characters and found myself a bit lost on some of the plot beats close to the end of the book. However, I will chalk that up (for now) as reading the book too sparsely. I’ll revisit this someday if I ever reread!

Exhaustive Review (spoilers):

World/System/Premise
Engagement: 4
Worldbuilding: 4

The worldbuilding was very easy to absorb. It didn’t feel a need to overexplain itself. It relies a bit on the reader being familiar with some corporate cyberfuture tropes, but I doubt ASR would be the average person’s first foray into the genre.

Some parts of the world also seem to be poly-normative and queer-normative. I’m glad to see this spring up in sci-fi after enjoying it so much in The Elemental Logic series.

There are a few pieces of world building that don’t entirely make sense, though. One, I find it hard to believe some humans didn’t get attached enough to a SecUnit to buy its contract before Murderbot. Humans pack bond easily, even to agents of corporatocracy (see: Amazon Alexa, Roombas, etc). Two, the book seemed to oscillate between “SecUnits are disposable bullet shields” and “SecUnits are too expensive to throw away”. This made it unclear exactly how high the stakes were for Murderbot.

Writing Style / Prose
Spelling / grammar / formatting: 5
Vocabulary and Sentence Structure: 5
Internal / External Dialogue: 4
Emotional Impact: 3

I liked the short, sweet, simple prose. It set the tone of the book very well and matched Murderbot’s “I’d rather be watching my shows” attitude to everything.

However, I struggled with some of the emotional impact of everything. I never really got to know the characters, and didn’t know who was who half the time. That’s partially my fault for putting the book down too often (I had a lot going on!). However, I feel like we could have learned more about the humans outside of Murderbot’s exposition.

Plot Flow
Pacing: 5
Scene Structure: 4
Plot vs. Character Impact: 4
Approach to Climax: 4

ASR is a short book, and it gets right to the point. Excitement springs up pretty much immediately, and the plot thickens from there. However, I found myself a bit lost about what exactly was happening toward the end. The part with the beacon confused me — was it an assassination attempt? An accident? It seemed to come out of nowhere.

The Ending
Satisfaction: 4
Resolution of loose ends: 5

The ending was very poignant and also left a lot of room for subsequent books. I liked the idea of “everything turned out great and Murderbot was invited to live in a paradise under the guardianship of humans” being turned on its head. It says a lot about its character that it didn’t want a peaceful happy ending if that meant losing its autonomy.

Characterization
Personality, Goals, and Motivations: 4
Interpersonal Relationships: 3

Murderbot cared deeply about its humans, but I didn’t really. Again, I put the book down a lot. It took me like 2 months to finish it, for no fault of its own. But the cast just felt like that, a cast, with only Gurathin and Mensah having any personality.

I wish there had been more interactions, or Murderbot’s recollections of interactions, to help us care more about the crew as people.

~Vibes~
Connection To Readers: 5
Originality: 4
The Itch™: 4

I connected to the book because Murderbot reminded me a lot of Gideon Nav, and that immediately gave me a lot of feels. I also like that Murderbot is never given a gender to signify its personhood. It doesn’t even really want personhood, either. This is very refreshing after a lifetime of sci fi media insisting that a robot needs to be a girlbot or a boybot to be “alive”.

Average Score: 4.18

Content Warnings