All System Red

Author: Martha Wells 

Series: The Murderbot Series #1
Genre: Sci-fi
Original Publication date: May 2017
Book description: In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.
But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.


Thoughts:

The writing style is not my cup of tea, hard to tell why. But the character SecUnit is intriguing enough to carry you through the whole story. 
There is not too much character exploration on the humans as the story is told from Murderbot. He seems to be a very unusual artificial being with emotions, hacking his own systems in order to be able to control his emotions and actions instead of being forced to simply follow orders. This unusual behavior made it possible to start helping the human team he is assigned to.
There are a mystery and a plot happening on the background as the team is facing first little mishaps that can be passed as malfunctions due to cheap systems, soon they realize it was not only that. 
It has a good pace, it is not super fast but it gives you enough to keep you wondering and wanting to read it, it is a bit sort so you know it will either have a quick ending or end in a section and prompt you to get to the next book right away. 
The SectBot even after deciding to help the humans, he grows close to them and wants to protect "his" humans but still is fearing what will happen after as he is discovered and they have the struggle of deciding to think of it as a person or Robot, this is faced by the humans and the bot itself. 

It gives you a good incentive to the reader to start a deep dive on how a simple change of mind makes a "normal" situation turns and when you really take a look in a socially acetable situation in a new light and see the wrongness in it. The bots have feelings and could be considered humans yet people treat them like it, as things, they are slaved and no one even bats an eye. They have issues coming to the realization. 
I like the development of relationship between them. And the best part is the SecUnit's POV.

This is a fun novella, it's just entertaining and yet it gives a nudge towards social analyzing and it touches your feelings as you see what a bot thinks or the lack of hate for humans when he has very good reasons to harbor vengeful feeling towards humans in general. 



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