Artificial Condition

 

Author: Martha Wells

Series The Murderbot Diaries #2

Genre: Sci-Fi

Publication date:

Book Description (from GoodReads): It has a dark past – one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.
Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.
What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks.

Thoughts 

Murderbot decides to run away from the humans it got close to during the mission. They do not trust humans and after getting to know them, more feelings and theories are proven wrong. Murderbot had a very specific idea on what bots should be and humans. After the previous mission, all those ideas are thrown out the window. 

Murderbot is annoying, they insist on their inability to have emotions and therefore they can't understand humans. So in an attempt to quiet their emotional turmoil about their past. A new adventure begins. In a previous mission, Murderbot was part of another security team, but something happened and the humans perished. There is no record left of the event in Murderbot's stored data. 

In order to travel, Murderbot must pretend to be something else. After making their way into an automated ship, Murderbot discovers ART. It is another intelligence similar to theirs. ART is very advanced and together they make a plan. A few alterations are needed and a few modifications or additions in Murderbot. Now instead of a bot, they appear like an augmented human: those are common enough to provide great cover. ART helps Murderbot sneak into a group of humans, the plan is to pretend to be a security consultant. The small detail of pretending to be human is a lot harder for Murderbot, not because of any specific aspect. Murderbot is annoying in the defiance and continuous point to say they are not human. It should be endearing but still not pleasant. 

The plot develops a little bit. The place is almost abandoned. But there is a bit of security left in place, it was a trap of course. The humans are almost killed and Murderbot needs to decide if help them and risk discovery or how to act and not blow its cover. ART proves to be an awesome help. 

There are other bots in the location, and when looking for the clues a discovery is made by Murderbot. The missing memories make a lot of sense. In those memories are buried proof of illegal deals in the mining location. With that reveal, Murderbot gets another good idea. Keep traveling and now that they proved they can pass off as human, it feels better about their options of sucesss. 

The story is a very quick read and enjoyable enough to get through. The first book was better.

This book was picked up again with the idea of completing the series. I had seen a lot of people talk about the series and they seem to love Murderbt. I might need to get through a few more novellas to get the allure for them