Rogue Protocol

Book 3 of the Murderbot Diaries series

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A great book! I enjoyed this one even more than book 2 and much more than book 1. They are getting progressively better as I move deeper into the series because they are building complexity; people and organizations are coming back around and being revisited.

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When I’d called it a pet robot, I honestly thought I was exaggerating. This was going to be even more annoying than I had anticipated, and I had anticipated a pretty high level of annoyance, maybe as high as 85 percent. Now I was looking at 90 percent, possibly 95 percent.

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In this one, Murderbot goes on a mission to gather data for the person who bought out her contract. Again, she partners up with some humans to get where she wants to go and in the process, also befriends a bot. This one is nothing like ART from book 2, the massive research vessel. The bot in this story, Miki, is more like a pet. It is kind and, in the end, quite virtuous.

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In the feed, Abene detached one of the assumption squares and moved it away from the tree. She said, If we assume Wilken and Gerth were sent by GrayCris, then they aren’t here to retrieve anything. GrayCris had ample opportunity to remove anything they wanted when they abandoned the facility. She hesitated, her attention moving from one assumption square to another. I think we have to ask ourselves, what does GrayCris want?

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The last quarter of this story is non-stop action involving combat bots, drones, the human-shaped bot Miki, Murderbot, some augmented humans, and an abandoned station slowly falling into a tempestuous planet's atmosphere. My heart raced in some scenes and I couldn’t put the book down.

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Murderbot would love to not care about humans (because we're so stupid) but she just can’t. She says it’s because she’s programmed that way, but it could be because she has learned the value and richness of relationships from the serials she watches. Or it could be because what is human in her genuinely cares for other people. I suspect it’s because she’s exceptional, genuinely caring, and highly principled.

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The bot knew I was there and it turned, reaching for me as I lifted the cutter. Miki braced its feet against the hatch protecting the flight deck access and pushed off. It launched across the cabin, its body cutting through the floating display, straight at the combat bot’s head.

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I don’t know if Miki was trying to distract the combat bot, or if it had seen me make a similar attack on the bot that came after Wilken, and was trying to duplicate the technique. Air rushed out of the pressurized cabin, down the access corridor and out the ruined airlock, and as Miki jumped the flow gave it an extra boost of speed.

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I’m beginning to see why this series won Hugo and Nebula awards. It’s slowly growing into a very compelling tale.

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If she keeps on doing what she’s doing, she’s going to single-handedly change the way SecUnits are seen and understood.

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