“Give ‘Em The Razor and Make ‘Em Buy The Blades”
I’ll explain that one in a bit. First, let’s talk about the book. This is the 2nd volume in Martha Wells’ “Murderbot Diaries” – following “All Systems Red” – reviewed below:
http://booksofbrian.com/on-the-nightstand-all-systems-red-1-16-2018/
It’s also the 2nd of my May New Releases – the first being “The Wolf: Under The Northern Sky” – which turned out to be a beautiful and thoroughly enjoyable book.
I enjoyed “All Systems Red” – enough to convince me to buy the three sequels. The next book – “Rogue Protocol” – is scheduled for release in August of this year. Contrary to what I wrote in the first review, I did actually did buy all volumes in hardcover. Given what I know Wells is capable of – I guess I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and just assume that she’s going to do something special with this story.
After reading this second book, I have to say…Murderbot is growing on me. I was right about the holes in “All Systems Red” – Wells is parsing out her backstory and is filling in the blanks as she goes. MB is becoming a more substantial and relate-able character as the story progresses. He’s growing and defining himself – starting to come to terms with his independence and deciding who he wants to be. Most of that growth is driven by his need to interact with a growing group of diverse individuals and the choices those interactions force on him. He obligates himself to a new group of humans – first via a contract he negotiates and then in response to a series of ethical choices that result from that contractual obligation. Those choices allow you to better understand MB, how he thinks about himself and how he feels about the humans who created him.
Just as important are the relationships he forms with other machine intelligences. The first and most entertaining of these is the alliance or friendship or something in between that he forms with the Artificial Intelligence – ART – responsible for the operation of a Research Transport vessel that he uses to escape from the world of his first set of human patrons. ART is a surprise for MB – he’d assumed that this would be an uncommunicative machine intelligence. In fact, ART turns out to be as communicative and as richly complex as MB and their relationship transitions from arms length wary to mutually supportive and amusingly familiar. ART is arrogantly confident in his superior abilities but humanizes as a result of his interactions with MB. As the story progresses, they become an effective, entertaining, almost lovable team united partially by the boredom of their constrained lives in service to human beings that are – in many ways – far less capable than either of them.
Long to short – this story is becoming increasingly interesting and entertaining. I actually enjoyed “Artificial Condition” more than I did “All Systems Red”. It was richer, more complex and it finally allowed me to connect in a more meaningful way to MB. I can’t help but think that I’m going to really wind up liking this guy as the story progresses.
I honestly have only one complaint and it has nothing to do with the book itself. I don’t like the way Martha Wells and the publisher are commercializing the work – hence the Razor / Blades quote. The story is being sold as 4 separate novellas:
- All Systems Red – 2017
- Artificial Condition – May 2018
- Rogue Protocol – August 2018
- Exit Strategy – October 2018
They’re sold separately as hardcovers at the price of $16.19 and as e-copies for $9.99. In reality, these are 4 sections of one book – obvious as you read through each separately – and could easily have been published in one volume. The fact that they were all released within an 18 month period only confirms that the Author and the publisher made a pretty crass commercial decision to break the book into four pieces and sell them separately to maximize revenue.
Instead of paying $25 for a single hardcover volume, I’m forced to purchase 4 separate novellas for a combined cost of ~$68.00 in hardcover or ~$40.00 in digital format. Before you say it, I will – shame on me – no one forced me to spend the money – I know I’m being played. Nevertheless, I’m really enjoying the books and I want to get my hands on them as they become available. It just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and it makes me wonder about Wells’ attitude towards her fans and readers. Wells and her publisher gave me the Razor but she’s selling me the blades – one at a time – at a pretty high price.
My recommendation – wait until an omnibus edition is published and just read it straight through. You’ll enjoy the story AND you won’t feel like you’re being exploited. I wish I was able to take my own advice. 🙁
Yep, I’m going to be waiting until they’re all released together. That is just brutal price gouging…