Core: 1/9. Terrible.
Sorry but the title of this book seems to have nothing to do with the context of the book. Is it because of Miki’s unusual rebellion against its owner? But Murderbot explained later that it’s also predetermined by its owner. The author didn’t tell anything about it. Did she forget it?
Also, I’m no longer attracted by Murderbot who appears more like human now, and the book seems to lack novel or interesting scientific elements.
Character: 4/9. Slightly good.
Miki: An innocent pet robot or gull who loved its owner, Abene, and believed in any human or robot who claims to protect Abene. It presumed Murderbot as its first bot friend and sacrificed itself to help Murderbot defeat the combat bot.
Abene: The leader of the investigation team who treated Miki so benevolently and tenderly that it made Murderbot jealous.
GreyCris: It served as the antagonist again and played it well by just sending two mercenaries to destroy their crime evidence.
Other human: No impressive behavior. It would be better if the author learned how to use smart dialogues to build characters and allot more paragraphs to represent characters there rather than create Murderbot’s endless chatter and self-propaganda.
Plot: 7/9. Excellent. Complete within my expectations.
Prelude
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Murderbot intended to find some evidence against GreyCris to help Mensah. So it had to board a shuttle full of contract-labor-bound passengers and involuntarily served as their relationship counsellor.
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Murderbot had to beguile Miki, a pet bot, into believing that it was deployed secretly to protect its owner so as to steal onboard to its destination.
Rescue Task
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Murderbot protected Abene, Miki’s owner, from being abducted in time after it had collected the required evidence. Abene commanded them to save Hirune who was just carried off by the combat bots.
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Murderbot cooperated with Wilken, one of the hired guardians, to immobilize a combat bot.
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Wilken attempted to persuade Abene to use Murderbot as a bait against drones and the combat bot so as to kill Abene without scruple. But luckily, the combat bot disappeared, and Murderbot managed to hack the hostile drones and Wilken’s armour just in time. They conjectured that their so-called guardians were dispatched surreptitiously by GreyCris to destroy the tractor array and disintegrate this area by sending an encrypted signal to the bot.
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Murderbot and Abene lured the crew out of the shuttle to paralyze the other guardian.
Conclusion
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The shuttle bumped the zipper off its course to save the tractor array. However, the combat bot seized the opportunity to invade the shuttle. Miki disobeyed its owner’s direct order to protect its friends and eventually sacrificed itself for Murderbot to annihilate the mighty invader.
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Murderbot hacked another ship to bring the evidence to Dr. Mensah in person after hearing Abene’s crying.
World and others: 3/9. Things would be more dramatic if the author was able to give more details on trivial cases Murderbot managed to deal with and render information on that world through them. Otherwise it always represents a sense of unrealistic tale.
I’m a bit disappointed when she skipped lots of descriptions on magnificent dynamic scenes like using a shuttle to bumble the zipper off its track.
In addition, I thought the storm mentioned a few times was the presage of a crumbling tractor array triggered by the encrypted signal. But since its final boss was just a combat bot rather than the catastrophe of a planet, I had to deduce that both the guardians and the combat bot were procrastinators without any intelligence.