All Systems Red by Martha Wells (Murderbot #1)

All Systems Red by Martha Wells
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Jacket Blurb: 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.

Read for September 2020 book group.

General consensus from the book group was this was an enjoyable, quick, and interesting read. For myself, this was just the length I needed at this moment in time. And being a short story, this is going to be a short review.

I've said this in the past, a good short story can be difficult to write as you need to engage the reader within the first couple of pages and keep their attention with a minimum of background "fluff". I thought the author did that - this is a character driven story and there is just enough background to provide the setting. A couple folks did note in book group that they would have liked more background information, and a couple of us thought it was good the way it was.

I haven't read any reviews on this selection, and I'm sure this has been discussed at length, but the notable lack of gender reference was quite interesting. For those in the group who "read" this as an audio book, they assigned a male gender because the narrator was male. I read on my e-reader and I thought the character came across as female. When really, the character is gender-less. Fascinating. This lead to discussions on Ann Leckie's books and similar.

Overall, a good read and I plan on picking up the next few books in the series. Recommended.

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