Review

Please be aware that Artificial Condition is Book #2 in The Murderbot Diaries, so this review contains *spoilers* for Book #1: All Systems Red.

Stop now if that’s a problem!

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Murderbot, having had its contract bought out by Dr Mensah and then slipping a transport to freedom at the end of All Systems Red, is now on a research mission to RaviHyral Mining Facility, where it once killed fifty-seven people due to a defective governor module. Or so it thinks. It doesn’t know. Was it at fault? Or was it really an external tech problem, like it had previously thought? It needs to know.

Hopping a ride with ART, a powerful data analyst/transport bot with a sensitive side, Murderbot reaches RaviHyral, only to get mixed up with a human protection job that turns out to be more dangerous than it at first appears.

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I really enjoyed this one — more than Book #1. It’s easier to follow in the action sequences, and it’s funnier. I particularly loved the bickering between Murderbot and ART.

Are all constructs so illogical? said the Asshole Research Transport with the immense processing capability whose metaphorical hand I had had to hold because it had become emotionally compromised by a fictional media serial.

The worldbuilding is great — a very organic accumulation of details, much easier to follow than in All Systems Red. It’s set in a high-tech futuristic space world with terra-formed planets, large exploitative corporations, humans, augmented humans, cyborgs and bots. Some characters also have interesting different family set ups, e.g. polyamory, and different genders — a character in this book is tercera, “a gender signifier used in the group of non-corporate political entities known as the Divarti Cluster”. It took me a stupidly long time to realise that the words “te” and “ter” that then started appearing in the text were pronouns for tercera rather than weird typos/new character names. (I got there in the end.)

The tercera cleared ter throat. Te had purple hair and red eyebrows, standing out against light brown skin.

I enjoyed the little touches of description from the cyborg perspective.

In the security camera view, from that angle, it was obvious how small they were. They looked so soft, with all the fluffy multicoloured hair.

Great fun. Year 7 & up — see content info. Nice short one again at 160 pp.

> Click here for content info — spoilers, enter at own risk!

Sci-fi violence, including punching, shooting, injury and death, kneecaps taken out, various bones dislocated, etc. — detailed but clinical; backstory — fairly dry & factual reconstruction of the massacre of humans by malfunctioning cyborgs; perilous situations; mention of sexbots but no description of their function; Murderbot is offered sex parts, but rejects them, as it’s completely uninterested in sex and always fast-forwards through the sexy bits in the soapies it watches; some swears — f-words, s-words… played for laughs mostly. Lots of good qualities, like loyalty, friendship, and the urge to protect the innocent.

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Wells, M. (2018). Artificial condition. Tor Books.

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