Book Review: All Systems Red by Martha Wells

All Systems Red is the first of The Murderbot Diaries, a series long recommended by a good friend of mine. I finally got the chance to check it out and after the last book it was a palette cleanser in terms of being a very short, self-contained story. 

As for other novellas, I'll forgo my usual setup and just write out some of the highlights. More after the jump.

All Systems Red is a very fast read by nature of it being a novella. On paper it clocks in at 144 pages, much shorter than my usual 500+ page reads. This was a pleasant change and I was able to finish it in about three sittings. The story is also very straight forward- we follow a SecUnit, a droid that has been supplied as part of a research expedition to provide security and basic services to the team. This droid, who calls itself Murderbot, is a bit of an oddball. Hacking itself so it doesn't really have to follow orders, it just wants to be left alone to watch entertainment serials. Still, circumstances throw it together with the team and it has to work together with the most disgusting thing it can think of- humans with all their emotional baggage. Despite the tension and mystery of the plot, it's an overall lighthearted take and you can tell Murderbot does care, in its own special way.

The story ended very openly so anything could happen from here, and we didn't get much in the way of exploring the rest of this universe (partly since Murderbot just doesn't care about that) so there is also room for a lot of discovery here. I'm curious to learn more about itand see how some of the other novellas fare so I'll probably be checking them out too. I don't always review other novellas here, so this might be a one-off for the blog, but we'll see. If you're looking for a light, futuristic/space-faring sci-fi read with an unusual main character, I can recommend you check out All Systems Red.