I tried to be mindful when I was listening to this & not just binging it in my stream of near constant distractions (the antithesis of the objective of the book). After a couple essays left me arguing instead of introspecting, I started to think about DNFing, but I decided to polish it off over MarioKart & morning paperwork today. It was presented well, & the narration was great. Some musings (writing/play)I will likely continue to reflect on. 

In most Kay books the crime solving tech &villains are the focus. This had meaningful character interactions (❤️sometimes there are 0) but she consistently leaves huge emotional conflicts off the page &there’s a big 1 here. 

 

I cannot believe she named the villain Edgar Allen Pogue. He has a (fake) history with the characters as if we would not remember an Edgar Allen Pogue. PC, you have to leave these breadcrumbs. TLP/Lucy’s plot becomes asinine. The ending fizzles out.

I liked this, Murderbot is definitely A Mood. It poses the question ever present in the genre since I, Robot; when does artificial intelligence become intelligent life? But Murderbot might not be ready for peopling. It’s really taking time away from their entertainment streaming time.

Definitely more about the vibes than the story itself. It seems to go out of its way to tick off all the YA tropes. And while it repeatedly reminds you that things are high stakes the MC seems so flippant that it loses any tension. The events leading up to the ending came about very conveniently.

The beginning started off superbly & there’s a reason it was stronger than the 2nd half, in 2008 when the MCU started it took awhile for the hype to build & social media was not what it is so the earlier stories were newer to me than the dispute over Spider-Man, why James Gunn was fired, review bombing of Captain Marvel etc. if you follow Marvel in any capacity, you probably know most of this. It will  likely hold up as a chronicle of events once we are further away from these debacles but it ends at a meaningless point (Quantumania).

This series deserves more hype. I would read 50 of these. 

YA Romcom would be at the bottom of my list of preferred genres, but I went into this optimistically &was pleasantly surprised. Sort of an enemies to friends to lovers story as ex-bestfriends reunite. Super cute. Good banter. It was slow enough to maintain some tension without becoming too repetitive. Lovable characters with mental health rep in full force.