EXIT STRATEGY, the (supposed) series finale so good that it got sequels. Murderbot finds out that its actions have caused trouble for the humans that made its quest possible in the first place, and heads back to help them.

I love Murderbot, its rapport with the various humans is complex and interesting, it was nice to see Dr. Mensah again. The narration is great, the world-building continues to build incrementally in a way that gives everything you need to know for this volume (and no more), but the whole picture is one of a complex economy of corporations, planets, and political entities.

The combination of planning for action and then carrying it out has been well-handled and exciting all series, but it really shines here. Murderbot explains its plans, then how it has to adjust, whether it goes this idea from a serial, how things go wrong, how its trying to fix it. I love the detail, it's at just the right level because it says the shape of what it's accomplishing (or attempting) but doesn't get overly technical. It makes it feel like a lived-in world, where Murderbot knows exactly what its doing and how to accomplish it with its tools, but doesn't bog down the narration with jargon. Something about the way that this character who canonically loves fiction comments when it got the idea for its current plan from its favorite show... it's really relatable and I love it.

It looks like this was intended (or at least marketed) as the final book in the series. You may note that there are more than four books, so that didn't stick. It wraps up a lot of things left hanging from earlier in the series, most notably by returning to the humans from ALL SYSTEMS RED. The main storyline (help the humans with their immediate problem) is pretty self-contained, but the reasons for Murderbot to care about these particular humans enough to seek them out and help them was set up in the previous books. The immediate threat is resolved here, but it really was introduced earlier in the series, so this very much is trying to be the conclusion of (this stage of) the saga, rather than its own thing. When evaluated based on it being intended as the final book, it wraps up a lot of stuff, all the way back to the first book, and it does feel mostly finished. However, it does leave things that could be addressed later, like, what is Murderbot going to do with the rest of its existence? This would have been a fine place to stop, narratively, but I'm glad this isn't the last I'll read of Murderbot. The main character is the same and its voice is pretty consistent, there have been incremental changes in how it things about certain things (mostly how it thinks of humans and of itself in relation to them), but the changes aren't huge enough for it to feel like a different character altogether. If someone started here without reading the rest of the series I don't think it would go well. This was meant to be the series finale and the emotional crux of it is the question about how Murderbot will relate to the humans from ALL SYSTEMS RED and what its place is with them. The action bits are a rescue, and that would make sense, but a lot of the catharsis would be missing if someone hadn't read the other books.  

Since this isn't actually the last book I'm going to read more Murderbot. This series is really great so far and I hope that continues.

This was just okay. The early parts dragged, in the end it was pretty good but not fantastic. A lot of language was quippy but it just felt off. It was smarmy, showing off how clever it is, but it didn’t have a ton to say beyond its own cleverness. It spent entirely too long hinting at a word or phrase that people weren’t quite understanding, and by the time the word was said in a way that made it discernible, I had spent long enough being annoyed at the running gag that I didn’t care that I got the answer. It’s the very first book published in the series, and it’s probably skippable. It does conclusively establish the pretty cool shape of the world that was explained at the very beginning, and is reiterated throughout the series, so there’s that at least. I like the dragon bits, but also I just like dragons.

I've read other books in the series so I know I like where they end up, but this definitely isn't up to that level since it's the first one.

UNWIND is a dystopian future where abortion is outlawed but teenagers can be "unwound", a state which is distinct from death in ways that are legalistic, technical, and horrifying.

I liked and I'm looking forward to how the sequels (hopefully) develop and complicate the world. UNWIND has a specific and pretty interesting plot, but narratively it does the heavy lifting of a kind of tour, showing all the different facets of existence for someone impacted by the unwinding, the ways that this deeply flawed plan has cracked and broken the people under it. The main characters are slated to be unwound, some willingly and some not, but the mix of perspectives combine to show just how fucked up the whole system is. Secondary characters get a few chapters and even minor characters might get one to show how everything in their world is bent by this paradigm. 

In a book meant for teens, it's especially poignant that since Unwinds are always children the majority of recipients of their organs will be adults. This sets up a paradigm where the old are preying on the young in a visceral way. Page counts are lower in YA, and part of what makes this world so immersive are the little things. Even something as simple as recipients continually referring to the donated organs and body parts as if they don't belong to them, they belong to the person who was unwound, it creates this sense of disassociation. There's a character who received a lung and consistently draws a distinction between himself and this lung that's in his body but isn't his, it belongs to some other kid who was unwound. This distinction is one of horde of tiny details in how everyone is committed to the idea that the unwound are that, unwound, a state that is somehow distinct from state-sanctioned murder plus organ donation on the basis that a bunch of people said so and everyone plays along. 

THE COLLAPSING EMPIRE is a quippy sci-fi epic about the end of an era and the pivot from archaic relevance to necessity as the interstellar Flow between planets collapses.

All the characters were quippy and witty in this way that started to make them all feel the same. The overall effect was to make it so Cardenia was the only one who actually stood out, but that’s mostly because she’s new to her position, out of her depth, and knows it. Everyone had schemes and machinations that they were totally sure would definitely work out well for them. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t, but their smug self-confidence was frustrating when it was coming from every character at once. I will admit that there a few characters who are so insufferable that I might enjoy watching their downfall in later books, but I’ll be totally fine if I don’t read any more of this series. 

The Emperox's family and various places have Chinese names and, as far as I can tell as a non-Chinese person, that's the extent of it. They could have been completely made-up sci-fi names and it would have the same effect on the plot and characters. I mention it because there's a trend of borrowing Asian aesthetics in sci-fi and elsewhere without actually having it matter to the story, and this seems to be yet another in that vein. It actually made it harder for me to track what was going on because every time they said something was happening in Xi'an I had to remember they meant a place not on Earth. 

There's one queer character, I'll get to her in a minute. There are, however, several characters commenting on how being interested in a same-sex relationship would be totally fine... it's just not them. This is most memorable with the Emperox, who is being pressured into marriage with a guy but the political stuff could be equally satisfied if she married his sister... alas she's not gay and she doesn't like the guy so she has to figure out another solution. That she doesn't like the sister either is true but not nearly as relevant in the framing.

It felt abrupt in several places, using surprising content (whether sexual or violent) for shock value. There’s a character who is everything I typically dislike about a classic male captain who is self-important and uses sex to control his crew and manipulate power dynamics… except she’s a woman. It turns out I dislike this kind of character no matter what their gender and I found her to be off-putting. She wields sex in a way that likely isn’t technically rape, and isn’t presented as rape in the text, but also doesn’t feel like the other parties are enthusiastically consenting. "Likely isn't technically rape" is not a sentence I like as an accurate description of a scene, since it indicates that the text has allowed to be ambiguous something that shouldn't be since sex and sexual assault clearly aren't intended to be main themes. It wasn’t graphic, but it was consistent, feeling like for every X pages of conversation she had to fuck someone. I appreciate the sex-positive atmosphere, but it cemented her in my brain as “captain who fucks”, and made her less interesting overall. It didn’t help at all that her introduction is mid-fuck with a subordinate who has basically no dialogue and may as well have been a sex toy for all they added to the scene, as all the conversation was between the captain and someone who entered the room to speak with her. I don’t mean “subordinate” in a sub/dom sense, I mean that she is fucking a crew member over whom she has a whole lot of power as the captain. She's also one of two queer characters, since later in the book she's confined and fucks the woman guarding her. "Asshole captain who fucks regardless of gender" certainly is queer rep, and in a context where she's just one of many queer characters that could feel more okay, but instead it feels like she's fitting the biphobic stereotype where liking more than one gender is equated with extreme promiscuity. 

There's a reveal that could have been really cool if the same information had been presented in a different order. Someone has a theory that's (so far) correct, and someone else is incorrect. By the time we learn what the incorrect person thinks they're already established as an odious person and there's no emotional weight to finding out they were wrong. It explains their earlier actions, but otherwise is strange and feels pointless. I think it would have been more interesting to have them presented earlier as competing theories and have it unknown who was right until much later. Instead they're just wrong, and uninteresting in the process.

“Today I Am Paul” is a poignant and thought-provoking portrayal of a robotic future for elder care and cognitive dissonance caused by trying to be everything to everyone. Medical Care Android BRKCX-01932-217JH-98662 ponders interactions of programming and identity.

I like the strange specificity of the android's attention to details, the layers of consciousness as it checks in with its medical logs but also performs the social niceties, particularly when it already knows what Mildred ate but still asks her how her breakfast was. I appreciate the dynamic with Anna, how they trade off and Anna interacts as if she was the one who visited when she speaks to Mildred about the garden.

The commentary about the inverse journeys of Mildred and Millie is very subtle but poignant, the characterization is very complex for such a short story.

This story deals with death, memory loss, and cognitive decline. It does so in a very conscientious and tender way, but it doesn't shy away from the implications of these topics. It's a very quick read, and well worth it if you have the 15-20 minutes to spare.

FUGITIVE TELEMETRY finds Murderbot as murder-detective, trying to figure out why a dead human is dead on Preservation Station, all while following a bunch of human rules.

I like procedurals and this is one, of a sort. It certainly fits the "gruff detective who isn't with the investigating body but still has to begrudgingly work with them and sometimes is under suspicion" classic set of tropes... except it's Murderbot on a station trying to solve the murder. If you like Murderbot and solving mysteries, you'll love this, I sure did.

This continues, generally speaking, the relationships and definitely-not-friendships that have been developing throughout the series so far. The main storyline starts here and wasn't present previously, and, as a murder mystery, there's absolutely a major thing that's introduced and resolved in this volume. I doubt it'll be the last book in the series, and it has things that the last book left open but this doesn't close off, so at minimum those could get picked up by later books. Plus, generally speaking, I'm up to read about whatever Murderbot decides to wander around and do. The MC is still Murderbot and its voice is consistent, though its thoughts are slowly changing in how it thinks about specific humans and groups of humans. This would mostly make sense if someone picked it up at random and didn't know about the rest of the series. The necessary context is present and the main plot is contained in this volume. 

This has murder, bots, and Murderbot, I'm happy and ready for the next book!

I was having trouble following the story across points in time, as the narrators didn't feel different enough to be distinctive. The perspectives are labeled at the start of each chapter, but I felt adrift, bored, and uninterested. 

THE EMPRESS OF SALT AND FORTUNE unwinds layers of grief and years of confinement amidst luxury into the willing ears of a Cleric sent to record all they can.

The layering of the framing narrative and the tale being told made this feel like it has the scope of a much larger novel while keeping the intimacy of a personal story told by one person to another over an ultimately brief period of time. I loved it and I'm eager to read more in this series.

WENDY, DARLING is a retelling which takes the original’s commentary on early 1900’s England’s sexist expectations for women and girls and leans into them, examining and contextualizing them rather than merely reproducing them. 

It's tempting to dismiss this version of Wendy as passive, inactive. Not very many things actually happen in one sense, and she spends most of the book not doing things, or talking in circles around the things she did as a child in Neverland long ago. But that rumination, that early passivity is the point, and it forms a sharp contrast with the last quarter of the book where she leaves to rescue her daughter, Jane, stolen by Peter nearly as soon as the book begins. It's about the time stolen from her by sexism and institutionalization, the agency take from her by men who dismissed her as a girl then as a woman, and the way that Peter in his ageless boyhood is an echo and a concentration of the forces that twist every statement of Wendy's into a way she must have been female and therefore mistaken. Wendy doesn't do much in an action sense but she makes the most of every moment she can, talking with Mary as they sew secret pockets into their clothing, plotting ways to get back at her tormenters in the institution. 

Jane's sections feel more robust than the flashbacks to Wendy's time in Neverland, but they're tied together to illustrate Peter's efforts to treat Jane as literally interchangeable with her mother, brought there to be his "mother". He needs her to protect him and make it all better, but to never stand up or point out that his treatment of the other boys (and everyone on the island) oscillates from active abuse to petulant neglect. Because of adult Wendy's thoughts about her daughter we have more context for what Peter is trying to strip away from Jane, it's easier to notice what he's removing. 

The narrative treatment of Mary White Dog in England and Tiger Lily in Neverland attempts to address some of the harm of the original by grounding Indigenous people as real with specific tribes and origins, not just something from Peter's imagination, while also showing how harmful it was to Tiger Lily and the rest of her tribe to be trapped by his whims on the island, discarded when he grew wrathful or bored. There's a contrast drawn between Mary knowing the tribe she's from while having an awareness of how much knowledge she lost by being removed from her homeland, versus how little Tiger Lily can remember since she's trapped in Neverland. Tiger Lily doesn't remember any other name for her tribe. Given Peter's penchant for renaming people, it's probable that "Tiger Lily" isn't even her original name in this version, though it's all we get.