grayestofghosts | 10 Novels #3: All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) by Martha Wells (Reply)

All Systems Red by Martha Wells is actually a reread for me (or relisten, on audio) and I decided to give it another go because I thought that it might be relevant to my next writing project. It's short and I am unsure if it's a "novel" but I'm counting it anyway. But even while reading it, I felt like there wasn't a lot of meat to it, which is unfortunate. There was definitely the scaffolding of the intrigue plot, which I guess to me took secondary importance. There was the plot of Murderbot's development as a, person, I suppose? Which is definitely the main plot. However it felt weird that a huge emphasis on Murderbot's media consumption as being a part of its relateability, and yet we are starved for details on this media except that it's a soap opera and there are certain stereotypes present. We get a scrap of the actual plot like, once. What Murderbot actually enjoys about these serials is very vague despite their overwhelming importance to it. And to me, that's just... very odd. I would almost expect the soap opera plot to be like a tertiary plot, for how much of a motivator it is for Murderbot. As it is, it mostly feels like "trust me bro."

Then again, there are tons of books in this series. Maybe the actual serial content gets fleshed out later. I don't know. Don't show your entire hand right away, I guess?