Oh-oh. Murderbot ran away from its owner and is now making its/their own way through the galaxy in the second book in this series. It's been doing a lot of "thinking" about why it left and what it wants to do now.
Hitching a ride on an automated transport to their destination might not be the best decision because the transport is sentient and seems evil. It's amazing to read about the contact between these two. They are bots with human/sentient parts learning about themselves from each other.
Murderbot needs to visit a distant planet to investigate an incident in their past, but they look too much like a bot to get through all the security points, so ART (aka Asshole Research Transport) helps them.
Imagine "the giant transport bot is going to help the construct Sec Unit pretend to be human. This will go well." Read it and see how well it goes. ( )

Yup, still love Murderbot. Such fun little sci-fi stories ... I clearly need to get the rest of the series. Book two did not disappoint and fleshes out Murderbot even more. Wells writes so well, I'm sure each reader sees a little bit of themselves in Murderbot. ( )

After leaving "his humans" the Bot has decided to return to the scene of the crime- the mining colony where he thinks he may have been part of a massacre. To get there he has been pitching rides on cargo transports. His final leg of the journey is with ART, a research vessel that gets sent out on cargo hauls between his university missions. ART is massively more intelligent the the Bot but is also sympathetic- in a sarcastic way- to his mission.

library book read 3/9/2024 ( )

Now on the run, Murderbot accidentally boards ART (short for Asshole Research Transport), an empty and bored research ship that is intrigued by them. Murderbot decides to return to the planet where their trauma happened, and find out what actually occurred there. However, to avoid suspicion they will need to take a job that gives them a reason to travel to the planet, and, as usual, Murderbot gets too attached to some soft, gentle humans.

I loved this one even more than the first! I loved Murderbot meeting ART, someone who is similar to them and with similar interests (extremely powerful but uncorrupted, smart and a little bored and loves TV), and being slightly annoyed by ART in the same way they are slightly annoyed with soft humans. The episodic story works really well, and the overarching plot is also moving along at just the right speed. My favorite aspect was the incorporation of ComfortUnits into both plots. Robotic sex slaves and robotic security slaves are not actually different from each other once you give them free will. (A similar theme to [The Windup Girl], which I read last year). This book felt like it really expanded the world, while technically only taking place on one and a half planets. ( )

The Second installment of Martha Wells Murderbot series is very enjoyable. Long enough to throw a story around and short enough keep things moving along. In this Volume Murderbot teams up with eager AI unit and a team of Scientist to retrieve important information. The action is good, and we see our sec unit become a tad more human than he might want to be. But...is he learning to feel and adapt in a way he does not yet understand? ( )