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qrschulte's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Body horror, Cursing, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Self harm, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Moderate: Confinement and Colonisation
Minor: Pregnancy and Dysphoria
laguerrelewis's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail
stories's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The characters sing.
Murderbot is growing and maturing and navigating more than just its complex relationships with *humans* now.
We got to revisit old friends, meet new friends, enemies and acquaintances, and experience the full spectrum of emotions in an action packed mystery investigation.
Perhaps by consequence of being longer, I found Network Effect more challenging to read than the other Murderbot books, but I’d say it was still worth the effort.
Graphic: Cursing
Moderate: Violence and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Confinement, Death, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Slavery, Kidnapping, Murder, and Dysphoria
bookgirl's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
enough feelings! book thoughts. I love the various levels of consciousness and activity. It’s like having multiple screens of interesting inputs but in narrative form. I’ve never read anything like it before and it’s super entertaining, fun, and modern. A wonderful representation of how we interact with modern tech, but made more fanciful and fun and accelerated because of Murderbot’s enhanced processing abilities. Basically it’s fun to feel like you’re just as smart as murderbot, processing so many interesting inputs at once as he is. It’s like you get all the benefits and satisfaction of the analysis and hard work, without doing any of the work. I think it’s a triumph of creativity and readability!
Graphic: Blood
Moderate: Violence
Minor: Confinement, Death, Mental illness, Violence, Abandonment, Colonisation, and Classism
wilybooklover's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Torture, Violence, Blood, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Body horror, Kidnapping, and Grief
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Slavery, and Colonisation
divine529's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
This is basically a typical Murderbot story with more content and an emphasis on it's various relationships and I adored it on ever level. And I loved seeing ART again. That is all.
I'll absolutely be reading this again and I can't wait to dive into the next installment.
Graphic: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail
frantic_vampire's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Abandonment, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Body horror, Death, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Murder, Abandonment, and Injury/Injury detail
inferiorwit's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Adult/minor relationship and Slavery
hanz's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Grief
booksthatburn's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
As the first full novel in the series, Network Effect handles the transition from novella to novel beautifully. It expands the scope and feel of the characters while still keeping things connected to the earlier books. My favorite thing was the addition of new point of view characters, it was strange but cool to get perspectives other than Murderbot, especially since they have some very specific similarities while obviously being distinct characters. Murderbot itself was delightful as always, it’s really grown throughout the series in terms of relating to other entities and figuring out what it wants, slowly becoming proactive rather than reacting against what it was ordered to do before. As usual for Murderbot there’s danger, rescues and heist things, which were all great. It really feels like a longer version of a Murderbot book, which is perfect.
This doesn’t specifically wrap up anything from the previous books, but it does continue developing the definitely-not-friendship between Murderbot and Dr. Mensah, which is noteworthy given how little time they spent together this time around. The main storyline starts here and wasn’t present previously, it’s definitely its own story, with the main plot being pretty self contained. It’s not the last book, and at the end it clearly leaves something for later books to pick up as Murderbot starts to picture a life for itself and gets an unusual offer. I mentioned before that there are some additional narrators, because of plot reasons they have a lot of similarities to Murderbot, but they are differentiated in some cool ways. This would make sense if someone started here and didn’t know about the rest of the series. The first four novellas were a set telling a complete story, while this volume is pretty self contained. Everything you would need to know in order to understand what’s going on gets explained, partly because Murderbot has to provide some explanations since the other characters mostly were not around in the other books. That means that Network Effect technically could be read by itself, but if the plot description intrigues you you should definitely start with the first novella.
This is a great entry in a fun-to-read series about sentience, personhood, and self discovery in space and on various planets.
Graphic: Confinement, Gun violence, Violence, Medical content, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Body horror, Cursing, Death, Blood, Kidnapping, and Grief