Reviews with content warning for Trafficking - Fugitive Telemetry

Finally finished the series! I can't believe I read the last 2 books out of order 😭
Another great book in an amazing series. Not only do I love Murderbot, but I always love all the new characters. Martha Wells you are a god amongst men 🙇‍♀️

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katebella's review against another edition

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adventurous funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix

3.75

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pacifickat's review

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adventurous funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

True crime Murderbot! What's not to love?

I found this installment to be quite a bit cozier than the rest of the series, with Murderbot realizing it wouldn't mind trying its hand at detective sleuthing closer to home. The tonal shift between Network Effect and Fugitive Telemetry is a little jarring though, and it felt a bit odd to shift from interplanetary adventures to a locked-room mystery on Preservation. Even so, I still thoroughly enjoyed spending more time in this series.

Murderbot still delivers in snark and darkly humorous internal dialogue:

"I didn't need as much air as humans did, but I needed some, and it was really cold out there in the colony ship's shadow. This meant that if the Life Tender failed, it would take me longer to die, so I'd have longer to feel dumb about it than a human would."

And in between the humor and action sequences, Murderbot still manages to deliver its signature surprising doses of introspective self-awareness:

"That plan was easier. Plus, one hundred percent less murdery. I liked it better. Huh. I liked it better because it wasn't a Combat Unit plan, or actually a plan that humans would come up with for Combat Units. Sneaking the endangered humans off the ship to safety and then leaving the hostiles for someone else to deal with, that was a Sec Unit plan. That was what we were really designed for, despite how the Company and every other Corporate used us. The point was to retrieve the clients alive and fuck everything else. Maybe I had been waiting too long for GrayCris to come along and try to kill us all. I was thinking like a Combat Unit, or, for fucks sake, like a combat bot."

As it turns out, existing in survival mode long term is not good for anyone, bot-human constructs included.

Unfortunately, the cover gave away the mystery of whodunit.

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cfitz13's review

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adventurous funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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wickedgrumpy's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

This one was a bit of a murder mystery/whodunnit/almost a buddy cop moment and I’m not mad about it at all. I don’t think it moved the major overarching story much but it did develop more of the interpersonal relationships that Murderbot has been, let’s say, cultivating in a quasi-antagonistic manner.

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arinheck's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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booking_along's review

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adventurous informative mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

After the disappointing read that was network effect, I have to say I went into this with extremely low expectations.

So I don’t know if that was what made this one of the better books in this series or if the author needed to come back to novellas and that worked.

The plot in this was different and interesting and unpredictable (especially compared to the previous books) and I enjoyed that s lot.

Also murderbot was back to its snarky ways in this one, so that was fun too.

I don’t know if the pacing in this was actually better than in network effect or if the noticeable lack of length (160 pages compared to the 350 pages of network effect) just made the pacing better, but this didn’t drag, had a nice fast pacing and a good mixture of investigation and action.

This was fun and entertaining and made me enjoy the series again, which yes repeating myself again, I didn’t expect after that last book at all.

Well done, Martha wells! Let’s hope the next one will be a bit different and a similar pacing ad well, so that it is kept interesting and more unique and makes this sierra worth while to read just like this novella did!

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indeedithappens's review against another edition

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adventurous lighthearted tense fast-paced

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

3.75

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