A review by pacifickat
Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

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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