A review by maeverose
All Systems Red by Martha Wells

adventurous dark funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

My possible adhd made it really difficult to focus while reading this. It took me a while to get through because I had to re read things over and over for them to stick. I’m pretty sure that was just a me thing and not a problem with the book.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Literally halfway into the first chapter I already loved Murderbot, and grew to love it even more as the story went on. I related to it’s social discomfort a lot lol (Lot’s of parallels to autism, I felt like). I liked the humor, I actually laughed out loud several times. I really liked the worldbuilding and the way things were subtly explained to the reader without feeling like they were being explained. I liked the human characters (especially Mensah) but I feel like the only character that was fully fleshed out was Murderbot. It is a novella so of course with that many characters not all of them are gonna get the same amount of focus but I do wish they were a little more developed. Maybe if there had been a smaller cast of characters that would’ve been better. I liked the mystery at first but was a little unsatisfied with it in the end. 

I’m still going to go check out the second book from my library right away.

My feelings about the mystery reveal (major spoilers):

I didn’t love the reveal that GrayCris was just killing people because they found something that was super valuable. I kinda hoped it would’ve been something more interesting, that feels so.. boring? I also don’t know that I buy anyone going that far for money, especially because neither DeltFall nor PreservationAux knew about the remnants when they were killed/pursued, so it wasn’t like they were a current threat to GrayCris’s future fortune. I think it would’ve been cool if it took more of a horror approach and had aliens coming after them or something lol. But this isn’t marketed as horror so obviously I can’t really be mad it didn’t go that route.. and to be fair the humor would’ve felt out of place then... apparently I don’t know what I want

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gun violence, Violence, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Mass/school shootings

Minor: Cursing, Slavery, Forced institutionalization, and Blood

There is some implied gore, but never any super explicit descriptions. I really don’t like gore and never at any point was grossed out but if you’re super sensitive to that kind of thing I’d still be cautious.