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A review by eiion
Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
4.25
I love this series. I genuinely just adore every moment of it. MurderBot as a character is great, and the way we see them grow, learn, and change throughout the series has such a special place in my heart. That being said, I don't think this was the strongest installment.
Fugitive Telemetry actually takes place before Network Effect, back on Preservation, despite being published afterwards. So if you're reading in published order (like I was), this is sort of a step back from what we did on Network Effect, and I think that that is the biggest downfall of this book and where it sits in the series. If I had read this before Network Effect, it probably would have been rated just a little bit higher.
The story itself was fun, I have no issues with what we were given and I did like seeing MurderBot interacting with the humans of Preservation and taking on a role that it had never really encountered before: detective for a murder mystery. But it just felt a little unnecessary. After Network Effect, I was itching to go forwards, to see what would happen with ART's crew and the new era of MurderBot. And to go backwards made this book feel more like filler than anything else. It introduced characters and an organization that didn't feel super important because... well, I've read what comes next in MurderBot's life, and they're not a part of it! It didn't add to the overall story, because the plot had already progressed beyond that point. Again: If I had read them in chronological order, this issue would be nonexistent, but I didn't know, so published order it was.
This one was much more of a standalone because of the things mentioned above, and was still a very entertaining read, even if it killed some of the momentum I had for the series just because it was placed in a weird order. If you haven't read the series yet, you 100% should, but make sure you READ THIS BOOK AS NUMBER 5!
A fun little adventure in the MurderBot universe and, even if I wished I had read it in a different order, it was a nice breather following the chunky book that was Network Effect.
Fugitive Telemetry actually takes place before Network Effect, back on Preservation, despite being published afterwards. So if you're reading in published order (like I was), this is sort of a step back from what we did on Network Effect, and I think that that is the biggest downfall of this book and where it sits in the series. If I had read this before Network Effect, it probably would have been rated just a little bit higher.
The story itself was fun, I have no issues with what we were given and I did like seeing MurderBot interacting with the humans of Preservation and taking on a role that it had never really encountered before: detective for a murder mystery. But it just felt a little unnecessary. After Network Effect, I was itching to go forwards, to see what would happen with ART's crew and the new era of MurderBot. And to go backwards made this book feel more like filler than anything else. It introduced characters and an organization that didn't feel super important because... well, I've read what comes next in MurderBot's life, and they're not a part of it! It didn't add to the overall story, because the plot had already progressed beyond that point. Again: If I had read them in chronological order, this issue would be nonexistent, but I didn't know, so published order it was.
This one was much more of a standalone because of the things mentioned above, and was still a very entertaining read, even if it killed some of the momentum I had for the series just because it was placed in a weird order. If you haven't read the series yet, you 100% should, but make sure you READ THIS BOOK AS NUMBER 5!
A fun little adventure in the MurderBot universe and, even if I wished I had read it in a different order, it was a nice breather following the chunky book that was Network Effect.