Back to novella length for Murderbot, a nice compact mystery. Murderbot is currently adjusting to Preservation, a place where humans and bots live alongside one another and bots are granted a certain amount of autonomy and free will when sponsored by humans; however, the people of Preservation (particularly the security personnel) are understandably unenthused about granting those freedoms to an armed and (presumably) dangerous security enforcement bot. Murderbot isn’t terribly interested in trying to win them over, either, or in being some human’s pet bot. However, when a dead body turns up, both Security and Murderbot are interested in finding the killer; it’s great to see them try to combine their resources and work together. Murderbot’s narration is priceless as usual; I love how piercingly observant it is of other humans, set against how determinedly it refuses to analyze its own reactions.
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