Palate Cleansing Reads: The Murderbot Diaries

Beth

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I think I’ve seen sixty-two tweets just this week from folks complaining that they are in a severe book slump. Everything in their TBR pile looks like a re-read of Anna Karenina: unnecessary, a slog, not as hot as you want it to be.

But I have the solution. No matter your favorite genre, no matter your preferred reading strategy, no matter your beach behavior: I have the books to cleanse your palate, bump up your summer reading and get you out of that slump.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

What: Imagine a very violent android-esque AI robot who introduces itself by letting the reader know that it no longer has to do what its client tells it to, but it will – for appearances – and because perhaps, in between downtime watching its favorite media, it is thinking existentially.

Hmm? It’s a six-book sci-fi series about a rogue security droid who looks human but doesn’t know how to act it, but also has large guns in its forearms, and for some reason, IT FEELS THINGS.

But … Trust me. It calls itself Murderbot. It can barely regulate its emotions. It loves binge-watching hours and hours of human-produced media (like your mammaw watching “her stories”). And it consistently finds itself saving the humans around it, while it isn’t making best friends with sentient spaceships.

So. The Murderbot Diaries are the perfect palate cleanser because you can expect nothing like whatever your library haul has in store for you. There are no WWII dramas about lonely sisters. There are no breeches or petticoats. There’s no sex: except for the kind that Murderbot fast forwards when it streams media. But what there IS is a fascinating character study of hilarity, human behavior (from a non-human who definitely doesn’t want to be close to them) social anxiety and self-recrimination. It’s just so delightful!

Also, follow @MurderBotBot on Twitter to get a fun dose of MurderBot in your timeline every day.