I love this series, I love Murderbot, and I am in absolute fits and giggles with Platform Decay for some reason. Perhaps it is the active giddiness of being up to date with this series and the excitement of reading a new novel upon its release. Maybe it is simply because this series is so near and dear to my heart, and seeing it continue to evolve and expand is a balm to my soul and a much-needed reprieve from the intense workload I am juggling. Either way, Platform Decay has been such a blessing and a pleasant, amusing, wonderful break into the sci-fi world within the Murderbot Diaries.

Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good. After volunteering to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realises that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn’t know. Including human children. Ugh. This may well call for… eye contact! (Emotion check: Oh, for f—)

As you can tell, Murderbot is a truly one-of-a-kind character, with wit and anxiousness and too many emotions for it to rightfully handle, even with its new mental health data pack installed. Seeing Murderbot’s progression throughout the series and the continued explorations of its experiences, expectations, and emotions make for such entertaining and enlightening scenes. Add in the many characters we have seen interact and work alongside Murderbot in the past, and you get such a snarky, sensitive being just trying to get by without bloodshed, murdered clients, and any more fluid leaving its body than already has been shed.

Platform Decay feels a bit like Exit Strategy in the structure and context of Murderbot going in to save hostages and bring them back out to safety amidst a whirlwind action-packed sequences of escapes, humans making bad decisions, robots trying to communicate with it, but this time we also have Murderbot’s reluctant check-ins with its emotional state and a few more layers of political and personal stakes to stoke the fire. Seeing how Murderbot processes it all and the many times it second guesses itself, is forced to distract itself from lashing out by playing an episode of Sanctuary Moon, or recalls interactions and dialogue with others that contrasts or reinforces the situation at hand make for such engaging reading.

Platform Decay is so visually immersive, too. The number of times I could picture the setting, from the strangely desert-like and mountainous terrain Murderbot is met with, the many flora that serve as jungle-like foliage in the common spaces, and the various tech and bots that give an alien contrast to the already manufactured natural aesthetic. It is such a visual book. The series has been stunning visually overall, but Platform Decay is one of the books that has made me think about it so intently.

I highly recommend giving this sci-fi series a read, especially if you are looking for something that is funny, easy to read, and a perfect introduction to the science fiction genre. It is also an amazing series for those deep into space operas and epic science fiction books. Martha Wells is such an amazing writer, I need to give her other series a read to see if her sci-fi brilliance transcends genre.