Book Review: "Fugitive Telemetry" by Martha Wells

 

 5/5 stars 

*Spoiler alert!*

“I had archives of everything that had happened since I hacked my governor module, but I hadn’t had as much relevant experience in that time. But what I did have were thousands of hours of category mystery media, so I had a lot of theoretical knowledge that was possibly anywhere from 60 to 70 percent inaccurate shit.” 

I see that there are only seven books in this series, and I’ve burned almost through them all in less than half a year. (Why am I like this?!) I love the “Murderbot Diaries” books, and Fugitive Telemetry is no different in this regard. We return to the usual novella-length, but that doesn’t take away from it at all. 

Dr. Mensah ropes in Murderbot to an investigation with a security officer they don’t like much, Indah, when a corpse is found in the Preservation Station mall.

It’s unusual for Preservation, where there is very little crime, aside from largely fight-related or intoxication-related incidents.  

Murderbot, ever the detective, notices signs of foul play quickly. I really enjoy their sarcastic inner monologue as they analyze the crime scene. Always elegant, our Murderbot.  

“I guess if you were really determined, you could find a way to get yourself killed by exposing the power connectors under the panels and shielding and, I don’t know, licking them or something, but this dead human clearly hadn’t.” 

Soon, the weird death becomes part of a much larger picture involving another secret corporate operation to recover some escaped indentured workers—aka slaves—and their families. And no, it’s not GrayCris, it’s just another slimy corporation trying to hide the fact that they have slaves working their mining sites. Par for the course.  

I think it’s not unrealistic to extrapolate into humanity’s potentially space-faring future and see the same patterns of corporate malfeasance, slavery, and wealth inequality that we’re dealing with presently and have dealt with since the founding of America.  

Murderbot, say what you want about them, but they hate injustice when they see it, especially humans not in control of their own destinies, as Murderbot once was under the thumb of their governor module. It becomes their mission to rescue all the refugees when there is suddenly a hard deadline of how long people can survive in a cargo container not meant to hold people.

    

“Huh. I liked it better because it wasn’t a CombatUnit plan, or actually a plan that humans would come up with for CombatUnits. Sneaking the endangered humans off the ship to safety and then leaving the hostiles for someone else to deal with, that was a SecUnit plan, that was what we were really designed for, despite how the company and every other corporate used us. The point was to retrieve the clients alive and fuck everything else. Maybe I’d been waiting too long for GrayCris to show up and try to kill us all. I was thinking like a CombatUnit, or, for fuck’s sake, like a CombatBot.” 

Character. Growth.

 

I think both Murderbot and Dr. Mensah have a poignant parallel journey where they both must overcome their collective trauma from all the GrayCris assassination attempts, and to not let fear and paranoia dictate how they decide to live their lives. To live by their principles and not let their fear govern them. Of course, they’re still going to feel fear, because they’re alive, and they want to keep living not only for themselves, but the people they care about.  

That journey is what made me really love Fugitive Telemetry. Not only the echoes of our present in Murderbot’s universe, but the demonstrable character growth we see in our beloved characters.  

I am moving on eagerly to book seven, System Collapse, and already grieving the massive story hangover I will have once I have finished it. (I’ll probably have to dig into the short stories to ease my grief.) 

What a fantastic universe we’ve gotten to know in the “Murderbot Diaries.” 

Happy reading! 

--BookOwl