Book Review: Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4) by Martha Wells
Cover art by Jaime Jones
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Series: The Murderbot Diaries (Book #4)
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 150 pages (Kindle Edition)
Word count: 32,400 words
Published: 2nd October 2018 by Tordotcom
Exit Strategy concluded the first story arc of The Murderbot Diaries with another action-packed narrative.
“I was having an emotion, and I hate that.”
I had a feeling about this since I started All Systems Red. But with Exit Strategy, there’s no more denying that the first four novellas work as a connecting episodic story. What I liked most about Exit Strategy is the return of the familiar characters from All Systems Red. Murderbot also has grown as a character. It has pretty much acknowledged that it, somehow, has an emotion. And Murderbot cares about Mensah and the characters it met from the previous three books, including ART and Miki. This works in favor of the narrative for me. Seeing Murderbot juggle with the feeling of becoming more human was great. At the same time, it made things easier for me to care about Murderbot and its determination to execute the rescue mission in Exit Strategy.
“So the plan wasn’t a clusterfuck, it was just circling the clusterfuck target zone, getting ready to come in for a landing.”
Concerning the plot and pacing, Exit Strategy has a similar pacing and story structure to Rogue Protocol. As I mentioned in my review of that book, if you have read the first two books, you will more or less know what you are getting into continuing with the series. That situation doesn’t change here. It’s such a cliche to say this, but I believe the length of the novellas actually decreases the quality and satisfaction of reading the first four titles in The Murderbot Diaries series. Although they are all enjoyable and–because of the short length–great to be treated as a palate cleanser between your big fantasy and sci-fi books reading, I feel the world-building and characterizations in each book would’ve benefitted more from the extra pages. The actions in Exit Strategy were fun, but without that crucial emotional investment, it can get a bit stale.
“Possibly I was overthinking this. I do that; it’s the anxiety that comes with being a part-organic murderbot. The upside was paranoid attention to detail. The downside was also paranoid attention to detail.”
I am excited about reading Network Effect, the first full-length novel in The Murderbot Diaries series. I am still giving Exit Strategy the same rating I gave to the previous three books in the series. I think each of the four novellas remains consistently good, as far as storytelling quality goes, but each book has its own respective charm. ART in Artifical Condition and Miki in Rogue Protocol, for example. That said, Exit Strategy is my favorite of the first four novellas in the series. While it is true it has concluded the first story arc of the series, I have a good feeling from the trajectory of the series so far that Network Effect will be where the “main story” actually begins. For the first time in the series, I feel relatively excited about reading the next installment.
“I don’t want to be human.”
Dr. Mensah said, “That’s not an attitude a lot of humans are going to understand. We tend to think that because a bot or a construct looks human, its ultimate goal would be to become human.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
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