Rogue Protocol

I liked how this book progressed and evolved. Murderbot is still itself but you can see it learning more and trying to be less like a Secbot, even though that's impossible. But the story has a great plot and characters, a few twists, and some suspense that kept me reading through the end. Nice continuation of the story!

While the previous book in The Murderbot Diaries focused a lot on dialogue, here there is a good mix of action and emotion, with another new bot/human relationship dynamic that added more to the world building.

The Murderbot story is interesting, the plot with GrayCris seems like it's going somewhere, but these past two books feel like a setup for the fourth book in a way that left both feeling incomplete. Murderbot still hasn't grown to like humans or see anything in a different light, but readers did get more insight of it's relationship with humans from it's reactions to Miki's relationship with it's leader.

Repetitive plots aside, I'm hoping that the fourth book will bring out new aspects of Murderbot as a character, shed some light on it's past, and take those final steps into the emotional impact of Murderbot's story.

3/5 for the humor, the fun action, the surface-level side characters, and the fast pace adventure I've come to really enjoy in Wells writing.

The penultimate Murderbot novella is like a blockbuster action movie compared to the previous book. There's almost non-stop action, lots of things blowing up, with lots of combat bots and the surprisingly charming Miki, a human-style bot who befriends Murderbot. Sounds confusing? Yeah, probably is, because you can't read this stand-alone. You have to read the other two novellas to make any sense of it. It was highly enjoyable again, though not as captivating as the previous installment. On to the final novella now!