All Systems Red - Martha Wells

⭐ 9.5/10

(Originally written by Magdalene)

This is the free ebook all the people who participated in the Tor.com trivia night received, which I was very excited about because I'd heard great things. I finally actually read it, and it was so good!

It's a novella, just over 100 pages, so it gets going really quickly. The main character is a self-aware Security Unit robot, who calls itself MurderBot (it's gender- and sex-less). It has hacked its module so that it doesn't actually have to follow any rules or orders. It hates talking to people and all it really wants to do is have time to itself to watch all of the episodes of TV it has saved. But it does its job with as little work as possible, and its new clients are a group of scientists doing a survey of a new planet. But several things don't seem right and things are getting dangerous, and ugh, MurderBot is starting to care about its clients a little, so annoying!

I love MurderBot so much. It's awkward and anxious and only likes TV, but despite its name it maybe cares a little bit on the inside. The story itself is pretty exciting and fast-paced, but I was mostly there for MurderBot's awkward interactions with people and sarcastic comments. I will 100% be reading more of the novellas in the series to hang out with MurderBot some more.