Network Effect

I am LOVING this series, and this novel was no exception.

With all the inner monologue and 4th-wall breaking (and the asynchronous HelpMe.file insertions), I keep thinking "how could this be rendered in video?" (Except I didn't think "render" in my head, because holy cow, is it pretentious.)

And my conclusion is: it would be tough, and very few could do it. I'd love to see it done well, but 99% of book-based video is so "lossy", to appropriate a criticism of JPEG as compared to GIF. ("Lossy" meaning all those delicate plot and character nuances are lost.)

This series gets more addicting with each installment. The first four books were almost too short, and reading this one felt like I was finally really getting to dig in to the world of Murderbot. Consider me thoroughly hooked!

Hugo Best Novel 2021, and I can kind of see why. The Murderbot stories do not normally speak to me, but this one was actually gripping and had a bunch of interesting turns. The people still feel somehow wrong, but the scifi story here works.

Enjoyable, but I got bogged down in the middle for a good while: I suspect I prefer this kind of story at novella length.