Book Review: System Collapse by Martha Wells

• Title: System Collapse
• Author: Martha Wells
• Year: 2023
• Type: Fiction

While I did like this one, of all the Murderbot books so far, this is the one I enjoyed reading the least.

First of all, it jumped directly back into the action, as though it and Network Effect were intended to be a single work. The problem with that is, it’s been three years since I read Network Effect and I only vaguely recall what happened in it. This made it very difficult for me to follow a lot of this book. Should I have re-read Network Effect first? Maybe, but I don’t think a book should assume that readers have recently read the prior work. It feels like a bad bit of reader experience.

Also, this book felt like it was non-stop action action action. There was no time to pause and sit with what’s going on with our protagonist. There was inner dialog—and banter with ART—but it was primarily operational. Considering I felt untethered from the story from the very start, having it set an unrelenting pace for the remainder of the work didn’t endear it to me.