Book Review: Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells (Murderbot Diaries #3)

Publisher: Tor.com
Published: August 7, 2018
Received: purchased
Read from November 14 to December 27, 2022
Synopsis from Goodreads:

SciFi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is again on a mission. The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris Corporation is floundering, and more importantly, authorities are beginning to ask more questions about where Dr. Mensah’s SecUnit is.

And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good.

Review:

Rogue Protocol is the third novella in the Murderbot Diaries series. In this one, Murderbot is investigating GrayCris and winds up helping a group of humans (and a bot) who are also investigating a terraforming facility that was run by GrayCris.

Like the last book, this one was filled with completely new characters except for Murderbot itself. I do enjoy getting a diverse look of the sorts of people that live in this universe, but I have a hard time getting invested in many of the characters because I know they'll be gone come the next book. Though part of why I don't feel closer to them might also be the way in which the story is told. Murderbot is keeping its distance from the humans in this book too. Murderbot is always doing that, but in this one, it felt like Murderbot interacted with the human characters even less than in the last book. That's just my perception though and isn't necessarily true.

Similar to how Murderbot formed a close-ish relationship with ART in the last book, it becomes closer to Miki (a bot) than any of the humans in this book, and I also found myself being drawn to Miki more than any of the human characters.

Miki challenges a lot of Murderbot's beliefs about relationships between humans and bots as Miki thinks of the humans it travels with as friends while Murderbot thinks of them as owners. Murderbot is pretty judgmental of Miki at the start and views Miki has naïve for viewing humans as friends, but Murderbot's own views are challenged by the end of the story.

I imagine this is going to continue to shape Murderbot's view of the world, including its own relationships with humans that it has or will encounter. I'm excited for that. Murderbot seeing Miki's relationship with its friends was my favorite part of this book.

Rogue Protocol was a fun book, and I enjoyed going on another adventure with Murderbot. At the same time, I'm really missing the characters from the first book and ART from the second book.

It looks like Mensah will make another appearance in the next book, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Book Review: Solitaire by Alice Oseman

Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books UK
Published: July 31, 2014
Received: purchased
Read from June 13 to December 20, 2022
Synopsis from Goodreads: 

In case you’re wondering, this is not a love story.

My name is Tori Spring. I like to sleep and I like to blog. Last year – before all that stuff with Charlie and before I had to face the harsh realities of A-Levels and university applications and the fact that one day I really will have to start talking to people – I had friends. Things were very different, I guess, but that’s all over now.

Now there’s Solitaire. And Michael Holden.

I don’t know what Solitaire are trying to do, and I don’t care about Michael Holden.

I really don’t.

This incredible debut novel by outstanding young author Alice Oseman is perfect for fans of John Green, Rainbow Rowell and all unflinchingly honest writers.

Review:

Since Heartstopper was released on Netflix earlier this year, I've watched it too many times to keep count. I've fallen absolutely in love, so of course I wanted to read the comics and Alice Oseman's other books. The comics are available for free online, so I read the whole thing while waiting for the books to arrive in the mail. (When the physical copies arrived, I immediately started reading Solitaire, so I actually haven't gotten a chance to read the physical copies of the comics yet either.)

While the Heartstopper TV show is based on the comics, not Solitaire, Solitaire is set in the same universe. All of Oseman's books are, but from what I know, Solitaire is the book most closely tied to Heartstopper. It follows Tori, the older sister of Charlie in Heartstopper. It also takes place a year after Heartstopper volume/season 1 even though the book itself came out earlier. It was actually the first book that Alice Oseman published.

That fact was evident while reading. The tone of the book does feel like it was written by someone younger. I believe Oseman published the book while they were in university. It does show but not necessarily in a bad way. The teen voice of the book felt very authentic. I could totally believe that Tori would view the world the way she did even when I, as an adult, felt frustrated with her at various points throughout the story.

Despite sometimes feeling annoyed with Tori, I do think she was well written. All of the characters were. I could easily imagine them fitting in with my classmates back in high school. They felt like real teenagers. To the point that some of them were downright infuriating, like Becky. I'm still trying to make myself feel sympathy for Becky purely because I knew what it's like to be a  teenager, but I have to admit that it's hard.

Tori and Becky's friendship was one of many aspects of the book that felt incredibly realistic though, and I appreciated the way it was written.

The standout character was absolutely Michael Holden. I'd heard about him before reading the book from other Heartstopper fans, and there are little glimpses of him in later installments of Heartstopper. I figured I would like him, and I was right. In some ways, he felt like a manic pixie dream girl except he was a guy, and I feel like this might have been done on purpose, especially since there's a reference to manic pixie dream girls in the book.

I just loved the way he was portrayed. I would absolutely read an entire book about Michael. Even though we learn he's not always as bright and cheerful as he seems, he did feel like a bit of lightheartedness that was otherwise lacking throughout the beginning and middle of the book.

One thing I heard about Solitaire before I read it was that it was darker than Heartstopper, after reading the book and also all of Heartstopper that's been released, I get that view but also didn't entirely feel the same way. There are a lot of mental health issues dealt with in Solitaire. It absolutely does get dark in places, but later volumes of Heartstopper (beyond what's been adapted on the TV show) also deal with similar issues. While I do think that Solitaire leaned into that darkness a bit more, the book honestly wasn't as dark as I suspected after hearing others talk about it. While Heartstopper does have a light tone overall, it also deals with some dark stuff in a serious way, and I was expecting Solitaire to be darker than it is from the discourse I'd heard about it.

While I do think Heartstopper is a story that I'll revisit more because it is more light-hearted at the end of the day, I still enjoyed Solitaire, and I'm looking forward to reading Alice Oseman's other books. Though they take place in the same general universe, they're not as closely tied to Heartstopper and Solitaire from what I've heard. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing more of that world, and I also look forward to how Oseman's writing style has grown over the years since Solitaire was published.