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.
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