All Systems Red
Series: Murderbot Diaries, Book 1
By: Martha Wells / Narrated By: Kevin R. Free
Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins
Liked it and will listen to the rest; ain’t complaining cuz I got them all on sale!
I dived right into All Systems Red with a definite sense of abandon, knowing I have all but the last in the series. I s’pose that if I didn’t have the next in the series, I might be a tad peeved, as most of the negative reviews suggest: Tooooo short—like sections of a book cropped out and sold for a full credit.
But I got all my Murderbot audiobooks on sale, so I can’t complain. Now if I HAD paid full price? Yup, I might be a trifle miffed also.
Cuz this is whizbang action and THEN!!!
…nothing… it’s over….
He calls himself Murderbot, but sssshh! it’s his secret name for himself. Actually, our hero here is a SecUnit ‘droid, a “heartless killing machine” who has a bit of a shady past. After a glitch where he killed over 50 of the humans he was tasked to protect, he went offline, and somewhere afterward was able to hack into his own governor module. SecUnit ‘droids are sent with planetary missions, provided by a Company who looks long and hard at the bottom line and, as such, doesn’t really provide the best materials/products. It’s: Get ‘er done as cheaply as possible. And so Murderbot finds (him?)self with a group on a mission conducting surface tests.
Things open with a bang, and we see Murderbot in fearless action (He’s fearless cuz he’s kinda off when it comes to emotions, a tad self-conscious, just not when he’s doing the job he usually tries to shirk). He’s off to save personnel from being shredded and devoured by a jagged-toothed monster that sprang from beneath the earth.
And things only get worse from there.
But this is only a barely 3 hour long book. So expect a LOT to be crammed into a short period of time. Things go wrong for this particular planetary mission, and sabotage starts to be suspected. Another nearby mission goes dark, and when it’s investigated, it turns out that THAT crew’s SecUnits ran amok and slaughtered everybody in sight. As Murderbot takes the rogue SecUnits on, he starts receiving mixed and loaded signals, telling him to kill! Kill! KILL! all the humans he’s with.
Oooooh, a devious plot. But our hero Murderbot, given that he’s alREAdy gone pretty rogue by himself, is immune to the plotting with a little help from his companion humans. And he and the humans come up with their own plot to flush Evil out into the open.
Action action action
And then it’s over, and we’re left to run off to buy the sequels. I can see why people would be crotchety because I was getting all excited, and then I looked down at my phone, and it said there were only 28 more minutes remaining in the entire audiobook. Hmmm…. quite a scam…!
But like I said: I got them all on sale, soooo….
I like Kevin R. Free as a narrator. He can’t do female voices very well, but the way he did the oh so self-conscious Murderbot, with his fascination of space soap operas and entertainment feeds, made me laugh. Free kinda does some vocal juggling when he does each character, but at least he was consistent, and I could tell which one of the MANY crew members was talking. Plus, he handled the swiftness of the action as all things came to a head there.
Musings on what it’s like to have awareness; musings on what it’s like to be free; musings on what it’s like to have your death be almost meaningless. Plenty of musings going on, and each does make a person think for a bit.
And then it’s over…
On to the next!
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