A Review: System Collapse by Martha Wells

After a brief return to the novella length of book 6 in the Murderbot Diaries, Martha Well returns to the novella format with System Collapse. Is this the grand story I’ve been waiting for?

Summary

Our favorite SecUnit with no guardrails isn’t firing on all cylinders. After [REDACTED], it’s experiencing performance issues, and no one can figure out why. And that can’t be helpful when the crew has a run-in with the Barish-Estranza corporation and their attempt to usurp a planet with a long-lost colony of humans. Fortunately, MurderBot isn’t alone. Our SecUnit, ART, and crew must intercede for the colony’s best interests before Barish-Estranza victimizes yet another untapped world.

Review

Topping my enjoyment of Network Effect has been a real challenge for this series, and it seems the same with this story. Don’t get me wrong: all the pieces are there. The sarcastic and often cynical humor, the entertaining banter between MurderBot and ART, and the brisk pacing I’ve come to expect and enjoy from Wells’s popular Sci-Fi series. I hoped that the return to a slightly longer story might return the series to a new high.

But either because of the loss of novelty, the lack of a conflict that I appreciate fully, or because I’ve changed, this novel just didn’t hit the way I’d hoped.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t some interesting elements that I enjoyed. I continue to love MurderBot and ART and their relationship. And I thought that the introduction of PTSD and how that trama is realized and dealt with within an AI system was interesting and (for the most part) well executed. However, I don’t feel like I got the emotional catharsis I wanted from those two elements. I was also very interested in what might happen with SecUnit 3 and its relationship with MurderBot, ART, and the Preservation crew. 

Overall, I would have preferred that either the System Collapse be cut shorter if this was the intended story to be told or be made a bit longer to accommodate some of these plot lines that were left on the table. This left me with a feeling that the story was just fine. And sometimes that can be more disappointing than a story that completely fails.

Is System Collapse Worth Reading?

But I haven’t given up on this series. I think the potential for the development of our characters and the series into a better long-term plot arc is still there. So I’ll be reading on when the opportunity comes.