Today’s stack: assassins, murder, and Murderbot.
System Collapse by Martha Wells
System Collapse is the latest in The Murderbot Diaries series, which I wrote about last year. Murderbot is a security unit (SecUnit) in a sci-fi dystopian future where corporations hold most of the power; SecUnits are kind of like robots but include some human neural tissue (think RoboCop), and Murderbot’s human brain for some reason gives it a lot of anxiety. System Collapse follows up on some of the events of Network Effect, the full-length novella, and sees Murderbot and various human crew members on a planet where a lot of the colonists had been exposed to alien contamination, with disastrous results.
Now, Murderbot’s humans are trying to negotiate an agreement with the surviving colonists, both to provide a way for the University to study the alien contamination, but more importantly to keep the colonists from being indentured to the Barish-Estranza corporation who wants to claim ownership of, well, everything and everyone on the planet. Unfortunately, Murderbot seems even more anxious than before and its performance is down—not a great situation when it’s trying very hard to keep its humans alive.
It’s been a while since I last finished Network Effect—the novella Fugitive Telemetry came out last fall, but a lot of the characters and events referred to in System Collapse were from the full novel, so it took me a little bit to reorient myself. I’d probably recommend a re-read of Network Effect just to get that fresh in your mind, and I’m half inclined to just do a whole re-read of the series now. Murderbot is just a fascinating character, and I love the way that it figures out how to handle situations. (Note: most of the time, it actually involves a lot less murder than the name would suggest.) If you’ve been keeping up with this series, you’ll definitely want to pick this one up. If not, now’s as good a time as any to get started—but in that case start with the first novella, All Systems Red.
The Mantis by Kotaro Isaka
I read Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka early last year—it was about a number of colorful assassins who all wind up on the same bullet train, trying to get a mysterious briefcase. (It was also made into a movie starring Brad Pitt.) The Mantis is another book set in the same universe; there are a couple references to characters in Bullet Train here and there, but you don’t really need to know anything about the first book to follow the plot. (I found out that there was another book, Three Assassins, that came in between these two, but I somehow missed that one entirely.)
Kabuto is an assassin—he seems competent enough, though there doesn’t seem to be anything fancy about his techniques. In fact, unlike the assassins in Bullet Train, who all have bizarre methods tied to their codenames, Kabuto’s killing methods are almost entirely left out of the book. Instead, the book is largely about his internal thought processes. He is married and has a teenage son, and he really wants to get out of the business. But his handler, known only as the doctor, keeps presenting him with more jobs to do and some vaguely threatening comments about retiring.
A big focus of the book is instead on Kabuto’s relationship with his wife, and all of the methods he has come up with to keep her from getting mad at him. She seems to be the one thing that he is scared of, and he goes out of his way to stay on her good side. Above all, he wants to makes sure that no matter what happens to him, his family is safe from the violent underworld he’s been part of, and that these two parts of his life never intersect.
In some way, these books remind me a little of the John Wick series: there’s this whole hidden world of assassins who have some shared contacts and customs, and civilians are just ignorant about it all. But unlike the John Wick films, which feature tightly choreographed scenes of ultraviolence as John Wick mows down countless enemies, The Mantis often pans the camera away before you see Kabuto finishing off his target. It’s much more about his mental state than his physical state, the way that he is coming to terms with his decisions and the life that he has led.
Although I wouldn’t say I really ever liked Kabuto himself, I did find the book really intriguing. Outside of his philosophizing, there is still a plotline about the doctor and assassination attempts and vengeance—but it’s a slow burn and there are some surprising twists to be discovered. I’m planning to go look up Three Assassins soon to see what I missed.
Chaos Terminal by Mur Lafferty
Chaos Terminal is a sequel to Station Eternity, which I wrote about last year. Mallory Viridian lives on the space station Eternity, where she fled because when she lived on Earth there were always murders happening in close proximity to her that she ended up solving. She hoped that by moving to a place where there were very few humans (it’s mostly aliens), fewer murders would take place. But then more humans showed up, and with them, murders.
By the end of the first book, Mallory had solved the murders, helped to save the station, and even figured out a little bit where her murder-solving powers came from, though she still hopes she won’t have more opportunities to put them to use. Mur Lafferty has other ideas, though, and wrote this sequel.
There’s another shuttle of humans arriving—the new alien ambassador, plus a few people that Mallory has personal ties to, which has always made her nervous. But this time, for some reason, she isn’t getting her usual “somebody is gonna die” vibes. Instead, she is feeling some other inexplicable fears. On top of that, the station seems to be on the fritz, with various systems not functioning like they should. Are these connected? In the meantime, this book also includes some alien political strife among the Gneiss, huge rock-like aliens. It seems that a few of Mallory’s Gneiss friends may have caused a major incident, and of course the fallout is coming right around the same time that one of the human visitors turns up dead.
I really enjoyed this followup to Station Eternity. It’s a good blend of a murder mystery with aliens-and-spaceships sci-fi, and the characters are a lot of fun (particularly Tina, the loud, brash Gneiss princess).
My Current Reads
I’m almost finished with Thinking 101 by Woo-Kyoung Ahn, and have found it to be really fascinating and useful, so I’ll share more about that one soon. In the meantime, I’m looking at my growing pile of comics and thinking I should really dig into some more of those soon, so stay tuned!
Disclosure: I received review copies of the books covered in this column. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support independent booksellers and my writing!
