Title: Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries #3)
Author: Martha Wells
Genre: Science fiction
Publisher: Recorded Books Inc.
Publication Date: August 2018
Format: Audiobook
Length: 4 hours

Read if you like: futuristic societies, questions of robots ethics, critiques of capitalism, witty humour, diverse cast, themes of identity and freedom

Rating: 

The Murderbot Diaries have quickly become one of my favourite sci-fi series. They’re witty, thoughtful, and packed with a decent amount of action, and I typically find myself laughing out loud several times throughout each book.

Rogue Protocol felt a little more action-heavy than the previous installment and spent much of the short novel moving some core plot aspects forward. I liked the story in this one (though admittedly I did miss ART from the previous book) and it’s left me eager to see how things progress now that many of the pieces have started to fall together. This was a solid addition to the series that left me wanting more.

The Book Synopsis: Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells 

Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas?

Sci-fi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is back 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.

The Review

Given that this is book three in a very interconnected series, I will do my best to keep my thoughts more high-level to avoid any significant spoilers. That said though, one of the things that I love about The Murderbot Diaries is that each story does feel like a relatively contained story. 

In Rogue Protocol, Murderbot decides that he’d like to reconnect with Dr. Mensah, but before they can do so, they first want to gather more evidence about the various dilemmas they’ve recently found themselves in. As a result, a lot of action ensues as Murderbot goes about this. 

I felt like it was a touch less introspective on Murderbot’s part in this novella as the plot moved forward, but there were still a lot of the characteristic Murderbot aspects that I’ve come to enjoy. It’s always a delight to see Murderbot interact with humans (typically with annoyance, avoidance, and awkwardness), but it’s in their interactions with bots and AI that the real introspective gems come from. Processing their experiences, how they’ve been treated, and what it’s like to live alongside humans from their perspective is always an interesting exercise in growing awareness for Murderbot as it wraps its head around what relations between beings can be like versus what their traditional experience has been. I feel like you see more of this in this novella than perhaps any other as Murderbot interacts with a particularly sentimental AI while on its quest for more information. 

The only reason I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5 is that it did feel like it was mostly building toward the next book. This isn’t a bad thing, and in fact, it’s extremely necessary, it just meant that when I finished I wished I’d been able to see a bit more. I’m looking forward to picking up the next book so I can get the additional details I’m craving.