Platform Decay by Martha Wells

TL;DR: One of my favorite Murderbot books so far.
Source: NetGalley, thank you so much to the publisher!

Plot: Murderbot does a rescue mission but now has to deal with children!
Characters: A delight as always, which made the banter top level.
Setting: A new type of station that acts like a ring around a planet. It made for some interesting travel.
Science Fiction: The new station type was fun and a fascinating idea.

Summary:

Everyone’s favorite lethal SecUnit is back in the next installment in Martha Wells’ bestselling and award-winning Murderbot Diaries series.

Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.

Having volunteered to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realises that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn’t know.

Including human children. Ugh.

This may well call for… eye contact!

(Emotion check: Oh, for f—)

Thoughts:

If you’ve made it this far in the Murderbot series you’re probably a pretty happy fan, and I can you that this volume is definitely going to reinforce that. This one might have been one of my favorite volumes in a hot minute.

Murderbot is doing what they do best in this and rescuing some humans. The big difference here is there are children involved. And not just teenagers but two small children. This was fantastic. As a Mom I was laughing out loud at several moments because of how genuine and how real I felt the actions of the kids were. Murderbot is of course continually exasperated and anxious, something we know and love. The stakes also felt reasonable high without overtaking the story.

An excellent addition to the series. As someone who didn’t absolutely love the last book I read (I liked it, not loved it), this was a fantastic return to form.