Fugitive Telemetry

- Martha Wells

May 19, 2023

GOODREADS BLURB:

Albany, WA

No, I didn’t kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn’t dump the body in the station mall.

When Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it knows it is going to have to assist station security to determine who the body is (was), how they were killed (that should be relatively straightforward, at least), and why (because apparently that matters to a lot of people—who knew?)

Yes, the unthinkable is about to happen: Murderbot must voluntarily speak to humans!

Again!

SERIES / GENRES:

FIRST WORDS:

The dead human was lying on the deck, on their side, half curled around. A broken feed interface was scattered under the right hand. I’ve seen a lot of dead humans (I mean, a lot) so I did an initial scan and compared the results to archived data sets, like human body temperatures vs. ambient temperatures, lividity, and various other really disgusting things involving fluids that happen when humans die. This was all data I still had in longterm storage. The comparison let me estimate a time of death. I said, “Four hours, approximately.”

Dr. Mensah exchanged a look with Senior Officer Indah. Dr. Mensah’s expression was dry. Senior Indah looked annoyed, but then she always looked like that when I was around.

MY REVIEW:

solid, good read:

☆☆☆☆☆ 4/5

First things first, Fugitive Telemetry should definitely be read before Network Effect. I assumed that Fugitive Telemetry would start where Network Effect ended, with Murderbot deciding it wanted to take a job with ART to see if it could get along with ART’s humans and could handle being apart from Mensah. When ART doesn’t feature and isn’t mentioned, it’s hard to get over the disappointment and appreciate Fugitive Telemetry despite the discovery that the events here take place before Network Effect, not after.

It did seem unlikely that the dead human had been a GrayCris agent, because somebody had killed him. As far as I knew, I was the only one currently on the station looking for GrayCris agents to kill.

Having said that, Fugitive Telemetry is excellent. Take a police procedural but add Murderbot finding clues, telling everyone they’re doing things wrong, followed by proving that they’re doing things wrong, all in an attempt to protect Mensah and find a purpose or at least a direction.

Maybe I’d been waiting too long for GrayCris to show up and try to kill us all. I was thinking like a CombatUnit, or, for fuck’s sake, like a CombatBot.

Overall, Fugitive Telemetry may have been held back by the strange jump back in time, but it was as enjoyable as every other book in this series has been. I’m solidly on team ART, though, and cannot wait for System Collapse to come out later this year (especially after reading the book description to confirm that it takes place after Network Effect and will include ART).

“There could be an explanation,” I said, because there could be, and I’m used to having to be as accurate as possible or get my neural tissue fried and old habits, etc.