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.

Entry #3 in Martha Wells’ Murderbot series, Rogue Protocol continues the series’ perfect formula of a great action adventure with snappy and sarcastic humor. While I found the previous entry Artificial Condition to be a bit slow and a tad heavy with its setup, Rogue Protocol felt like a welcome return to All Systems Red’s more ideal balance with a more extensively developed plot that connected back to the series’ loose overall narrative.

At this point it goes without saying that the tone and humor of the series is pitched perfect for me and something I don’t really need to spend much time on (I would assume if you’re reading this review you must be familiar with the series or my past reviews unless you’re one of those chaotic and unhinged mid-series readers). Murderbot’s character voice and narration is always a joy, yet somehow Wells manages to one-up herself yet again:

There needs to be an error code that means “I received your request but decided to ignore you.”

Then there was Asshole Research Transport. ART’s official designation was deep space research vessel. At various points in our relationship, ART had threatened to kill me, watched my favorite shows with me, given me a body configuration change, provided excellent tactical support, talked me into pretending to be an augmented human security consultant, saved my clients’ lives, and had cleaned up after me when I had to murder some humans. (They were bad humans.) I really missed ART.

While still following the winning formula of Murderbot conducting preservation/bodyguard type of work with some sort of sidekick ally, Rogue Protocol manages to keep the concept fresh by introducing another bot referred to as “Miki”. Constructed for a different purpose with a distinctively different tone from Artificial Condition’s ART, Murderbot and Miki’s interactions are an entirely different flavor that introduces many more questions and subtleties involving bot constructs and programming behavior. Heavily linked to the Rogue Protocol’s plot, Miki’s character and contribution to this novella spurs new character development in Murderbot and introduces an emotional depth to the story that was mostly absent in the series first two entries:

“Or Miki was a bot who had never been abused or lied to or treated with anything but indulgent kindness. It really thought its humans were its friends, because that’s how they treated it. I signaled Miki I would be withdrawing for one minute. I needed to have an emotion in private.”

As far as the plot is concerned, I found this book’s story and action to be much more in-line with the series’ first entry which was one of my nitpicks of the second book. Unlike the first two books which were set in locales featuring a mix of humans, augmented humans and bots, Rogue Protocol is set in the abandoned terraforming colony Milu. I have a fascination with urban exploring and abandoned locations and I found the setting to be both unique and exciting to read about. Compared to the first two novellas, Rogue Protocol felt more like a straightforward, tense sci-fi thriller and was much more action forward. My minor nitpicks of the story taking too long to get-going and being a bit dialogue-heavy in Artificial Condition were both directly addressed here and although I may be in the minority compared to other reviewers, I felt this entry had good pacing and no notable slow moments. The only minor point of improvement I had for this book was that at times, Murderbot’s movements in the colony of Milu could be potentially difficult for some readers to follow and keep track of (having read plenty of sci-fi adventure novels, this was fine for me personally). The book’s story and action also hits an emotional climax (at least for this action-filled series’ standard) at the end of the novella and then kind of abruptly ends without really covering Murderbot or its “clients” processing what just happened. I fully expect this to be followed up or lightly referenced in the next book knowing how good of a writer Wells is, but I would’ve liked the resolution to have been a bit longer or more in depth (mirroring my review of every other novella in this series, the material is so good I want more!).

Overall though I thoroughly enjoyed Rogue Protocol and this third entry has cemented this series as a must-read for me, more than justifying its popularity and devoted following. The fact that this third book utilized more plot elements introduced in All System’s Red implies Exit Strategy is only going to be even more involved and developed if it continues in the same direction.