New York Times: Martha Wells’s EXIT STRATEGY (Tor.com) is the fourth and final part of her brilliant Murderbot Diaries, a series of far-future novellas set in a universe worn out by corporate indifference and bureaucratic inertia. A single grumpy security unit—Murderbot—fights for life, liberty, and the pursuit of hours and hours of soap operas. The first book, “All Systems Red,” won both Nebula and Hugo Awards this year and is definitely the place to start.
I came late to these novellas, and during a difficult month this year I read almost nothing else. Murderbot’s voice, a beautiful blend of exhausted cynicism and deep, helpless love, was the only thing that felt like both a match to my mood and an appropriate response to the events provoking it. Murderbot has no illusions about the way the world works and will say so blisteringly, but remains so passionately committed to the people it loves and doing what’s right that I kept welling up in response. Its angry, poignant point of view, wrapped up in sharp, short bites of space adventure, is utterly addictive, and I’m genuinely delighted—as well as a little relieved—that the series’ success has greenlit a full-length Murderbot novel, so that I don’t yet have to bid it goodbye.