REVIEW: Fugitive Telemetry (novella) by Martha Wells

Fugitive Telemetry is science fiction, technically a sci-fi murder mystery. I bought my copy brand new.

Review:

A couple things, first: this takes place after Exit Strategy but before Network Effect. Also, it's a novella rather than another full novel like Network Effect. I was a bit disappointed when I realized that the Murderbot fun would be briefer than I'd hoped/expected.

Anyway, Murderbot has been contracted to assist Preservation Station Security in the investigation of a murder. The victim's identity is unknown, as is the location of the murder - the place where the body was found is not the place where the person was killed. The thing Murderbot really needs to figure out is whether the murder has any connection to GrayCris, and whether this means Dr. Mensah is now in danger.

This had several aspects from this series that I like: Murderbot interacting with humans and bots, a few interesting new bots, and Murderbot's usual dry, snarky humor. There was, however, very little Sanctuary Moon, Murderbot interacting with Dr. Mensah, or Murderbot struggling with annoying emotions inspired by humans. There was also surprisingly little action.

In order to reassure Preservation Station Security about its presence on the station, Murderbot had to agree to some restrictions: it couldn't access non-public systems or hack any bots or drones, and it couldn't conceal its identity. The whole "no hacking" thing very much annoyed and frustrated it, and I found that I shared its feelings - I understood why those limitations had been put in place, but it was inconvenient, and I missed Murderbot being able to get in and out of systems and do what it wanted as needed.

That said, it did (eventually) force Murderbot to talk to Senior Officer Indah, a human it probably would have just ignored and bypassed if it had had the luxury to do so. Watching Murderbot try to figure out how to make a human trust it while it still acted like itself was nice.

The murder mystery was okay, although I occasionally had trouble keeping track of aspects of the investigation. It wasn't good enough for me to, say, recommend it to mystery fans who don't normally read sci-fi (plus, it's best if you read the previous novellas before reading this one, and none of those have that kind of crossover appeal), but I did have some fun trying to guess what was going on.

Not the greatest entry in the series since Murderbot felt so hampered, and I was a bit disappointed that it didn't continue on where Network Effect left off, but I still really enjoyed it and wished it were longer.