I'm a bit mystified by the hype for murderbot. I read it and thought it was OK but a lot of people rave about it.
Still not every book is for every person, it didn't connect with me but it very obviously has its fans.
Still not every book is for every person, it didn't connect with me but it very obviously has its fans.
I've got enough past actually-greats—genre and otherwise—to catch up on, I don't need 100 "OMG it's so good!" comments from a dozen sites steering me toward a newer book that turns out to be pretty damn mediocre. That's been the outcome often enough that I just have to ignore those kinds of comments, no matter how frequently-encountered and how unanswered by credible-seeming naysayers they go—those aspects, maddeningly, don't seem to correlate with them being more likely to be good advice on what to read next.
IDK what the deal is, though I suspect it's actually multiple forms of difference in judgement of fiction and expectations for how one frames a recommendation, which have different causes but the same outcome.
Like, I basically need a top-ten in-genre books and a top-ten (dealer's choice) works outside that genre in any medium from someone recommending a book, to even begin to judge if what I'm going to find on the other side of the recommendation is probably going to at least be fairly good. A bare recommendation, no matter how glowing, carries no signal. Let me know what else you think is good, and I can start to get an idea of whether we're in alignment, because otherwise there's a decent chance we very much are not.
Even author recommendations are hit or miss.
I loved well's murderbot series. I tried her other books (Raksura) but it wasn't as fun.
I found American Gods to be highly praised, and though it was hard to get through. Gaiman's short story "How to talk to girls at parties" was fun though.
https://neilgaiman.com/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/How_To_Talk_...
I liked Neal Stephenson's early books like snowcrash or the diamond age, but the baroque cycle lost my trust.
The version that's sold today is the "author's preferred text" which is not the version that was praised and won awards etc.. I think that's pretty dishonest marketing, and wish they'd sell the original edition, which is like 200 pages shorter.
But books? The level of investment to make these determinations is larger, and there's less people doing it. Or maybe I just haven't found the answer yet.
I also don't think it helps that people either like a book or immediately say "bad writing" or "too YA", which then make others that disagree look like simpletons just for disagreeing. Creates a hard place for dialogue.
In particular the "moods" feature caught my eye.
I adore world building so I gravitate to fantasy and scifi but I really don't care that much about characterisation. A story with a dull self insert character is genuinely fine for me so long as the world building is interesting. That is ultimately why I didn't care about Murderbot much, the world building is pretty standard and the character that fans of the story relate to is pretty much lost on me.
You have to figure out the specifics of what you enjoy from a book and then look for people with similar tastes in order to find recommendations.
I’d rave about that.
However, it shouldn't be surprising that it's little known to the type of crowd that Murderbot Diaries is likely to appeal to...perhaps even more so when audiobook is the preferred consumption format for such short novellas as many commenters here have expressed.
I cannot stand Becky Chambers. I've tried to read her three times, and after about 20 pages I give up. Of the thousand or so novels I've read in the last 20 years, I've done that with about 5 books.
One of my friends asked my why I was so vituperative about Becky Chambers. I said it was just so bad.
They pointed out that I really, really sounded like I was channeling the "I am a man and I really want everyone's favorite things to be what men like in Sci Fi" trope.
I don't think this is accurate! I like all sorts of feminist sci-fi.
But I loath characters who sit around and don't do anything much while some low-stakes activity is happening and there's a bunch of angst that strikes me as unimportant whining not driving any plot.
So, fair enough, I have only encountered that style of writing from female authors. But I don't think it's a particularly damning individual preference.
I happened to love Murderbot (and A Memory Called Empire), though, per the original point of discussion for this post.
I really liked A Psalm for the Wild-Built but was hoping to learn more about the robots but then the second one came out and it was a lot of shallow philosophizing on the meaning of life that was more aimed at a level for YA books. There's nothing wrong with YA novels but that's not what I was looking for.
I want more stories about people just... living unremarkable lives in remarkable places. Like, I don't need to read about Batman, but reading about the guy who runs the bodega in Gotham City? Yum yum yum, that's absolutely food for me.
I describe Chambers to others as "cozy" sci-fi.
That said, I think her different works hit differently. The Monk and Robot series is a really poignant pair of novellas about what it means to be human in a solarpunk world.
The Wayfarer series (Long Way to a Small Angry Planet) is slice of life stories of people caught in awkward situations around space. It's like, "What are people on the fringes doing in Star Trek -- not Picard types, but like, construction crews or black market dealers or space communists or people who get stuck at a motel because the highway shuts down. What if Firefly was a little less high energy.
I disagree with your assessments a little, but not enough to make a fuss. I think it's absolutely fair to say, "This wasn't to my taste".
That said, I'm also queer, poly, and use neopronouns, so I think I may be primed for science fiction that takes the transhumanism language and explores those topics in ways that doesn't treat those topics are scandalous or shocking.
I'd put e.g. James A Corey in the same bucket (though I can't remember what proportion of them is actually male?) but I honestly can't think of any new male authors from Tor over that period. (They're Cixin Liu's US publisher so you might count him, but he's bad in so many different ways that I don't know I'd put him in the same category). And even beyond publishers, few of the authors being pushed by newspapers/Goodreads/etc. seem to be male.
I poke at this specifically because Hugo shortlist authors---with the lesser Novella Award serving as gateway---tend to generate exceptional sales figures relative to their peers, and Tor authors have had a statistically overwhelming shortlist presence over the past decade.
Filtering on non-female authors:
- Dexter Gabriel (P. Djeli Clark) wrote three unrelated novellas, all of which were shortlisted. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 was a warmup to his Nebula-winning novel A Master of Djinn. Arguably the most notable example, but doesn't quite fit the implicit business strategy I was alluding to...more like take random novella shots and further develop the thing that sticks, as opposed to committing two novellas to a strategic theme while reserving the option to follow up.
- Victor LaValle got a lot of attention across the board with his novella nomination, but jumped ship to a Penguin Random House imprint for his breakout novel The Changeling that was produced into a television series for Apple TV+.
- Kai Ashante Wilson wrote two related LGBT romantasy novellas; one was shortlisted. Sales clearly just wasn't there.
- Daniel Polansky...doesn't have a wiki page. Nomination was for a single standalone fantasy novella.
- Neon Yang and Nino Cipri identify as "they". Both were nominated for LGBT fantasy novellas; the former's Tensorate appears to have hit better sales metrics relative to the latter's LitenVerse.
- Adrian Tchaikovsky was already a reputable science fiction author riding on laurels, so doesn't fit the implicit business strategy; his nomination struck me as more "traditional".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novella#Wi...
I loved the world-building and how the author weaved poetry into the narrative. I liked how the world felt unfamiliar at first and gradually the author helped make sense of how politics and individuals fit together.
A big part of it might be that I've only read a handful of good sci-fi books so I have less to compare to.
For context, how many books have you read? (I don't intend to sound confrontational, I just want an idea of what level of reader you are so I know how much stock to place in your praise of the novel.)
Since graduating high school ~5 years ago I've probably read ~50 fiction books. I'm a big fan of Dune, Three-Body Problem, The Martian, and other similar sci-fi books.
I can relate. A lot of people, myself included, seem to be having this problem. The past 20 years of publishing has been weird.
Thanks for your response. I enjoy the same kind of sci-fi that you do, so I've got myself a copy of A Memory Called Empire. :-) Thanks again.
You put that beautifully! That is what I enjoyed about it.
If you enjoyed Murderbot, take that as a recommendation, although it is less sci-fi and more historical fiction.
Murderbot is not that. What you see of them is as genuine as their perspective can be. Murderbot may be snarky, but it doesn't have the same braggadocious air, and I do think that changes the character and story significantly. And if you're a similar kind of neuro-atypical then it can be a refreshing bit of heroic representation.
I will give Sixteen Ways some credit though - at least it ended. I don't particularly like the ending, but it is one. Murderbot falls off hard by the time the series gets to full length novels.
I'm a man, so I went in with my prejudices and automatically assumed Murderbot is a "he". When reading a review that considered it a "she", I re-read most of it and there's no single indication of its gender, if Murderbot even assumes one.
I found that interesting, kind of like that trick Ursula K. Le Guin pulled when she didn't tell her readers Ged from Earthsea was dark skinned.
There are parts of the story where Murderbot passes as either a man or a woman so I figure the body shape must be fairly neutral.
Wow, I've only read the first one, but definitely considered Murderbot a she (even though I'm male). Hmmmm....
I do think it's unquestionable that she was purposefully subverting and playing with the standard expectations of fantasy novels written by white and male authors.
I think Martha Wells does a bit of the same with her depiction of both Murderbot as well as -- in general -- the role of women in her series. In particular Dr. Mensah impressed me: she's fair, intelligent, and in charge. She's not an action hero nor does she know her way around extreme violence, yet she's not downplayed as incompetent or lost (arguably after overcoming some initial naivete); in fact she's possibly the most competent character (in things other than killing people, of course).
If someone tells you it is going to have big messages I could see how it would be disappointing.
i found it good, but definitely pretty pulpy and also clearly relying on the trope of 'minimal protag personality so the reader can slot themselves in'
The Murderbot series is specifically the kind of literature that's meant for serialized A/V adaptation in my opinion; but just as a novel of course it won't compete with the kinds of Gibson, Stephenson, Egan or even Weir.
This book had interesting character development, and I especially enjoyed the read-between-the-lines behavior of others viewed through an aspergers frame of mind. Sort of awkward but decent.