This may be the most exciting addition to this series yet.  The story starts with a bang; Murderbot and Three are already in the middle of something, hanging off the hull of a shuttle.  In a spacesuit, of course; but still.  They dock at a huge spacestation; a ring around a planet.  I’m talking really really huge.  This will be a problem later.

We have to wait for Murderbot to get through the security before we understand why it’s there.  Apparently, three of Mensah’s family members were kidnapped and brought to this station.  They were ‘rescued’ by one that Murderbot still considers a hostile; however, all three are safe and hidden in a safehouse.  Murderbot has trouble believing that their rescuer didn’t have an ulterior motive.  It’s not wrong.

Getting into the station wasn’t really the challenge; getting three civilians out might be.  And it only gets worse when it is forced to bring along two more children. Who cry. And talk incessantly. And have to use a restroom an inordinate number of times. But the grandmother who needs a walker is a lot more useful than Murderbot would have guessed.

The book takes them all on a journey around the ring station, in and out of very different habitats; all while evading capture by the dreaded Barish-Estranza corporation. Two things made the entire trip so much fun for the reader (not much for Murderbot): Murderbot installed an emotion check after the chaos of the last couple stories.  The emotion check is supposed to get it to pause to recognize an emotion and decide how to deal with it.  This was actually hilarious. The second thing was Three. It needed Three to get into the station and Three was supposed to immediately rendezvous with their escape shuttle, waiting for them.  But Three got distracted exploring and before you knew it, there were SecUnits all over the station who had hacked their governor module.  So even though the security alerts for a rogue SecUnit weren’t intended for Murderbot; it was still very disconcerting.  This was also hilarious.

The plot was substantial and the dialogue great.  The supporting characters were pretty well-described but the party really belonged to Murderbot.  Its internal musings and observations are what drive the story and made this reader fall in love.  Well, like, at least.  And the ending, while not completely necessary to the plot, was really perfect.  Keep ‘em coming, please.  ~~  Catherine Book

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