I thoroughly appreciate TorDotCom bringing the various 'Murderbot' novellas into print in cheap and easy to find trade paperback editions, but, as I've pointed out in my reviews of the prior two volumes, I wish they'd have done something more than just that. This is two novellas with nothing else. If you're looking for extras, there's an 'About the Author' page. There isn't even a contents page to tell us where 'System Collapse' starts, or indeed anything beyond a chronological listing of the series on the "also by" page to explain to readers that this isn't novellas five and six, as we might expect following the volumes comprising one and two and then three and four.

I think it's pretty important to know going in that 'Fugitive Telemetry' is the fifth novella and it's placed chronologically in the series fifth, before the novel, 'Network Effect', which was published before it. I'm a glutton for working through bibliographies in publication order, which indeed I did with this series, and you'd be absolutely fine doing the same thing. 'Network Effect' doesn't spoil 'Fugitive Telemetry' in any way. That said, 'System Collapse', the sixth novella and seventh title in the series, absolutely spoils 'Network Effect', so you should not work through the six novellas but leave the novel until last. Either read 'Network Effect' before starting this collected volume or at the halfway point in between its two novellas.

I've been praising TorDotCom for months and for a variety of reasons. Their novella range is top notch, providing some of my favourite books of the past few years, and that's not to put down the excellent novels they continue to publish as Tor. They do great work and that recognisable logo is as close to a sure thing when you're pulling volumes off a bookshop shelf as it gets right now. I'm not interested in putting them down. However, these three collected volumes of 'The Murderbot Diaries' are akin to a boutique film label carefully collating the hard-to-find short films of a cult filmmaker but then just slapping them onto a disc without even a menu, let alone extras. It feels wrong.

Other than that personal gripe, which I'll happily get out of the way quickly, this is wonderful stuff and you probably know that already. Martha Wells was an accomplished author before she came up with 'Murderbot' but now she's a phenomenon. Her initial four-novella story-arc didn't just not end there, it's sprawled over from print to television with Alexander Skarsgård in the title role. It aired on Apple TV, which I don't have, but it's been renewed for a second season and I'm sure it'll end up somewhere I can see. Worst case, I buy the DVD box set if they're still making such things.

I liked 'Fugitive Telemetry' but it came at an odd time in the series. The first four novellas, or the first two collections of them as 'The Murderbot Diaries', followed one natural arc in four parts. It isn't hard to just blitz through the lot in one go, especially as they were each shorter than these two; this volume is a hundred pages longer than the other two. 'Network Effect' tells a far more substantial story, thus warranting its novel length, and that continues into 'System Collapse', an extension that relies on its predecessor. However, 'Fugitive Telemetry' is a standalone story and so feels less substantial in comparison.

I've reviewed it before, so I won't dive deep again here, but it's set on Preservation Station and it works primarily as a murder mystery. A dead human is found in the mall area, someone who isn't registered in the system, making the crime doubly suspicious. Murderbot is there working private security for Dr. Mensah and the station's security team know that and aren't particularly happy about it, but accepted it as long as the rogue SecUnit promised not to hack any of their systems. Now they're asked to work together and nobody's happy, but the job gets done.

There's plenty of worldbuilding and I'm sure Wells will return to Preservation Station with future 'Murderbot' stories, because it's increasingly important as somewhere outside the Corporation Rim, where everything is run by companies. The known universe is historically separated between the Corporation Rim era and the pre-Corporation Rim era. Preservation Station sits outside that entirely and that gives it a philosophical power and a bureaucratic independence that has import within these stories.

After 'Network Effect', it's easy to see how Wells decided to shoehorn this in before it, to loosely set up that novel in the form of a refugee route that exists to funnel slaves off a mining planet. It pits the independent station against the might of the Corporation Rim and that's precisely where 'Network Effect' and then 'System Collapse' go. Again, that's why it does make sense to read this novella before the novel even though there's no specific story point to make it required. However, again, if you're reading through the novellas and haven't read the novel, please stop at this point and dive into 'Network Effect' before continuing on into 'System Collapse'.

When you do, I wonder if you'll find, like me, that 'System Collapse' is a heck of a lot more fun than 'Network Effect'. After the many events of the novel, Murderbot and many members of the team are back on the alien contaminated planet where most of it was set, officially to fix routers but in reality to talk the locals out of signing up with Barish-Estranza and effectively signing away their freedom to become corporate slaves. It's a good guys vs. bad guys story for the souls of the locals. It starts well but then gets better with the discovery that there's a second set of locals, who have been out of touch for years, up by the terraforming stations at the pole. So off go both good guys and bad guys to fight for their souls, too, with even more at stake.

'System Collapse' works on every level as a story but there's an additional reason why it may well be my favourite of all seven stories. That's because Murderbot, the central character throughout all of them, remains so here in the company of far more fleshed-out companions, while also losing something inside. She—see my earlier reviews for why I still read her as female, even though she has no gender inherently provided and technically hasn't chosen one yet—doesn't seem right this time out. She's making mistakes, increasingly so, and she doesn't understand why. The ending is a good one that makes me look all the more forward to the next volume, due in 2026. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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