Murderbot has previously featured in four novellas, the subject of Hugo and Nebula Award Nominations. Fans will have been anxiously waiting for the next adventure, a full-length novel. I liked this adventure better than earlier accounts because, instead of just violence and grumpiness from a cyborg that’s managed to free itself from its governor module, we get a lot of character and loyalty development in NETWORK EFFECT.

For those who have not read earlier instalments, yes, you can begin here. Early in the story, the security cyborg (an AI robot combined with some human parts, in a human frame and uniform) makes a dramatic narrator’s entrance while dealing with pirates. The space pirates were after its companions and once-security clients. Dr. Mensah, a lady who is a professor in a university at Preservation Station, has previously survived attempts on her life. Most people with money get a corporate SecUnit on contract. Amana, Mensah’s daughter, is young enough to want freedom from interfering parents and from privacy-invading drones. The compromise arrived at when Amana goes off to explore Corporation Rim space and gets a distress call, may prove too big a task for one cyborg.

The Murderbot Diaries series is the equivalent of every loud, action-packed, and expletive-ridden space battle film. Amusingly the cyborg (because the author is female, I persisted in thinking of it as somewhat female) enjoys watching the holovid series made by humans, especially the fantastical ones about space colonies meeting terrible fates. Computer geeks will enjoy the mind-stream of drone vision feeds, backchat between Murderbot and ART, a transport vessel, and other computer systems including security systems and bot pilots. Some technically crafty sections inserted by the author into NETWORK EFFECT pay off well and keep us guessing.

As a single read, this book starts to feel long, mainly because of the constant running around spaceships without resolving anything. The various crew members have human needs like sleep and food, and then we must worry about ART’s missing crew members whom we don’t know or see, as well as lost colonists. I read NETWORK EFFECT over a few days, and always enjoyed coming back for more. Much like those holovid serials. Martha Wells (also author of the Raksura series) has kept it consistent and detailed and is going from strength to strength by the conclusion. This book won the 2021 Nebula Award.