All Systems Red

All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries #1 by Martha Wells. New York: A Tom Doherty Associates book, 2017. 152 pages. ***

I received this book as part of a Facebook Bookclub, The Beekeepers - The Book Hive Book Club. This is my first book in Round 2, the second year.  I read it, journal about it and send it on to the next person on the list during the last week of the month. I thoroughly enjoyed the books last year and receiving someone else's choices each month encourages me to read a book outside of my usual choices (mystery, thrillers).

I read the paperback (152 page novella) version of the story. Short, sweet, and setting the stage. I enjoyed it and am glad it was chosen. This is the first book in a 4 part novella series and is a great marketing ploy if you don't mind spending that much on a @600 page book. My only personal issue  is that the owner of the book I read underlined, wrote in it and boxed words. Very distracting for me, if the book hadn't cost 15.99, I would have bought a clean copy to read. The story itself was very entertaining and a quick summer read. I am always impressed by the level of detail that fantasy authors portray in books about alternative universes. Wells does an excellent job of drawing the reader in from the very beginning, "I could have become a mass murderer," the opening statement from the Murderbot. With underlining humor, the Murderbot just wants to catch up on his shows and keeping humans safe doesn't require much effort. (reminds me of binge watching Netflix during the pandemic).

Martha Wells has written many fantasy novels, including The Books of the Raksura series (beginning with The Cloud Roads), the Ile-Rien series (including The Death of the Necromancer) as well as YA fantasy novels, short stories, media tie-ins (for Star Wars and Stargate: Atlantis), and non-fiction. Her most recent fantasy novel is The Harbors of the Sun in 2017, the final novel in The Books of the Raksura series. She has a new series, The Murderbot Diaries, published by Tor.com. She was also the lead writer for the story team of Magic: the Gathering's Dominaria expansion in 2018. She has won a Nebula Award, two Hugo Awards, an ALA/YALSA Alex Award, two Locus Awards, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the BSFA Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. Her books have been published in sixteen languages. For more information, https://www.marthawells.com/about.htm

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