When I tried to answer the question, “what did you do with your time while you were laid off?” Part of that answer was “read about forty books” of which about twenty were Wells’
5 Ile Rien, 7 Cloud Roads, 2 Emilie, Witch King, plus rereading Murderbot
I’m curious if Witch King will be standalone or not. That might change my answer. The Ile Rien ones were good, the Emilie ones would make good YA fare. The Raksura books are told by a nonhuman culture, but things get very dark at some points. I’d say that one of the main characters in that series is a bit of a prototype for Murderbot, and another the prototype for Ship.
Another good one is Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Also, I feel like if I am recommending something I have to recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is my current obsession. I've read all the books multiple times in multiple formats, but it's not much like Murderbot.
YMMV. I found it pretty tedious, especially the 2nd in the series (Children of Ruin). I liked Tchaikovsky's Final Architecture series (Shards of Earth, etc) better.
100% this. I am not at all arachnophobic -- I like spiders, I find them cute and fascinating. They were the only interesting characters in the book. The humans were all vile and the human scenes dull dull dull.
I really stuggled to finish the book and do not plan to return to the sequels.
i am reading service model right now with our scifi book club. this book needs a trigger warning for programmers. reading it feels like work because i am constantly analyzing what coding faults lead to the choices the robots are making.
Glad to see DCC mentioned, one of my favorite things to do is describe the initial concept to someone and then see them experience the first few chapters and get hooked
I found the Il-Rien books more engaging than the Cloud Roads. Especially the Fall of Il-Rien trilogy. I'm currently reading the two-in-one book they released earlier this year in the Il-Rien universe.
