In the fourth installment of the Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus award-winning Murderbot Diaries series, Murderbot manages to defy its own programming and decides to help the only human who ever showed it respect.
Martha Wells’s Exit Strategy... is the fourth and final part of her brilliant Murderbot Diaries ... Its angry, poignant point of view, wrapped up in sharp, short bites of space adventure, is utterly addictive, and I’m genuinely delighted — as well as a little relieved — that the series’ success has greenlit a full-length Murderbot novel, so that I don’t yet have to bid it goodbye.
Murderbot novellas are usually a joy to read. Exit Strategy becomes even more of a joy to read in the emotional climax and dénouement ... This is a fast, fun, and funny novella that, at its heart, is about personhood, independence, and selfhood: about autonomy, trust, and kindness, as well as anxiety, frustration, and anger. At its heart, Exit Strategy is a kind story, and a hopeful one. I deeply enjoyed it. I heartily recommend the entire Murderbot Diaries series.
Like its predecessors, Exit Strategy is fun, funny, and thoughtful ... Wells deftly stacks the odds against our hero, piling up obstacles along the way to a climactic showdown that pushes the clever SecUnit to its limits, and beyond. Like the rest of the series, Exit Strategy is about much more than the vicarious thrill of watching Murderbot beat up bad guys and get revenge on an evil corporation. Beneath the familiar SF action tropes this is an affecting story about the emotional trauma of slavery, in which a deeply wounded character takes its first tentative steps on a longer journey of self-discovery.
