While I wait to get my paws on the right edition of the latest novel, which comes out in April, I caught up with two short stories.
The first one is Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy (classified as #2.5, meaning it’s right after our favourite SecUnit met with ART, the Asshole Research Transport). It’s technically a Murderbot story without Murderbot. No thanks, you might say. But what if I tell you it’s a Murderbot story with ART pondering on the newly discovered rapport (its words, not mine) with a certain Rogue SecUnit? It’s true, I miss the narrating voice, and maybe the only way to make this perfect would have been to have it in Peri’s voice, but I understand it would have been extremely difficult to pull that off.
The second short story is Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory (classified as #4.5, meaning it’s after Exit Strategy and before Network Effect). Unless you’re completely in love with the characters and suffering from withdrawal, which is fine and understandable if you are, I’m afraid this one makes for a very brief and almost pointless read. It adds very little if not nuance, as its central topic is Mensah’s trauma and that gets explored in the other novels.
No Comments