Artificial Condition

Bibliyowhan

“Sometimes people do things to you that you can’t do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on.” 

Artificial Condition felt like a filler to an upcoming novella that would put more weight to Murderbot’s pursuit in finding his own truth. Was I disappointed? A little bit. But was it still worth reading? Of course! Like its predecessor, Artificial Condition is still every bit of an entertaining and relatable read.

I still admire Murderbot’s pragmatic decision-making skills, but I am also amused at how much he denies his concern for humans even when everything else he does contradicts his I-don’t-care façade. Take for example his reasons for leaving Dr. Mensah, he claims that he wanted to know what happened to him when he went rogue the first time, well that is quite true. But in addition to that, he left Dr. Mensah because he wasn’t sure if she and the rest of the team are safe from him. And I think this is where I got kind of disappointed. I expected Murderbot’s relationship with his previous clients will be revisited, that somehow Dr. Mensah will have a big part on Murderbot’s story. I was wrong, well at least for this book. I think.

I’m still hoping to meet Dr. Mensah and the rest of the team with Murderbot again. There are still missing pieces of the puzzle that could explain what really happened to the team on the previous book, as to why Murderbot went rogue before and why are his current clients’ contract got terminated that rendered them jobless. I have a feeling that all three incidents are somehow connected and leading us somewhere. Or maybe I was reading too much in this series and this title really has nothing to do with Murderbot’s story at all! Just as Dr. Mensah has nothing to do with him anymore and this could all be a farce and I’m just clowning myself! I’m really hoping that I’m wrong about that though, coz if I am right – which I don’t wanna be – I’m gonna be very disappointed because both books have left me on a cliff-hanger here. I need answers but I’m not even sure at this point if I will get some. I honestly don’t know where Wells is going in this story but I’m going with it anyway. I’m still sticking with this series, it has maintained its charm despite making me frustrated.

I may have not love this as much as I did with the first title, but one new character sure did made me enjoy it. ART – a transportation bot that Murderbot didn’t know he needed until he met it. Is it unfair of me to use ‘he’ for Murderbot but ‘it’ to ART? Maybe. Will knowing about ART not having a physical body help in justifying my reasons on using ‘it’ as pronoun for ART instead of ‘he’? I hope so. Aaaaanyway about ART, it is a highly intelligent transportation bot that helped Murderbot get out of situations he is too proud to admit defeat. ART, like Murderbot enjoys media, and has opinions that Murderbot don’t want to hear. They didn’t get along at first but they did eventually, which is a good thing for Murderbot’s new clients – Young scientists that are recently fired from their research mission and is trying to retrieve their data from the company that hired them. Long story short, it went south because the person behind their unemployment was obviously evil and is up to something. Which brings me back to my suspicion that these sneaky people that are trying to steal and hide information is somehow related to Murderbot’s past and his clients’ missions. Again, I don’t know if my hunch is correct but the only way to find out is to proceed and pick up Rogue Protocol. So here goes…. something – I hope.

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Published by Bibliyowhan

A bookdragon, not a worm. An Ahgase (iGOT7), occasionally a Phoenix. Drinks coffee darker than the mines of Moria while waiting for Winter to come in Neverwhere.

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