Book Review: Platform Decay by Martha Wells

Another Murderbot Diaries adventure! Platform Decay is book 8 in the series and takes place after the events of book 7, System Collapse.

Here is the Goodreads blurb:

Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.

After volunteering to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realizes that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn’t know.

Including human children. Ugh.

This may well call for… eye contact!

(Emotion check: Oh, for f—)

Read on for my spoiler-free review.

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Overall Impression

This is a classic Murderbot book. A high-stakes rescue, our favorite SecUnit with a new emotion module, and all set in a new, massive space station full of hostiles. What’s not to love?

Plot

The plot, as for most Murderbot books, is deceptively straightforward. This is a rescue mission. Murderbot, with some initial assistance from Three and guidance from Mensah, is there to rescue some of Mensah’s extended family from the hands of the evil Barish-Estranza corporation. Everything seems fine on paper, but of course it never goes to plan and that leads to ever increasing tension as Murderbot has to take care of humans and get them to safety.

Characters

As usual, we follow our favorite SecUnit, Murderbot, on another adventure. This time, it has a special emotion module that frequently checks on it, which emphasizes its usual snarky attitude. Joining it are more humans it has to protect, but we do see a bit of Three, another SecUnit it had helped free in prior novels. The story mostly focuses on Murderbot, though, and its group of humans.

Setting / World Building

I was very intrigued by the setting this time. We’re on an artificial massive torus station that, if I understood correctly, rings a planet. That makes it extremely large and it takes the characters quite a while to traverse it. The torus isn’t owned by a single entity, so different sections belong to different corporations or groups, and some are unclaimed. This makes for some variety as the characters navigate from fake desert landscapes, to fake jungle landscapes, to real industrial storage yards.

Final Thoughts

This was a fun book, fast paced, enjoyable characters, and a familiar cool setting. In short, it feels like another Murderbot book and that’s a good thing. I would have liked to see more of the usual cast, as well as more of ART and Three. Overall, if you’re a fan of the Murderbot Diaries series, you will enjoy this one.