Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

"Murderbot" has managed to escape from its last precarious situation and once again finds itself on its own, happy to amuse itself with TV shows whilst shuttling around the galaxy. A determination to find the reason for its original malfunction leads to a reluctant alliance with a powerful ship's AI and a bunch of youngsters who've gotten in over their heads.

Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries has become one of the most acclaimed SF novella series of recent years, telling the story of a combat "SecUnit" that becomes self-motivating and decides to leave behind its life of murder for one of comfort. However, it can't shake either a nagging sense of guilt and curiosity about its beginnings and it also can't quite stop itself from helping out humans from getting themselves into quite ridiculously dangerous situations.

Artificial Condition is less of a follow-up to the first novella, All Systems Red, and more of a direct continuation, following Murderbot as it tries to work out how it became self-aware in the first place and if its unusual situation poses a danger to humans. This takes Murderbot back to the station where its first breaking away from its programming took place.

This is all fun stuff, enlivened by Murderbot's sparky relationship with a starship AI called ART, which is so bored by repetitive flights that it decides to help out Murderbot by becoming its "man in the van." This relationship is the core of the novella and is fun, if a little repetitive. Once Murderbot reaches its destination it turns into more of a standard SF action thriller, as it helps out a bunch of kids who've managed to annoy precisely the wrong people. There's some focused action, some brief musings on "found family" (a theme of the first novella) and then off to the next story with barely a pause for breath.

As with All Systems Read, this is a fast, breezy ride delivered through some fun writing, some economical but effective characterisation and some nice action beats. It's also a bit over-reliant on knowledge of the first novella. This feels more like the second half of a (still very short) novel rather than a stand-alone novella in its own right, and it's also doing setup work for the next adventure (Rogue Protocol). That's all fine as long as you know what you're getting into, a series of serialised short novellas (each costing the same as a full-price novel) where the story continues from one installment to the next.

Artificial Condition (***½) is a short, fun, focused read and a solid new adventure for Murderbot. Readers on a budget may want to wait until an omnibus edition is available in their territory, however. It is available now in the US and on import in most other territories.