Exit Strategy
Review
Exit Strategy, by , is the fourth book in the The Murderbot Diaries. It wraps up the GrayCris storyline as Murderbot returns to save its friends.
Exit Strategy is the climax of the first four books in The Murderbot Diaries. It concludes the GrayCris storyline that began in All Systems Red, when Murderbot saved Dr. Ayda Mensah and her team and was set free.
Murderbot learns that Mensah has been kidnapped and imprisoned by GrayCris at their corporate headquarters. It quickly realizes that its exploration of the alien-artifact mining station spooked the company and forced them to take desperate action. Murderbot returns to the Corporation Rim, determined to save its humans. Along the way, it reunites with and rescues its old team, confronts a combat SecUnit, and grapples with its own death wish—learning that sometimes survival means running. There’s a lot of satisfying action as Murderbot saves its friends again and again.
The theme of Murderbot’s relationship with humans and humanity continues from Rogue Protocol. It has conflicted emotions after learning that SecUnits used to be more human and had closer relationships with their clients. It once again starts to run away, but at the last minute decides to stay. And it’s finally starting to accept that its need to protect people is a core part of who it is—not just leftover programming.
The detailed view of the “libertarian paradise” that is the Corporation Rim reminded me of ’s (horrible) The Probability Broach, which paints an idealized version of what a libertarian world would look like—so extreme it almost reads as satire. ’s version feels closer to reality. The hacking-as-combat parts, where code has a “physical” presence in the world, reminded me of similar scenes in Surface Detail and The Fall of Hyperion.
Next up is the short story Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory, then I’m starting ’s The Final Architecture series with Shards of Earth.