Platform Decay

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by Martha Wells

Book 8 of The Murderbot Diaries

Review

★★★☆☆

Platform Decay, by Martha Wells, is the eighth book in The Murderbot Diaries. It follows Murderbot and Three as they infiltrate a planetary torus to rescue Mensah’s family from Barish-Estranza.

The setup in Platform Decay is very similar to Exit Strategy, which is great because that’s one of the best Murderbot books. The mission gets more complicated when Murderbot discovers that Supervisor Leonide, from Network Effect and System Collapse, may have arranged the kidnapping because she needs Murderbot’s help.

I thought System Collapse was too slow and too long to really work, and I worried it was a sign of things to come. Platform Decay puts those fears to rest. It is a fine return to form: fast and action-packed, with deep emotional moments. It has everything I want out of The Murderbot Diaries, while also moving the larger story forward. In Network Effect and System Collapse, Murderbot gave other SecUnits code to hack their governor modules. In this book, we meet the first SecUnits who got that code from someone other than Murderbot. The revolt is now spreading beyond Murderbot’s control.

Modern science fiction is full of found family, and The Murderbot Diaries follows that trend. Murderbot is slowly realizing it has a place in Mensah’s non-standard family and is willing to risk its life to defend them. The Corporate Rim has equally complex families, including Leonide’s queer, multi-parent one, but they operate very differently. Where Mensah’s family rallies to save its members, Leonide’s is torn apart from the inside. The Corporate Rim uses violence to keep its workers enslaved and enforce its hierarchies, and its families reproduce that same behavior.

This book reminded me of a few others. The giant station with its natural landscape inside reminded me of the topopolis from Taylor’s Heaven’s River. The river suspended in the air is similar to the Ousters’ space river in Simmons’s The Fall of Hyperion. The city built into the walls of the (artificial) canyon reminded me of the canyon city from Banks’s Use of Weapons.

I thought I might be done with Murderbot after System Collapse, but Platform Decay won me back! I’m excited to see where Wells takes the SecUnit revolt and whether it causes the foreshadowed collapse of the Corporate Rim.