Warning, this review will necessarily spoil the ending of All Systems Red and its sequel, Artificial Condition.

Synopsis: In Rogue Protocol, Murderbot has heard rumors that the legal case against GrayCris, the Corporation that attempted to kill its clients back in All Systems Red, is floundering. Murderbot plans to do something about it. It’s heard rumors about a terraforming project GrayCris abandoned, a whole world somehow ruined rather than made habitable, a catastrophe of epic proportions. A crime if it wasn’t an accident. Murderbot’s plan? Travel to the planet of the failed terraforming project and find proof that the crimes GrayCris tried to cover up by the attempted murder of Dr. Mensah and her team weren’t the one-time work of rogue employees, but business as usual for a Corporation that’s secretly dealing in illegal alien artifacts.

Tags: Science Fiction, AI Protagonist, Loner Protagonist, Novella, Comfort Read.
Trigger Warnings: None.

Review: I love Murderbot. I love Murderbot so much. I just had to get that out of my system.
Life is pretty good for our rogue SecUnit at the start of this third installment in his diaries. It’s free; it’s saved people on a couple of adventures; it’s found the truth behind the deadly massacre committed using his unwilling weaponized body, the motivation behind its decision to hack its own control systems and go rogue: so that it would never have to watch helpless, trapped inside a body massacring innocents again; it’s…made friends? If All Systems Red was about Murderbot learning to care about things outside itself and be a person, and Artificial Condition was about it accepting itself and its past for what it is, Rogue Protocol is about the rogue SecUnit learning to make its own decisions when not under pressure. With room to breath, and newfound confidence about the origins of its freedom, Murderbot is looking for clarity of purpose. While hitchhiking around the galaxy, Murderbot happens to hear on the interstellar news that GrayCris has abandoned a terraforming project as accidentally ruined, which is apparently a big freaking deal. Interest piqued, it decides to discover if everything is as the Corporation claims, or if the terraforming was cover up for another attempt to find and smuggle ancient alien artifacts, and if there is evidence it can send to Dr. Mensah. Along the way our love-able killing machine makes new friends, and continues to demonstrate its inability to stand by and watch innocents injustice without acting.

Who would I recommend this series for? At this point? Anyone, everyone. Special emphasis still on individuals who would rather sit at home with a book than go to a party, people with any kind of autism diagnosis or social disorder, and to some degree, asexuals: there is still no romance in these stories, usually that upsets me, but not here.

This book earned itself another 5 out of 5 stars from me, once again I rushed straight from the ratings page to the next book.

Here are the Amazon and Goodreads links for your convenience.