Book review: Platform Decay by Martha Wells

Platform Decay is number eight in the Murderbot Diaries series. So if you haven't read the previous books, I'd strongly recommend reading those first. It's probably possible to read this without reading the others, but it does assume some prior knowledge, so certain things won't be fully clear initially, but context will probably explain them well enough after a while.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, and if you're a fan of the series, I think you will too. In this book, Murderbot has a new mental health module. Whenever its organic neural tissue "started to generate weird chemicals or whatever", it prompts Murderbot to check in on its mental state.

This means that the narrative includes periodic emotion checks, which give an insight into its mental state. I thought that was an interesting addition.

(Emotion check: I just really need some media.)

In this book, Murderbot has volunteered to carry out a rescue mission. But it's rescuing people it doesn't really know, including a child, and of course, children can be even more disgusting than adult humans. Cue anger, irritation, disgust, and even the occasional good feeling.

Someone on the fediverse mentioned that it's shorter than they're used to. I didn't notice, but the audiobook is less than six hours long, so it's shorter than most novels. Importantly, though, it doesn't feel rushed or cut short. It feels as long as it needs to be to tell the story.