I started a bunch of books in January, but I really only finished two (but hey, I also started those in January!) I don’t intend to write reviews for everything I read. I mean, I might, I should, but I don’t want to think too big here. But for this month, I figured I’d give both a go.
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
★★☆
Creepy, but not without its issues, but has one of the best covers for a book I’ve ever seen.
It could’ve been a short read. A modern epistolary told via chat logs and email exchanges between the characters Zoe and Agnes zips by. In the time it took for me to consume it all, my bathwater could have just run tepid. Except it didn’t. I was like a child, wanting to hide under my blankets during the scary parts of a movie. Each page filled me with such dread & trepidation that I had to take frequent pauses and breaks to settle my nerves. A novel experience since horror doesn’t leave me unsettled like this. Normally.
But by the time I reached the end, the worst of where my mind could lead me, it didn’t land there. The timeframe moved too quick with too little content interspersed, and my mind wrote a worse story than what appeared. Granted, Things Have Gotten Worse ultimately rests on the horror of loving someone more than they love you, but what happens when you give yourself entirely to an inexperienced & irresponsibly eager individual?
…which is what the BDSM relationship amounts to in the novel. This isn’t altogether terrible, but it’s too easy to see it as demonizing caricature of such dynamics, and LaRocca doesn’t offer a viable out. The relationship isn’t too well established & escalates rather quickly, going from “eff this, I’m out” to “let’s try again and this time, let’s make it worse by making it even more intimate!”
Agnes comes across as someone obsessed with observing grotesque slivers, curious and disgusted altogether by moments like a bunny eating her kittens, a priest shrugging off care after running over a cat, or a news story about a teenage who remorselessly murdered his little brother. While she is horrified at smashing a salamander & at the aforementioned macabre things. These add a touch of shock value, but it culminates in Finneas, a tapeworm that Agnes passes and thinks of as her own child (wtf.)
Zoe is depicted as depraved, but the sexual nature of her depravity is quickly forgotten and comes across as internet trollish. She implores Agnes to do things demeaning, damaging, and dangerous for the sake of humiliating Agnes. The only certainty is that Zoe isn’t entirely honest or as committed into this BDSM relationship as Agnes is, but all other details, backgrounds, desires, wants, motives aren’t truly realized. While a collection of emails & chat logs can’t deliver all that, I would have been certainly willing to suspend disbelief for more character development.
It is a suitably creep story, nevertheless, and fathomably enjoyable.
Murderbot #3: Rogue Protocol
★★★
So far Martha Wells has proven she is impossible to disappoint.
Being a novella series far better serves this story than any other format. Like consuming a television show: Would I rather watch a six-hour movie or six episodes of a series? Of course, books are a different format and it’s easier to chew down a 20+ hour long read with multiple breaks, but sometimes, I just don’t want to.
This far into the series, you should be familiar with this anti-Centennial Man. A grumpy robot that doesn’t want to be human, that wants to do its job alone, and be left alone while it watches its favorite shows. Give this machine a beer and you have a Bender but painted strangely more human.
Murderbot doesn’t want friends (despite finding them), doesn’t want to care about humans (despite ultimately caring about them), and doesn’t want help (despite obviously needing it.) There’s a transhumanistic thread in here, about the self-determination of life to make its own way (SecBots like Murderbot are feared when they’re untethered; an expectation to be property; or worse, patronizingly considered to be pets.)
And while this may be a discussion for the series as a whole, these themes are picked up in this book. Murderbot heads to a facility owned by the big evil company GrayCris, and hitches a ride with some nice humans and their pet robot friend, Miki. And of course, Murderbot has to lie, improvise, and fight to protect itself & the human crew, plus Miki. Oh, Miki, such a precious robot.
I’m eagerly awaiting to clearing out my queue and diving right into the fourth book.