Platform Decay

Platform Decay (2026) Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries #8)

Why yes, I did read this in its entirety on the day it came out.

The story opens with Murderbot and Three infiltrating a Torus where Barish-Estranza (from Network Effect and System Collapse) has a large presence.

This is a rescue mission, but you’re a good way in before you know who Murderbot is attempting to rescue, and even further along until you learn why.

Although there aren’t a lot of them, I quite enjoyed the interactions between Murderbot and Three.

You can just talk, I told Three. I pinged the shuttle to let it know we were in place, then tapped the cargo bot’s internal feed and slipped past its wall. Before the bot finished querying me as to what the hell we were doing on its back, I removed its memory of the proximity alert and told it everything was fine, just keep following its schedule. We aren’t pretending to be a SecUnit, I added to Three, we’re pretending not to be a SecUnit.

Even better, Murderbot had to deal with small people.

Sofi talked at me for thirty-two minutes about seven completely different individual subjects, then fell asleep again.

Normally, most of the people Murderbot has to deal with are in positions of authority where they have to act responsibly and think before they act and they speak. Here Murderbot gets to rescue someone who has zero fucks to give, and it was delightful.

“Give me a gun, too.”

“No,” (person) and I both said at the same time. I had a drone circling and I could see that neither of us had taken our eyes off the human guard or changed expressions. He was starting to sweat.

Sofi, tired and sleepy, leaned against Naja. “Nanna, you’re not allowed to shoot anybody anymore, second mom told you, remember?”

Naja patted her absently. “Second mom isn’t here right now.”

There are, of course, all the horrors of the Corporation and the various corporations who run the Corporation Rim. And they’re just as awful as you’ve come to expect.

As expected, I enjoyed the hell out of this, even if I did zip through it quickly.

That just means I have to get the audio book so I can catch things I missed. (Oh good, Kevin R. Free is the narrator!)

Characters: Murderbot, Three, Farai, Naja, Sofi, Supervisor Leonide, Tula, Janity, Supervisor Tillweather

Cover art by Jaime Jones

Publisher: Tor

Rating: 8.5/10

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