I didn’t intend to stay up to 1230 am an finish Exit Strategy, but I think once you start a Murderbot Diaries novella you are compelled to finish it. Or maybe that’s just me.

Exit Strategy is the fourth in the Murderbot Diaries series and just like the previous three novellas, I absolutely loved it. Murderbot has such a strong personality, full of doubt, sarcasm and usually horrible embarrassment. It wants to do the right thing without always understanding its own motivations. I just love its voice. Honestly, I think Murderbot may be one of my favourite characters of all time.

In this novella, Murderbot discovers that its guardian Dr Mensah may have been kidnapped by one of the corporations that Murderbot has pissed off by its actions in the previous three novellas. It meets up with its former clients from All Systems Red (colleagues of Dr Mensah) and they hatch a plan to get her back.

Of course, Murderbot’s internal monologue is hilarious and its assessments of the situation are dire and laden with sarcasm.

It is a really straightforward story, like the others. There’s one thing to accomplish and that gets accomplished. I felt there was more observation and spying than confronting and dealing with imminent death, which was a nice change of pace.

I think this Novella we see the results of its previous interactions with humans and all its discoveries about itself. I felt the ending and choices it makes at the very end of the novel were earned. When Murderbot is piecing together its memory after overdoing it, we get genuine insight into how it feels about itself, interwoven with utterly hilarious remarks about its colleagues/friends/clients.

It was an utterly compulsive read and I loved it. Murderbot is the best.