Exit Strategy (Murderbot Diaries book 4) by Martha Wells (book review)
‘Exit Strategy’ by Martha Wells is the fourth novella in the Science Fiction ‘Murderbot Diaries’ series, which currently comprises five novellas, two novels and two short stories.
Murderbot, a SecUnit (part flesh/part robot) that has hacked its own governor module to stop it being controlled by humans, is on its way back from Milu with vital evidence of GrayCris corporation’s illegal acts. It wants to take it personally to Dr. Mensah, its legal guardian, because, well, she is nice to it and she needed solid evidence to bring GrayCris to trial.
On reaching at HaveRatton Station, the first port of call on its journey back, its ship is diverted away from its usual docking slot. As Murderbot put it, ‘Oh, that’s not suspicious at all.’
Murderbot was definitely not going to be on-board for anyone or anything to find it. Murderbot got into its evac suit, an item it acquired during its last story, ‘Rogue Protocol’. As the ship made its docking manoeuvre, it cycled through its cargo module airlock, pulled itself along the ship’s outer skin to the side of the dock, found and got into empty module structure and walked through its lock onto the station.
It then reverted to pretending to be an augmented human it left the supposedly secure dock area and towards the shopping mall. While passing over the end of the embarkation zone where its ship had docked, it noticed a crowd of humans, twenty-three of them, were heavily armed and in power suits forming up for a boarding operation. It then overheard a conversation that the operation was to find a rogue SecUnit. Oh yeah. It was about me, to quote Murderbot’s thoughts.
The plan for getting its evidence to Dr. Mensah changed to getting off HaveRatton Station and getting its evidence to her as quickly as possible. Of course, it checked the newsfeeds to find out where she currently was. TranRollinHyfa, a station where GrayCris had its headquarters. Newsfeed speculation was she had gone there to testify in GrayCris’ possibly apocryphal lawsuit against her. Other more real circumstances suggested she had not gone voluntarily. It concluded Dr. Mensah had been abducted and was holding her to ransom in its law case.
Murderbot did not like this at all. Naturally, it would travel to TranRollinHyfa to rescue her and, in true Murderbot style, things just got far more complicated in between watching the entertainment channels, especially ‘The Rise And Fall Of Sanctuary Moon’ series.
‘Exit Strategy’ is the conclusion to the overarching story that started with the first novella in the series, ‘All Systems Red’. While the humour and jokes flow easily, the action is fast and surprising and the inventiveness behind the world-building continues to impress, Murderbot grows as a character. It with the help of its friends gets a better understanding of itself and changes to be more, well, human-friendly, that is if a SecUnit can stop automatically assessing security issues.
There is a downside. Publishing the whole story arc as four novellas means that later ones need to include background information from the former ones, to allow the novellas to read as standalone stories. For those who’ve read and remembered the former ones, this can detract from fully enjoying ‘Exit Strategy’.
This novella uses a lot of science and tech. Like any well-written Science Fiction, it only explains the effects on the protagonists. In my view, the technology was chosen to enhance the action and plot. Other tech that would have fitted into this story’s world-building of this story, would have made Murderbot’s problems go away so much more easily. It has been seen elsewhere in the genre.
I can only assume ‘Exit Strategy’ is written for the laughs, entertainment and making fun of action films. The last it does in spades!
‘Exit Strategy’, like its predecessor novellas, is a light-hearted enjoyable read that has sone thought-provoking underlying messages about the world we live in today.
Rosie Oliver
June 2025
(pub: TOR, 2018. 172 page hardback. Price: varies. ISBN: 978-1-250-19185-4)
check out website: https://torpublishinggroup.com/exit-strategy/