System Collapse by Martha Wells

First up: the Murderbot series is superb and wonderful, and you should try it if you haven't already. (The first book is All Systems Red, and it's a novella, so that would not be a big time commitment.) Martha Wells has been a fine, interesting writer of great viewpoints and interesting worlds for a long time - she did, I think, exclusively write fantasy before this series, which means it's ironic that a SF series would be her big breakout, but, whatever. It does mean all the Murderbot fans still have Ile-Rien to discover, which is excellent for them. (Murderbot fans: if you haven't read Death of the Necromancer, try it. It's vastly less pulpy than the title might make you think.)

That said, the Murderbot series, since it's mostly novellas so far and those can pile up quickly, has gotten somewhat complicated. The most recent book, Fugitive Telemetry, was a bit of a flashback - not far, but a bit - but Wells has now, I think, returned to the latest moments of her timeframe.

So the new novel - I think it's a novel; I didn't count words - is System Collapse, and it's a direct sequel to the previous novel Network Effect (not the previous book). (I told you this was somewhat complicated.) (Yes, I do start using Murderbot-style multiple-parenthetical-comments right after reading one of these books. What can I say? Wells is a good writer, and her characters get into your brain quickly and take it over.)

If you don't know the background: it's galactic medium-future SF, corporate-hellhole subcategory. There are mostly unmodified humans (probably not entirely unmodified, and likely modified different ways depending on their different planets/groups/backgrounds) and augmented humans (with techy add-ons to their bodies and brains) and constructs (mixed biological/robot humanoids, mostly autonomous and sapient) and bots (full-AI robots, embodied in ships and stations and various bodies, often sapient, too). Given the corporate hellhole background, many of those are held in some kind of control, whether software or legal or hardware or fiscal - or, most likely, as many of the above as the owning corp can manage.

The SecUnit (construct designed to provide security to humans) that calls itself Murderbot hacked its governor unit to become fully autonomous, after being used for some nasty business for a particularly hellhole-ish corporation. It has since gotten away from that corporation and mostly escaped the Corporate Rim, outside of which is an area of space with smaller independent polities and some not-particularly-horrible organizations. It's now loosely attached to a group from the Preservation polity that is mostly (this is vague, probably because Murderbot doesn't quite understand and/or care about the details) connected to the Pansystem University of Mihara and New Tideland.

In Network Effect, Murderbot, some Preservation humans, and the ship Murderbot refers to as ART (actually named Perihelion, also a free AI individual, probably even more secretly than Murderbot) were hijacked away to a distant system, where complications ensued.

System Collapse, as I said, is a direct sequel: many of the same complications, and some new ones, are still ensuing. There is a rapacious corporation that wants to profit from this particular planet, and the best way they see to do so is to get the current colonists to sign up as indentured servants and get shipped off to some other hellhole. There is an ancient alien contamination on this planet, which can take over agricultural bots and other low-level tech to send them on murderous sprees. There is what I suppose I can call a Lost Colony, from before the Corporate Rim was founded and very out of the loop on current events - and, worse, having fractured into multiple somewhat-warring factions.

It's a complicated situation, made worse by the fact that Murderbot recently redacted, and now, after a restart, is not operating at full capacity. But, as so often with fiction, tough situations for the characters makes for a great story for us the readers, and Wells is really good at this kind of thing.

As always, Murderbot's voice - cynical, endlessly commenting on everything it sees, media-saturated, searching and thoughtful and bedrock competent at what it does - is at least half of the draw; it's a brilliantly drawn character and an amazing viewpoint into this universe.

I say this a lot about series, because it's true: don't start here. But get here, because it's a lot of fun, and better than fun. Wells packs a lot into these short books: they are thoughtful and surprisingly deep for stories about a Murderbot in a semi-hellhole future.