Rogue Protocol, by Martha Wells (Tor.com) | review by Stephen Theaker

Third in the Murderbot series, and like the first two I enjoyed it very much. The SecUnit is a Droid with No Name (“I’d given myself a name, but it was private”) who just wants to watch its favourite shows, but can’t help returning to the fight when needed. It’s a wonderfully fun character to spend time with, with a self-deprecating sense of humour and a great line in bracketed asides.

In this book the SecUnit is trying to reach a place called Milu, where a failed terraforming operation has been abandoned by the dodgy GrayCris company in mysterious circumstances. Sneaking aboard a ship heading there, and then slipping unnoticed onto the facility, the SecUnit meets Miki, a bot treated like a friend or a pet by its owner Don Abene, and the SecUnit barely has time to get jealous before killer robots attack the humans.

The SecUnit has a tendency to throw itself headlong into danger that is ideal for action stories: “That’s how SecUnits are taught to fight: throw your body at the target and kill the shit out of it, and hope they can fix you in a repair cubicle.” When the action comes, it happens at high speed. The combat is imaginative but always clear to the reader, and there is always a solid sense of place and space.

It’s more expensive than most Tor.com novellas: I’d have bought every volume of this forever at three pounds, but at seven I’d probably wait for a sale. And it will be interesting to see if the longer books later in the series keep up the momentum – reading the Dumarest series, I never found myself wishing that E.C. Tubb would make them twice as long. But whatever the price and whatever happens next, I’d recommend Rogue Protocol to any fan of sf action. Stephen Theaker ****