Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells Narrator: David Cui Cui, Khaya Fraites, Marni Penning, Julienne Irons, Natalie Van Sistine, Alejandro Ruiz, Alysia Beltran, Bradley Foster Smith, Elena Anderson, Eric Messner, Jenna Sharpe
Series: The Murderbot Diaries #3
Published by Graphic Audio LLC on 2023-11-16
Length: 2 hours and 47 minutes
Listening Speed: 1.7x
Reviewing Audiobook from Audible
Rating:
Reading Challenges: 2025 Audiobook Challenge, 2025 Beat the Backlist
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Rogue Protocol is the third entry in Martha Wells's Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling series, The Murderbot Diaries.
Starring a human-like android who keeps getting sucked back into adventure after adventure, though it just wants to be left alone, away from humanity and small talk.
Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas?
Sci-fi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is back on a mission. The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris Corporation is floundering, and more importantly, authorities are beginning to ask more questions about where Dr. Mensah's SecUnit is.
And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good.
Murderbot is back in Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells. This time he is looking for evidence against GrayCris, the corporation at the heart of all that’s been going wrong. His goal is to find data that proves what GrayCris is doing and send it to Dr. Mensah, who is currently facing scrutiny about where the SecUnit is. In true Murderbot fashion, he stumbles across some humans in need of rescuing along the way.
In a stealth mission, Murderbot plans to sneak onto an abandoned site, gather data from its computer systems, and send it to Dr. Mensah. However, his plan goes awry when he finds a group of humans with their own android, Mickey, who are in over their heads. Murderbot can’t just leave them. Something in his programing won’t allow it, so he is stuck protecting them from their own security team.
I can’t help but laugh at Murderbot’s internal dialogue. He doesn’t like humans and is so uncomfortable around them, yet he puts himself in harm’s way time and again to protect them, even if they aren’t his humans. Mickey was a fun addition to this story. She is a companion bot of one of the scientists, and her personality is the complete opposite of Murderbot’s. She’s bubbly, inquisitive, and a ray of sunshine, something Murderbot believes will get her killed or him.
GrayCris is at it again, but it’s up to Murderbot to prove it. He feels like he has to protect the humans he’s found, but still needs the data he came for. The scenes are action-packed, a bit gruesome at times, and full of hilarious internal monologues from Murderbot.
Overall, I really enjoyed Rogue Protocol. I once again listened to the graphic audio narration, and again, did so in one sitting. I love how the story comes to life through the various narrators. If you are a fan of sci-fi, snarky robots, action-packed scenes, I highly recommend it.
About Martha Wells
Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, the Ile-Rien series, The Murderbot Diaries series, and other fantasy novels, most recently Witch King (Tordotcom, 2023). She has also written media tie-in fiction for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and non-fiction. She has won Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards, Locus Awards, an Alex Award, and a Dragon Award, and her work has appeared on the World Fantasy Award ballot, the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the BSFA Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, the Sunday Times Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. She is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and her books have been published in thirty languages.
She is also a consulting producer on the Murderbot series for Apple TV+.
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