5/27/25 - Continued Dune, All Systems Red review

 Hello, feasyheads!

Today more progress was made in completing Dune. I have about two hundred pages left and should hopefully be done by this week. Today, I opened Goodreads for the first time in a while, and my to-read list has significantly grown.

But that's not what I'll talk about today. There was this series, The Murderbot Diaries, that's been on my to-read list. After The Will of the Many, I thought that's what I'd read. However, this weekend, I got the first book, All Systems Red, in audiobook form. It's a novella, only three hours of listening. I must say, it's a really enjoyable series, and I'll keep listening to it all the while finishing the Dune series. 

Quick question: Do I put it as read on Goodreads if it's an audiobook?

Immediately I connected with Murderbot, the main character. It's sarcastic, cynical, asocial, and is descriptive but entertaining. This made it easier to get into the plot of the story, which I also really like. There's clearly dystopia in this somewhere, what with the megacorporations. However, the story focuses on the small team of researchers Murderbot's supposed to protect. 

In some books, little is told of the character. In others, there's a lot of explanation coming from the character. Personally, I believe the first is better, but Murderbot does some explaining only about the things it should care about—hacking the entertainment feed and how to watch something undetected rather than the state of the world.

Unlike Dune, this series seems to focus very little on the world and worldbuilding but instead on the characters. So far, I'm liking this series—it gets a 9 out of 10!

The first book alone is also nice to read, and I'd recommend it for adults and YA enjoyers alike.

This is all for today!

Good morning/afternoon/evening/night/3:00 AM,

Uncle Wally