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Hugh Likes Fiction: Platform Decay

August 3, 2026

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Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries, book 8)

Written by Martha Wells

Narrated by Kevin R. Free

Audiobook published by RB Media

The Skinny: Murderbot performs a daring rescue on a planet-sized space ring, and complains the entire time.

I love Murderbot. and I enjoyed Apple TV’s recent adaptation, but it was really great to get back into my favorite media, Martha Wells’ novellas, particularly as narrated by the superlative Kevin R. Free. And the latest entry in the series, Platform Decay, is just as great as previous entries. The novella opens with Murderbot and fellow rogue secunit Three infiltrating a giant artificial habitation torus around a dead planet. Murderbot is there to rescue hostages, the family of its friend and mentor Dr. Mensah, who were captured by a vengeful corporation. It manages to get them out of their hidden safe house, but now they have bigger problems: Navigating the colossal torus to their exit point without being discovered and recaptured, and a promise to free more captive civilians, including more children, along the way.
Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries are a constant delight, particularly the way they dissect and reinterpret old SFF tropes. Murderbot is less a robot wanting to be human than an artificial being discovering its humanity largely against its will. Murderbot’s narration is full of snarky asides, complaints, and its unique perspective along with its attempts to and struggles with communicating and connecting with others. It is, as always, brilliantly delivered by Kevin R. Free, as over the course of the adventure through a habitation torus divided into multiple different zones, each with different owners, regulations, modes of transport, and even biomes, Murderbot gets more and more frustrated and tired. You will thrill to hear Murderbot complain about the bus.
Wells’s mastery of world building is also on display as the characters move through the various zones of the torus, we get little glimpses of how life actually works, both in the torus and in Preservation Colony, where the characters are from, as they come up against obstacles like traffic due to a sporting event, and reports of other rogue secunits, not just our protagonist.
While it is a sequel to the previous books, Platform Decay is actually a great place to jump into the series. Returning characters have brief mentions to past events, but nothing that is critical to the plot that isn’t explained. Most of the characters are new, and charming, and the adventure is entirely self-contained in its short audio runtime.
If you are a fan of the Murderbot Diaries this is a must-listen, but if you are curious, this is also a great jumping on point. You can find Platform Decay in print, ebook, and audiobook, and I listened to the Audiobook through Hoopla, an app that works with local libraries to provide access to books, audiobooks, graphic novels, music, movies, and more. at no cost. Check to see if your local library participates!

Everyday Drabbles #1169: Naga

February 1, 2025

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The Naga keep to themselves. On rare occasions, one can be seen in the wasteland, watching silently before slithering away. They don’t mix with the other peoples of the world.
Rumors say they are the remnants of a lost civilization conducting horrific rituals and worshiping strange gods in the ruins. The Naga would be bemused by the description.
Their ship had crashed and stranded them on this planet decades ago. Rather than twist the world out of shape with their advanced technology, they elected to wait for the native civilizations to catch up before announcing themselves. They are very patient.

“Sudan Naga Ram Temple 01” by Dbxsoul is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

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Everyday Drabbles © 2025 by Hugh J. O’Donnell is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

Hugh Likes Fiction: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

November 6, 2024

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The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

Written by Malka Older

Published by Tor

The Skinny: You seem like you might need something cozy right now.

The second novella in Malka Older’s ongoing series, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is a delightfully cozy mystery set in the post-Earth colonized world of Giant, née Jupiter. Pleity is Classical Scholar, who studies ancient texts to gather data about the lost biomes of Earth in an attempt to someday recreate them. Mossa is an investigator as well as her once and current romantic partner. They were thrown together again when Mossa’s investigations led her to Pleity’s University in search of a missing and presumed dead scholar in the first book in the series, The Mimicking of Known Successes.
The sequel finds Mossa once again calling on Pleity’s help,some time after their initial investigation, as she attempts to locate a missing student. They find no less than seventeen people have gone missing from the University across a number of different fields. Meanwhile, the previous investigation has shake Pleity’s faith in the organization and its methods. The pair travel not just the many linked artificial platforms orbiting Jupiter, but also to the moon of Io, Mossa’s home and the site of the first controversial Jovian settlement.
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is as enchanting a novella as the first in the series with clever, deep world-building, a cast of lovable space communists, and just enough danger to keep things interesting. Fans will find much to love in this one, and while it spoils the ending of the first book, the opening serves to get new readers up to speed quickly.
Like the first book, the story is over too quickly. I would have loved a meatier, less straightforward mystery for them to solve, but everything clicks nicely into place with a satisfying ending.
Books three and four in the series are scheduled for future releases, so I can’t wait for the further adventures of these two pseudo-Victorian space goofs. You can find The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles in print from your local bookshop, or in ebook or audiobook from your preferred online retailer.