Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells [Review]

Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries #3) by Martha Wells
Format: ebook
Source: borrowed through Kindle Unlimited
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Date read: May 30, 2025

The Murderbot Diaries
1. All Systems Red
2. Artificial Condition
2.5. Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy
3. Rogue Protocol - Paperback | Kindle
4. Exit Strategy
4.5. Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory
5. Network Effect
6. Fugitive Telemetry
7. System Collapse

Martha Wells
| Website | Amazon |

Synopsis (Goodreads):

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.

Thoughts on Rogue Protocol: Murderbot has found some of the answers it was looking for about its past, but it's not in the clear yet. Mostly because it's an AI who might think it doesn't care, but it ends up caring too much. So when it sees that the case Preservation Aux brought against GrayCris isn't going as cleanly as it thinks it should (really, humans complicate EVERYTHING), it decides to follow up on an offhand comment Dr. Mensah made in one of her press interviews and...well, THINGS HAPPEN.

What things? you might ask. Oh, little things like hitching a ride to a station that GrayCris wrote off as a terraforming failure to search for clues to illegal activity. It *might* have represented itself as an augmented human instead of a SecUnit (because rogue SecUnits are terrifying) and it *might* be in the middle of what could possibly be sabotage of said station. Oh, and there might be pet robots and possibly other SecUnits it has to deal with.

You know, things.

Basically, this anti-social AI has a lot of interacting its doing for a construct who doesn't like interacting. And all to make sure Dr. Mensah and her team get the evidence they need to keep their case moving forward. For a so-called rogue SecUnit ("so-called" because it may be ungoverned, but it's not nearly as murderous as people think it will be), it's pretty dedicated to helping the humans who cross its path.

*thumbs up* and onto book 4!