I read things!

The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett, aka the last Discworld book: Did Not Finish. I have been pushing off reading this book for years, for reasons. I'd never have finished Raising Steam if it hadn't been Discworld, even though it didn't feel like Discworld. This book also doesn't feel like Discworld. The most Discworld it gets is in the tone of the footnotes. Some of the footnotes are the footnotes of a Discworld book. The book itself is not. It is oddly self-indulgent, plodding, and boring. It needs to stay on target. It has the same problem as Raising Steam where it really needed someone to come in and edit and tighten it up and cut, cut, cut.

This is neither a good book nor a good Discworld book. Eventually I just gave up. I may come back but I really don't see any point. It's not well-written, it's not engaging, and at 12 chapters into it, all I could tell you of the plot is "everyone hates 3rd born entities, they're misfits and unwanted, and also I think Geoffrey just came out as agender?" I was never here for "witches exist not to do magic, but to provide unpaid, unappreciated necessary social support", and the gendering of magic in Discworld has never been my thing, plus the witches books were never my favorite (I still hold a grudge about Agnes and even here he managed to stick in a fat joke about her. At least no one was being a jerk to Magrat! ...Yet, perhaps.), I always dislike when dialect is rendered phonetically and this book is a neverending orgy of that stylistic choice, and I just... Discworld ended with Snuff. It was on a downward move, but, you know what, if gave happily ever afters to folks and opened up new ground with the goblins, and let's call it quits there. Snuff was the last Discworld book.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells (Murderbot 1): early on in this book, it became clear that this was not my genre, and then it became clear that this was doubly not my genre. I'm not into Corporate Dystopia and also not into Alone On A Planet And Something Unknown Is Trying To Kill Us. I persevered and finished just because murderbot is so highly recced by everyone, so if nothing else, I'd be more able to read fic or whatnot. But this was not my book or my genre at all, and I wish murderbot had been a robot, not a cyborg.

Artificial Condition (Murderbot 2): "okay but it is hugely popular and it's not like it's going to be another horror trope story and maybe it'll be less corporate dystopia so why not try it, maybe I'll hate less that it's a cyborg indistinguishable from a human instead of a robot, plus it's short" and this turned out to be a good decision! This book was much more enjoyable. I did have the same complaint of "I really wish this had a strong narrative voice", except, well, it does have a strong narrative voice. It just doesn't feel that way to me for some reason. But "I don't care and just want to watch tv" is a strong opinion. I guess maybe I want a voice more in line with Lemony Snicket/JSMN? It feels like it could be just so much stronger, and I wish it was.

Rogue Protocol (Murderbot 3): I feel like it's more hitting its stride. Better all around and I like the narrative voice much more, the POV is coming through stronger.

Exit Strategy (Murderbot 4): again good, again improvement on narrative voice, but omg we're back to corporate dystopia and I'm really tired of these CamelCase names for everything. I liked the ending; I'm sure there's lots of meta on these books as trauma recovery narrative.

Network Effect (Murderbot 5): "*sing-songs* I don't like corporate dystopia! I don't like corporate dystopia!" Large parts were very boring, it sped up when ART came online. But looking directly at Corporate Dystopia and discussing it in universe is not going to make me like it any more. So. Overall enjoyable, but I'm not planning to go on to Murderbot 6, unless someone tells me I should give it a go (I only persevered because I had a stack of books and the last days of Pesach and the first 4 are very short)

Murderbot 6 is another short one and it's a classic murder mystery set in Preservation with minimal Corporate Dystopia onscreen (although there is a fair amount of 'wait, this is how they do it when Not Corporate Dystopia? so weird') if that helps you decide anything.

Is there also a lot of passing out? That was also really bothering me, reading that from the inside POV of it happening over and over again.

Either way, I'm very open to fic recs. I like Murderbot, ART, and Three, but maybe Three the most for fic potential.

I am 99% sure Murderbot does not go into shutdown at any point in book 6! It's a much gentler book with a lot less peril and lower stakes. I'm not sure Murderbot even loses significant performance reliability at any point.

There isn't a whole lot of Three fic I've seen - I think most of the fandom is really hoping we will get a lot more Three in an upcoming book, and waiting until we know more. I will think about recs that have a minimum of Corporate Dystopia in them, but really it's one of those small fandoms where most of the fic is worth a look.

Book 6 does sound enticing! I did like the books, it's just that the genre kept reminding me that, no, I don't, and then it kept hitting on my fainting anxiety. But it's very well done; the stylistic choices done with Three's narration were excellent.

I love Murderbot, and I love the narrative voice, but if it's not your thing it's not your thing. There are many other awesome books out there.

Discworld ended with Snuff. It was on a downward move, but, you know what, it gave happily ever afters to folks and opened up new ground with the goblins, and let's call it quits there. Snuff was the last Discworld book. I sadly came to the same conclusion--I made it (more or less) through all of The Shepherd's Crown, but nothing remains in my memory of it aside from "not a good book :(", and I never read Raising Steam because I'd been burned by a couple other late-series books. Such a shame to see a brilliant writer fall so far, and I have no idea how much was because of his illness. Whatever the reason, the whole series definitely shifted from gently-biting and very clever social commentary to an almost bitter, ham-fisted condemnation of society, until it seemed like the message mattered more to the writer than the story and characters.

Ah well--I remain grateful that he gave us so many enjoyable books before the decline!

I think it was entirely the Alzheimers. I don't know too much about how the process shifted but I know it did. And I don't know how much editing and planning he gave to each book and how that changed. But thinking about the "shape" of the book, the other ones have distinct shapes. The Shepherd's Crown just rambles along, and does not seem to be going in any real direction with any force. It needed a very strong editor and a lot of revision.

I read things!

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