All Systems Red
Martha Wells
Narrated by Kevin R Free
This is not the voice I'm looking for
I have read every extant Murderbot story (novels, novellas, and one short story) with pleasure, and All Systems Red may be my favorite.
What I love about Murderbot is Murderbot's voice. By that I do not mean how It sounds when It speaks. What I mean is the emotional tone. It's familiar, because it is the same voice I hear in my skull when I think: introverted, fond of TV and movies, and eager to do absolutely anything other than deal with humans face-to-face.
The audiobook was always destined to be a challenge. I have given narrator Kevin R. Free an impossible job here. ANY real voice would have been unsatisfactory. And so it was. I don't want to critique any specific aspect of Free's performance, because that is not what my dissatisfaction is about. It is about an actual physical human voice speaking Murderbot's silent thoughts.
Thus, I don't think it's really fair to rate the audiobook based on my subjective enjoyment. I'm going to stick with the four-star rating for the eBook.
Excellent review! 💯
And the idea that sometimes any voice speaking something is not ideal is an interesting idea, and I can see how that could apply to various writings in one way or another for various reasons. ⚖️
Thank you for sharing this excellent review with us readers! 🙏