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October Daye / Inheritance - Essay Series Part Five: Long Series and How to Read Them

Hello Patrons and general audience members! Welcome to another Books That Burn essay by Robin. Thank you to Case Aiken, who receives a monthly Patron shoutout. [Full Audio Available Here] This is the fifth and final entry in a five-part essay series discussing two long-running book series by queer authors: October Daye by Seanan McGuire, and Inheritance by A.K. Faulkner. I chose these series because I love them both, they were intended from the start to be long series, neither of them are finished yet, and the authors have different structural approaches to developing each series across so many volumes. Purely coincidentally, they are both long-running contemporary fantasy series mainly set in California in or near the 2010's, with major characters named Quentin, and whose fast-healing protagonists have a tendency to quasi-adopt a gaggle of magical teenagers. After a brief moment in the 1990's, October Daye begins in earnest in 2009 and has reached 2015 as of the eighteenth boo...
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Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)

No, I didn’t kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn’t dump the body in the station mall.

When Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it knows it is going to have to assist station security to determine who the body is (was), how they were killed (that should be relatively straightforward, at least), and why (because apparently that matters to a lot of people—who knew?)

Yes, the unthinkable is about to happen: Murderbot must voluntarily speak to humans!

Again!

TITLE: Fugitive Telemetry
AUTHOR: Martha Wells
PUBLISHER: Tor.com
YEAR: 2021
LENGTH: 168 pages
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Science Fiction, Mystery
RECOMMENDED: Highly

Queer Rep Summary: Lesbian/Sapphic Secondary Character(s), Bi/Pan Secondary Character(s), Genderqueer/Nonbinary Main Character(s), Ace/Aro Main Character(s).

FUGITIVE TELEMETRY finds Murderbot as murder-detective, trying to figure out why a dead human is dead on Preservation Station, all while following a bunch of human rules.

I like procedurals and this is one, of a sort. It certainly fits the "gruff detective who isn't with the investigating body but still has to begrudgingly work with them and sometimes is under suspicion" classic set of tropes... except it's Murderbot on a station trying to solve the murder. If you like Murderbot and solving mysteries, you'll love this, I sure did.

This continues, generally speaking, the relationships and definitely-not-friendships that have been developing throughout the series so far. The main storyline starts here and wasn't present previously, and, as a murder mystery, there's absolutely a major thing that's introduced and resolved in this volume. I doubt it'll be the last book in the series, and it has things that the last book left open but this doesn't close off, so at minimum those could get picked up by later books. Plus, generally speaking, I'm up to read about whatever Murderbot decides to wander around and do. The MC is still Murderbot and its voice is consistent, though its thoughts are slowly changing in how it thinks about specific humans and groups of humans. This would mostly make sense if someone picked it up at random and didn't know about the rest of the series. The necessary context is present and the main plot is contained in this volume. 

This has murder, bots, and Murderbot, I'm happy and ready for the next book!

CW for ableist language (brief), cursing, violence, trafficking, slavery, murder, death.

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A person in a suit walks through a large grey hallway with a tall multi-limbed robot walking behind it.


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