System Collapse is the second longer Murderbot story and picks up immediately after Network Effect so definitely recommend at least refreshing yourself on that if not rereading it prior to picking this one up. After the events of Network Effect, Murderbot is still trying to figure out what it wants for itself and in the meantime is helping colonists but starts finding gaps in its memory and other issues that might led to unreliability so Murderbot needs to figure itself out quickly.

It pains me to give a Murderbot book less than four stars but I don't think I've felt this ambivalent about a Murderbot book since Rogue Protocol. I'm sure I'll do another re-read at some point because maybe it was a mood issue but I just did not care about anything that was happening for the first 60% of this.

The front half is a lot of setting up the situation on the planet and what's going on with the colonists and their history with the Barrish-Estranza company and very little action is happening until the back half. Once the back half got rolling, I felt more engaged. The back half also has some of the best character moments and definitely had me smiling and feeling more like I was reading a Murderbot book.

If you've made it this far in Murderbot, you'll still probably enjoy it but Network Effect remains my favorite of the series. I appreciate Murderbot finally dealing with its trauma but this just had too much detail on planetary colonization that just did not hold my attention. Though again, that was perhaps because I was reading it when I was having a rough time. We'll see when I get around to re-reading it.