May 2026

 Hi friends,

Maycember is always a whirlwind with all the activities around the kids getting out of school. We had an art show, a picnic, a snowstorm, and our regularly occurring illnesses to navigate. 

I did get the chance to reread all of Murderbot along with a few other new releases, including Fonda Lee’s new release. I would highly recommend a first read or reread of Murderbot. It was so good. 

Let me know what you think of these books and if you have suggestions for further reading. 

Best,

Tonya 

Rogue Protocol (Murderbot Diaries #3) by Martha Wells

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: In this installment, Murderbot sets off on a sidequest to gather evidence to condemn one of the evil corporations that is trying to ruin its life and the lives of its’ people. Along the way, Murderbot encounters a companion (a.k.a. sex) bot that defies its expectations for human-cyborg relations. There’s tons of awesome action, stupid humans who are always awful at their own security, and an emotional gauntlet for Murderbot to navigate. 

Exit Strategy (Murderbot #4) by Martha Wells

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: The first four Murderbot novellas create one long arc that tells the first arc of Murderbot’s decision to live as a free whatever it is! This novella is one long rescue mission to save Murderbot’s favorite human, Dr. Mensah, from an evil corporation. Wells knows that corporations make excellent bad guys in this current day and economy, and their literal mustache-twirling sinister smiles are not the most unbelievable parts of the story. Murderbot has to risk everything to save Dr. Mensah and her crew, who have begun to feel like more than clients. Can Murderbot overcome its extreme social anxiety to save the day and possibly get a life? Never underestimate Murderbot. 

Home: Habitat, Range, NIche, Territory (Murderbot #4.5) by Martha Wells

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: This short story is told from Dr. Mensah’s point of view following the events of Exit Strategy. I liked seeing this world from another point-of-view and getting a short peek inside of Mensah’s head. It really helped expand Wells’s world and contextualize the difference between the evil corporations that inhabit most of the universe, and Preservation’s utopia. 

 Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot #6) by Martha Wells

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: This is technically the sixth book released in the Murderbot series, but it falls chronologically fifth and follows the events of Exit Strategy. When I first read Murderbot, I read this one after Network Effect and was super confused about why the explosive events at the end of Network Effect weren’t even mentioned in this one. I would recommend reading this one before Network Effect, which made for a better reading experience. In this one, Murderbot becomes a detective and gets to solve a murder mystery as well as the mystery of human prejudice against innocent but deadly former SecUnits who just want to protect the only family it’s ever found. It’s nice to see Murderbot in what’s not a life or death high stakes rescue operation, and to just get to see it interact with some of its favorite people. 

Network Effect (Murderbot #5) by Martha Wells

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: This installment is a huge pivot for Murderbot. First of all, it’s the first full length novel, and it’s also the most action packed and even has some horror elements. Murderbot again takes on a big, bad corporation in defense of some naive and innocent settlers, but out maneuvering the corporation this time will take more than just Murderbot’s ability to get shot over and over and keep on coming. It might even require Murderbot to do something more painful: experience emotional vulnerability. This is peak Murderbot, and probably my favorite book in the series. 

System Collapse (Murderbot #7) by Martha Wells

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: This novel-length episode picks up following the dramatic end of Network Effect, and we get to see Murderbot deal with its own trauma that came as a result of those events. Since Murderbot isn’t human, there’s no template or proven tools to help it cope, so it’s once again flying by the seat of its pants trying to fix its emotional well-being and save a bunch of security-stupid humans who are way out-matched by an evil corporation. 

Platform Decay (Murderbot #8) by Martha Wells

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: This is the new Murderbot book that just came out a few weeks ago. This one follows a familiar infiltrate and rescue plot that we’ve seen before in other Murderbot books. The main difference in this one is that Murderbot has evolved as a being. Murderbot’s internal dialogue is always the best part of these books, and in this one we get to experience Murderbot’s increasingly unhinged “emotion checks,” which it started doing to deal with the trauma from previous adventures. We also get to see Murderbot interact with children, and it is delightful. I’m not sure where Murderbot will go from here, and Wells has announced that there will only be one more installment, so I’m eager to see how she wraps it up. I definitely recommend a first read, and have to say that I enjoyed the series even more on this re-read. 

The Class of ‘74: Congress After Watergate and the Roots of Partisanship by John A. Lawrence

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review:  Lawrence worked on Capital Hill for many years in many different roles, so he had unique access to some of the main players still around from the 1974 freshmen class in the House of Representatives. This class swept into power following Nixon’s impeachment in what would be described today as a blue wave with dozens of freshmen Democrats flipping Republican seats amidst the nation-wide furor over Watergate. This freshmen class has been accredited with implementing many of the changes that have made the House what it is today including deposing several chairmen who had ruled their committees with iron fists for decades and impeded many of the liberal initiatives that the Democrat-led House tried to pass. This class pushed for the house to be democratized and power to be pushed out to newer members and subcommittee leadership. The author makes the case that some of these changes inadvertently contributed to the rise of polarization and dysfunction that dominates the House today. This book was published in 2018, so it doesn’t even include any of the mishaps of the Congresses since then including the lack of a Speaker for months, the longest ever government shutdown, and the Speaker agreeing to a rules package that could allow a vote to be called by a single member on wheterh or not to oust him as speaker. That all seems mad when you read about how the House managed its members back in the 1970s and even into the 1980s. One thing that struck me when I was reading was that the Democrats seemed to take it for granted that they would always retain the House majority. They had for decades at this point in the 20th century. It almost made it seem like they were completely blind-sided by the rise of Regan-era Conservatism in the 1980s.This mindset draws another stark contrast with the House today where the majority seems to flip regularly every 4-6 years or so. This was a good read for those who want to go in the weeds reading about the House’s parliamentary procedures and rule changes and how that contributes to our current day legislative landscape. That being said, since this book tried to capture the breadth of the class of 1974, there was a lot of names. Like too many names to keep track of, and they all kind of blurred together and made the narrative hard to follow. That was my main critique. Still, as someone who has worked briefly on the Hill and continues to work for a legislative agency, I enjoy learning about the history of Congress. 

The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: Lee is responsible for what many in the sci-fi/fantasy community consider the best urban fantasy series of our generation, The Green Bone Saga. I enjoyed that trilogy so much that Lee became a must-read author for me, so I was excited to hear that she was publishing a stand alone scifi novel featuring a menopausal hitman/fixer who is just trying to finish her last job so she can retire and leave the edge life behind. This book was super atmospheric. It’s set on an inhabitable exoplanet that hosts a population of humans trying a centuries-long terraforming quest after being cut off from contact with Earth 500 years before. Capitalism dominates their society even more than it does now with “the company” dictating almost every aspect of the lives of the population. Isako is a top tier contractor, who is hired by company leadership to advise on everything from increasing production, to leading armies in hostile corporate takeovers that involve real fatalities, not just board room ousters. Those who can’t or won’t hold regular employment from the company are ostracized and expected to willingly walk out of the biosphere to perish in the freezing cold and radiation blasted ground that is this branch of humanity’s home. I loved the world-building in this story, and especially how the setting was reflected in the characters’ choices and motivations. I also really liked Isako as our protagonist. I love a bada** female samurai who's known as Quickdraw for her legendary fighting skills. I wasn’t such a huge fan of the second point-of-view character. This was intentional by Lee. He’s not meant to be likable, but he was sympathetic. That’s what Lee excels at: writing characters that even when they make horrible decisions you can still sympathize with them and understand their motivations even if you disagree with the choice. I’ve heard other reviewers say that “no one is the villain of their own story,” and I appreciate that Lee trusts her audience enough to write characters that make controversial decisions and to portray them sympathetically, not just as mustache-twirling evil-doers. She’s not scared of people accusing her of condoning or supporting their decisions and the accompanying potential for getting canceled that always lurks for prominent public figures in our hyper-online day and age. Anyway, I digress. This was a great book, and I kind of wish we had another installment because I’m not sure how I felt about the ending, which is why it got 4 stars instead of 5. I would definitely read more in this world and from Isako’s point of view. 

James by Percival Everett

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review:  I read this book for a book club that I participate in with some ladies from work. One of the reasons that I enjoy book clubs is that I get to read books that I otherwise would not have picked for myself, and this was one of those. I think your reading experience with this book will be heavily influenced on if or when you read Huckleberry Finn. This novel is a spin-off of that story told from the slave Jim’s point of view, and I think that this story was better. Before I get my high school English teacher coming at me, I also have to admit that it has been nearly 2 decades since I read Huckleberry Finn, and my memories of the story were hazy at best, so it might not be a fair comparison. However, this book does what all great retellings should do: it maintains the most important elements of the original while adapting it to the time period that we live in. The pace and structure of this book differ a lot from those I usually read in the scifi/fantasy genre. The whole book feels like a symphony that starts out pretty slow and tame and then builds and crescendos through a series of increasingly disturbing and violent events to a fantastic and dynamic climax. Then the book ends like 5 pages later. No falling action, no time to explore the ramifications of these events on Jim or the other characters. We’re just done. I’m sure that Everett intended for the reader to feel this abruptness and to chafe somewhat at the uncertainty surrounding the fate of our characters, and I think that choice brilliantly tied into the rest of his themes surrounding Jim’s inability to control any aspect of his own fate. Anyway, since this book already won a well-deserved Pultizer, I don’t think that my one paragraph review will add much to the conversation, but there it is. Everett is a genius, and so is Jim/James, who is definitely better-read and educated than I am, or any of his owners. Being able to see some of these characters’ reactions when they discover Jim’s erudition was another remarkable statement from Everett on how prejudice so extremely distorts our view of the people around us. Anyway, I’m again unsure how I felt about the ending, which is where the 4 stars came from, but I do admire Everett for the bold artistic choice and have to admit that any other ending would have felt incongruous with the rest of the story. 

You’ve Been Pooping All Wrong: How to Make Your Bowel Movements A Joy by Trisha Pasricha, MD, MPH

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review:  I’ve been on a long fiction streak, so I decided to break things up with some nonfiction, starting with this book by a neurogastroenterologist. For those not familiar with this niche medical subspeciality, that means intestinal doctors that study the connection between the gut and the brain. And what a fascinating connection it is! I had no idea that our guts contain neurons and that there’s a dedicated nerve that connects our brain directly to our guts. So when we’re nervous about something and feel butterflies in our stomach, that is actually a physiological reaction as our intestines respond to our nervous or anxious feelings. I think everyone should read this book. Dr. Pasricha is a great story teller, and I loved her authorial voice that could make discussion of some of the grossest things our bodies do entertaining and enlightening. I have to say that I now have a much better understanding of how my own body works, and that I’m definitely enjoying the pleasure that comes with pooping. Now I just look forward to the day when I only have to think about my own bowel movements, instead of the little people that I’m constantly cleaning up after and asking if their poops were pokey….