Rogue Protocol is the third novella in the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells.
Finished on: 18.11.2025
[Here are my reviews of the other novellas in the series.]

Plot:
Following the news about its own disappearance, Murderbot realizes that Dr. Mensah is in trouble as people question why she doesn’t know where “her” sec unit is. Murderbot decides that a new story is needed to take off heat of Dr. Mensah – and decides to investigate a terraforming GrayCris abandoned a few years ago and where it suspect something different going on than the official claims. With a bit of luck, Murderbot gets where it needs to go – only to happen yet again into a mission that it didn’t sign up for.

I am so happy that this series is living up to the hype that it came with – and Rogue Protocol is no exception. It is well-written, insightful and funny, and Murderbot is simply a great protagonist. I am very excited about this.

Rogue Protocol continues a different plot thread from what I thought it would, but I can’t say that I am angry about that. (Still curious about where I saw things going, though.) It expands the already pretty big world Wells created by new facets and everything makes a whole lot sense, which i generally appreciate.

It also continues to ask questions about what it means to be, not a human, but a person. I am not sure whether Murderbot would like me calling it a person, but whether it wonders about its own personhood or realizes that even far more limited bots like Miki (or far less human things like ART in the last ones) are persons, it might grow to accept its own validity. I think it already started. (Also, Miki is awesome.)

Wells has a wonderful way of letting Murderbot grow (so much so that it starts to feel weird to call it Murderbot, but it hasn’t really announced a new name yet), yet at the same time of showing that its fundamental character didn’t change all that much – leading it to make a lot of the same mistakes again and again, but they usually turn out to be the good kind of mistakes.

But this is not some kind of philosophical treatise (or not just one), it is an exciting SciFi mystery with a good portion of (well-handled) action scenes, vivid characters all around – and a great sense of humor. I am very glad that I still have plenty left to read in the series.

Summarizing: fantastic.