Activation Degradation

A Novel

By: Marina J. Lostetter

Narrated by: Hayden Bishop

Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

The Murderbot Diaries makes first contact in this new, futuristic stand-alone novel exploring sentience and artificial intelligence through the lenses of conflicted robot hero Unit Four, from Marina Lostetter, critically acclaimed author of Noumenon, Noumenon Infinity, and Noumenon Ultra.

When Unit Four - a biological soft robot built and stored high above the Jovian atmosphere - is activated for the first time, it’s in crisis mode. Aliens are attacking the Helium-3 mine it was created to oversee, and now its sole purpose is to defend Earth’s largest energy resource from the invaders in ship-to-ship combat.

But something’s wrong. Unit Four doesn’t feel quite right.

There are files in its databanks it can’t account for, unusual chemical combinations roaring through its pipes, and the primers it possesses on the aliens are suspiciously sparse. The robot is under orders to seek and destroy. That’s all it knows.

According to its handler, that’s all it needs to know.

Determined to fulfill its directives, Unit Four launches its ship and goes on the attack, but it has no idea it’s about to get caught in a downward spiral of misinformation, reprograming, and interstellar conflict.

Most robots are simple tools. Unit Four is well on its way to becoming something more....

©2021 Marina J. Lostetter (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

Engaging and thought provoking!

Activation Degradation by Marina J. Lostetter is great! The book is being pitched as “Murderbot makes first contact” but that description does it a disservice. I love Murderbot and loved this but they are very different books. Lostetter’s tale doesn’t have any of the snark of the Martha Wells’s series, but it does have some of its heart. Activation Degradation asks all kinds of philosophical questions like what it means to be human, what is free will, what’s a conscience? There is excellent writing, thoughtful discussions, action, found family, humor, great LGBTQ rep, and many heartfelt and emotional moments. I would say it’s a mixture of hard sci-fi, space opera, and alien contact.

It opens up slowly but be patient - it’s worth the effort! All of the preliminary scientific world building is important because it makes Unit Four’s personality stand out amidst the mechanical descriptions.

The story changes tone and loses its clinical descriptions after Unit Four’s ship is boarded by a team of invaders.

We see the world thru Unit Four’s eyes so we discover all of the twists and turns of the story as it learns them. It’s hard to give details without spoilers so I will leave it at that. So much heart in this book!

The narrator, Hayden Bishop also does a good job at pulling you into the story and portraying some of the more emotional moments.

Activation Degradation was engaging, thought provoking, and I loved it!

Medium

Story not compelling. Not believable. Lot of emotions which does not make sense to have when you are a fresh born biological robot.

Not actually a story about a robot

The summary tricked me into reading this. I was lead to believe I’d get a cool story with a robot or android at the Center. Instead it’s about an augmented human grown in a cloning vat, with all the stupid human things that come along with being a shitty human.

Besides the false advertisement, it’s also written in a repetitive style that occasionally vomits adjectives at you. It’ll say something like „It felt sticky, syrupy, clingy, tacky and utterly viscous!“

I did not finish this book as the actions of the characters became more and more unrealistic, clearly all so the author could make her plot happen. It’s in the style of „The cat wants the mouse and the mouse is easy to catch so I’ll have to come up with reasons why the cat doesn’t actually want to catch this mouse right now but still wants it overall!“

It’s annoying to read because you know exactly what the author is doing the whole time.

Way too much detail / synopsis shows promise though

Sometimes excess detail is helpful other times it’s just an annoyance. The story has promise but I couldn’t get past the first 40 minutes as the story could not progress for the amount of detail. Some helpful but most was unnecessary leaving nothing to be imagined and detracting from the emotional atmosphere that you could just see in the subtext. And there it is. The story in the first 40 mins felt like the subtext to the amount of detail.
I will look for other books narrated by Hayden though as she was doing an amazing job of it.
This is one book I will be reading separately I think so I can skim the excess details and… hopefully… enjoy the story.