Platform Decay

By: Martha Wells

Narrated by: Kevin R. Free

A most-anticipated title from USA Today, Goodreads, BookPage, BookRiot, Seattle Times, and The Nerd Daily!

Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back in the next installment of Martha Wells' bestselling and award-winning Murderbot Diaries series.

Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.

After volunteering to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realizes that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn't know.

Including human children. Ugh.

This may well call for … eye contact!

(Emotion check: Oh, for f—)

“This spectacular journey, punctuated with satisfying combat scenes, takes on an epic flavor grounded by Murderbot’s sardonic voice and Wells' exploration of mental health and physical well-being. Equal parts action packed, humorous, and heartfelt, this proves the series shows no signs of slowing down.”—Publishers Weekly

©2026 Martha Wells (P)2026 Recorded Books

"Emotion check" Murderbot might need a therapist...

What a Funtastic audiobook! Just fun, Fun, FUN! I loved every minute! Murderbot is on mission to rescue part of Dr Mensah's family little did Murderbot realize how difficult that would be for them! Dealing with human feelings, human emotions, and ummm yeah even eye contact. And surprisingly the mission got complicated when it realizes that instead of three people it needed to rescue a total of eight, and the other five were in another location! So eight people in two locations and some of 'em were children. Murderbot would have shuddered if it didn’t have the perfect control as Murderbot is a Sec'Unit Cyborg, plus Murderbot has the 'Walk Like a Human' program running... 😆! And wouldn't you know they're being chased by a Evil Corp. Also Murderbot had a secondary goal which was to give # 3, another 'him' to not only help accomplish the mission, but to also experience more freedom from the tyranny of the controllers! And ummm things get messy especially after # 3 releases other Sec'Unit from their controller...
So yeah AwesomeSauce grab the audiobook because Kevin R Free unleashes Murderbot with all their wry cynicism, don't forget to bring the media... Sanctuary Moon...

Love this!

I can't believe that I had forgotten how much I love this series. It took a little bit of time for me to fall back into the world of our funny, yet so adorable SecUnit but before I knew it, I was enthralled all over again.

In this book, we follow along as he is on a mission that doesn't exactly go the way he planned. There is also the fact that he is now apparently a mentor of sorts for another SecUnit (Three) and is handing out "How-To" cheat sheets like candy ("How to" walk like a human, dress like a human, etc).

One of my favorite things was his new - "Emotion Check" - where he continually checked in with himself to see how he was feeling. I expected some of his emotions, but some made my already enamored heart melt feel for him even more -

Examples like: Totally calm, Exasperation, Angry, Sulky, Conflicted, Panicking.

I mean seriously, how can you just not want to hug him (even though he realized that being touched was maybe not as bad as he used to think.....)

So this was another winner. I hope this series keeps going for a very long time.

Heartwarming Hostage Situation

Following Sec Unit slowly accepting that it is part of a family while doing superhero level shit and complaining the whole time beings me such joy!

I listened to it twice!

Another stressful adventure for murderbot. It's always complaining but at the same time you know it loves what it does. Also I got to learn what a Taurus structure was.

Kind of just ends

This is a great addition to the series, the setting of this one is amazing. My only issue with this book is that it kind of just ends. I would have liked another chapter of everyone returning to Preservation. There are some loose ends to tie up.