[nesfa-reading-group] Book choices for December

[Liz P]

The Murderbot Diaries #7
System Collapse

Martha Wells

Following the events in *Network Effect*, the Barish-Estranza corporation
has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as
additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there,
Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet,
they’re sure as hell not leaving without *something*. If that something
just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a
decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal
operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are
doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with
Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to
hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast.

+++++++++++++++++

Legends & Lattes #0.1
Bookshops & Bonedust

Travis Baldree
In *Bookshops & Bonedust*, a prequel to *Legends & Lattes*, author Travis
Baldree takes us on a journey of high fantasy, first loves, and second-hand
books.

Viv's career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam's Ravens isn't
going as planned.

Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she's packed off
against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk—so far from
the action that she worries she'll never be able to return to it.

What's a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?

Spending her hours at a beleaguered bookshop in the company of its
foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted, but it
may be both exactly what she needs and the seed of changes she couldn't
possibly imagine.

Still, adventure isn't all that far away. A suspicious traveler in gray, a
gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling, and an improbable number
of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever
expected.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Ministry of Time

Kaliane Bradley
A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious
exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it
all:

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and
is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently
established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history
to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the
fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and
monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as
history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed
1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living
with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by
outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the
collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a
seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast
of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a
horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much
deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to
light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with
consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices
that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and
whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.
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