Cleaning with Murderbot (kids, definitely try this at home, but only when the kids aren't home or if you're using an earpiece, so they can't hear it)

Do you know what makes cleaning more fun bearable: Cleaning with Murderbot!  The audiobooks of Martha Wells' splendid series of Murderbot novellas are fantastic.  Kevin R. Free is crabby, frustrated, annoyed, irritated, and obsessed in such a way that I almost can't imagine how reading the text myself could possibly be as much fun as listening to him as he brings this character and its world to life.

When I realized that part 3 had come out, I was excited.  And then I saw that part 4 was the "conclusion" and had also come out. ALL OF THEM WERE AVAILABLE THROUGH MY LIBRARY SYSTEMS.  I may have listened to them all.  Twice.  In a row.  Oh, Murderbot, ART, Miki, and assorted annoying humans, it was wonderful to listen to you while I cleaned and did laundry and dishes and came up with as many excuses as I could find to keep listening (and laughing and wincing and wanting to give Murderbot a hug, even though that would totally freak it out).

Murderbot is a construct, a SecUnit (security unit) created of organic, cloned human parts (including a face) and inorganic computer/mechanical parts (most of its brain, I think).  Most areas of the inhabited universe consider them robot tools; they are not considered sentient beings capable of self-determination, and they are strictly controlled by corporations that own and deploy them to places where human security would cost more and be less effective.  They get nearly destroyed a lot.  It hurts, even when you can control your pain receptors to some extent.  These units all have a failsafe installed to prevent them from running amok and destroying everything around them. The failsafe monitors all their actions and can override their self-control.

Murderbot does not have a functioning failsafe; it hacked its Governor Module after something went wrong and Murderbot killed a bunch of people.  (It wasn't held responsible for its actions, of course, because it is considered a tool.)  That is also when it started to refer to itself as Murderbot.  Now that it has its freedom of conscience, control of its actions, and a lot of experience and scary strength it could wreak an awful lot of havoc.  What it actually does is hide from (and complain about) its annoying human clients as much as possible, try to fill in the gaps in its patheticly inadequate, corporate security module education, and binge-watch TV/media every spare second.  And give some powerful (and frequently hilariously aggravated) commentary on what it means to be human and / or a person.  And sometimes accidentally-kind-of-on-purpose go on murderous rampages to save dumb people. 

Murderbot is not interested in becoming a human (humans are pretty dumb, for the most part) or even more human (its revulsion when a helpful AI offers to give it functioning sexual organs is thought-provoking on a number of levels and also pretty stinkin' funny).  But all the humans seem to assume that's what everything wants.  Pretending to be human and fitting in better with humans gives it more freedom, though (and about 800x the stress and aggravation), so it goes back and forth a lot on the topic.

I LOVE ME SOME MURDERBOT. 

Best of all?  There's a novel coming out next year.  I hope they get Kevin R. Free to narrate it.  Except then I will have to go on a 16-hour cleaning binge, and I think that would be a terrible idea.  Maybe if it comes out in the spring . . .