Why People Who Like Murderbot Will Also Like City Spies

Aka, I’m desperate for more city spies fans.

1. Found family with problems who try to do better and fix those problems

In the Murderbot Diaries, Dr. Mensah and the rest of PreservationAux are Murderbot's found family. They purchase it, but because they don't have the opportunity to talk things over, things go badly and it runs away. But by Exit Strategy, they're trying to treat it better --- Pin-Lee sneaks it stuff to help it run away, Mensah explicitly tells it she handled things very badly, all the humans make sure it has time now to make its own decisions. 

In the same way, all of the City Spies screw up in their attempt to become a family. From the beginning, Mother handles Charlotte badly and doesn't tell the others. Then he and Brooklyn don't tell the others about a project, and Sydney gets jealous of Brooklyn, and they have to handle so much emotional drama beyond just the stuff with Mother's family. (By the way, it's really hard to provide spoiler free examples so just trust me on this. Or read the books.) Even in books 3 and 4, by the point you'd think they'd've worked out some issues, there's still subplots about the spies learning to become a family and to resolve their problems. 

The found family situation in City Spies is very similar to the Murderbot books, because each group begins with some people who know each other and a new person who doesn't, and over the course of the next few books, they become a family --- there are still issues between them, no problems are magically solved, but it becomes a situation where they all *want* to work together and solve those problems and help! each! other!

2. Neurodivergent rep 

Murderbot has become a character I and many other neurodivergent folks identify with. In the same way, I identify with Kat and Monty, two canonically-confirmed neurodivergent characters. While this confirmation does not come until the middle of book 4, there are hints from as early as book 1. I knew by the time Kat said, "That would be fine, if you were Sydney," that she was someone who also needed things to be in a very specific order to function well. 

Like Murderbot, Kat sees the world in a fundamentally different light. She understands how patterns and math underlie every aspect of the world, and she sees patterns where others see chaos, which lets her play an important and celebrated role in the group. Murderbot plays a similar role, as a SecUnit, since its brain works differently from both humans and bots, and its friends know that and accept it, such as with the drones and the listening in. Beyond that, though, they're both socially awkward (see: every single page they appear on in their respective series) but deeply loyal to their friends/chosen family.

3. Kat and Char are not *not* aspec 

I don't have much to say on this because it's a middle grade series, so there's no romance at all, but Kat and Charlotte both strike me as arospec or acespec, from the way they interact with each other and the way their relationship fallout is treated almost like a breakup but fundamentally different because they're different. 

4. Some easy possibilities for despair 

Mother's traumatic rescue from the fire, found family gone very wrong, so many mission-gone-wrong possibilities, Magpie. There are *so* many things that despair-y brains can take as fanfic fuel. So much of it is glossed over because, hey, middle grade series, but all the fans are teenagers and know not to read stuff we don't want to see. So despair away! (Just tag things properly, please.)

5. Spy missions. Just. Spy missions

Who doesn't like a good heist? And who doesn't enjoy competent humans just like Murderbot does? City Spies offers both. 

And there's lots of room to explore both the kids as spies and the adults -- there's lots of fic potential in Monty's first few missions, or Mother and Clementine working together, or even Virginia Wescott and Monty being friends in training!

6. Beny could easily be sapient 

AI sapience is a big thing in sci-fi. And Murderbot's take on it is great. While there's no canon AI in the city spies books, there is great possibility in Beny, the computer that the city spies depend on; Brooklyn and Monty already treat it like it's sapient, and what if it was? I've written one fanfic about this concept, and I have lots of ideas for more. 

In conclusion, for people who love the big themes of Murderbot, the city spies series contains many similar themes, or the possibility of exploring similar themes, and you should definitely read them. Come join me!