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Hellspark features a main character named Tocohl who is confident, pragmatic, and within the first few pages of Chapter 1 uses her fighting skills and responsive armor suit skin to take down a group of bad guys armed with knives who are kidnapping a woman who turns out to be an important character in the story. Tocohl is assisted by her extrapolative computer Maggie, who lives in Tocohl's ship but uses a remote to interact with characters on planet part of the time. Tocohl usually speaks to Maggie by subvocalizing—this book was where I first heard that term, though I didn't quite understand what it meant until I read TMBD.

The main story takes place on a planet where a survey team has gone to assess if one of the life forms there, the sprookjes, are sapient, because that will determine whether the planet can be developed by outside forces or not. But there's been a mysterious death, the planet is prone to frequent lightning storms, and the survey team are all humans from different planets, leading to cultural and language differences that add to the tension. Tocohl, however, is from a culture of traveling merchants, and she uses her understanding of the languages and the nonverbal movements of the different cultures to work through the group's communication challenges as she helps them try to determine if the sprookjes are sapient before their time runs out.

ART:

And at the same time, Company SecUnits are treated much worse than Three by virtue of being rentals. Many--if not most--of Murderbot's clients didn't want to have any SecUnits, but were required to take them per Company rental agreements for other equipment. Even the ones who specifically did want SecUnits didn't have any investment in what happened to them. They were the equivalents of the U-haul you'd rent to move your couch across town. They just needed to do a job briefly and hopefully be in good enough shape to get their deposit back at the end, but if not, eh. No big deal. Murderbot has never had the same clients for very long, and it's never had to work with the same SecUnits for very long. Every contract changes. Nothing lasts.

It loves a trashy soap opera. It’s so soft and gentle with an injured Volescu. It’s favorite human is a middle aged mom who drives carefully and mom friends at her friends and coworkers. It’s so delicate and considerate with Mensah’s kids. It lets Tapan sleep touching it and turns up it's body heat for extra comfort. It likes plays and musical theatre. It's best human friend is a sunshine nerd from Planet Hippy. It keeps a diary. It doesn’t understand the appeal of human adolescents but it’s so good with Amena. It likes decidedly unrealistic media. It cares so much about humans that it’s never met and wants to keep them safe and happy. It gently frets over Three just minutes after meeting it. It gets flustered and confused when complimented or treated with care. It offers to free other constructs, even while actively fighting them. It has criticisms and strong opinions on media. It’s shy. It “hacks” its way into things by asking the relevant bots to be friends and share media. It only ever really scares Amena when she witnesses it's wild grief over losing ART. It stops, gets back in control, and explains immediately when it realizes it’s causing her distress. It lets ART make media requests, pauses to let it process its own emotions, and re-watches certain scenes over and over again until it’s happy, mere moments after ART scares it so badly it goes nearly catatonic, simply because ART asked. It grieves Miki even though it never really liked the bot in the first place. It’s uncomfortable with physical touch but offers to let Mensah hug it and lets her grab its arm when she’s in distress.

Murderbot's Pterrible Pterosaur Ptorment

It walks up, says "hi", hears the unit it just met has humans its trying to protect, and says, "you don't have to, you could be free"

And then gets told, "I am free you dipshit, I'm still protecting these humans. Fuck off"