Murderbot Diaries - a question of reading order

You guys should be able to put me straight on this.

Do I go chronological order and read Fugitive Telemetry next

or

publishing order and read Network Effect next?

I have listened to the first four novellas as part of the audible plus catalog and the rest of them are there, too, except for the last which I purchased for $5. I'm not ready to go just now so no pressure. Just don't want to get lost or have something "spoiled" by reading in a whacky order.

>1 Bookmarque: When it comes to these two, it doesn't really matter what order you read them in. But System Collapse takes place right after Network Effect, so it is very very helpful to have Network Effect fresh in your memory before reading SC ;)

Ok so maybe chronological is better since the time perspective kind of matters, right? So that would mean Fugitive first and Network after that.

I personally recommend reading Fugitive Telemetry before Network Effect. I read them as they came out, so in publication order originally, and found it jarring to go back in time after everything that happened in NE. I did a reread before System Collapse came out and read them in chronological order and much preferred it.

>1 Bookmarque: I agree with Alexandra and recommend chronological order. Publishing order skips around with events and could be confusing.

Thanks for the help. I've got a Peter Clines book going at the moment, but will head back into Murderbot after that and it will be F.T. At about 4 1/2 hours, it won't take me long to get through.

I agree with chronological order. Martha Wells has commented that she wrote Fugitive Telemetry to make a better transition of inter-relations between the characters leading into Network Effect.

I listen to MurderBot on audiobook and enjoy them out of chronological sequence. My listening mostly is early morning walking Luna, my Labradoodle. I started pre-dawn listening back in 1991 when audiobooks were on cassette. MurderBots are some of the best on audio.

Ok, so I just listened to F.T. today and that was kind of fun - a murder mystery for a change. That's what I thought these books were about when I only knew the title character's name, not its role - that it was a robot detective. How fun that at least one of the books lets it become that. And I just read a bit about Network Effect and, yay, ART's back! Am going to get going on that one next.

Thanks everyone who suggested I listen to these in chronological order. I found Network Effect to be complicated and a bit tedious compared to the shorter works and so going directly from that time to the next made it easier to keep track of people and events. ART was less entertaining this time around for some reason - seems his barbs and jibes are less playful and more hurtful. Hm.

>10 Bookmarque: Maybe you should be cleansing your palate between these. I know reading or listening to too much of any one author at length doesn't work for me.

Well I dove right in and am at the beginning of System Collapse - sometimes I find that staying in a strange world is better than popping out for a while. Plus some friends are reading the whole of the Silo Saga which I only have read the first - Wool, so I'll get the next two on audio. Didn't want to mix my dystopias!

>12 Bookmarque: I enjoyed Wool, but I didn't keep going. I will await your verdict.

I will have to read the last part of Wool before proceeding since I don't remember much about the war and the stuff not included in the Apple streaming series. Then I'll get to the others and hope they are good. The waitlist for the books from the library is really long, so I'll get them from Audible. Funny that for the second set, Shift, the price is lower for that than the ebook. I hate that pricing for this kind of thing so weird and nonsensical.