I haven't read this series yet but it's on my TBR. Is there some kind of actual justification for the price of these books? The combined total word count of all the books is ~350k, which is 50k words shorter than a few books I've recently read that cost $7-8 each. Meanwhile the entire Murderbot series costs $76 to purchase, most of them being 30k words for $12.
I'm lethargic on both getting around to reading it and not letting those hefty prices color my opinion if I were to read it, so I'm not sure if I ever will.
Yeah there's a few ways they could be acquired. I don't do Amazon or Kindle but they appear to be on Kindle Unlimited. They've also apparently been sent out for free a few times. I feel like it puts a bad taste in my mouth either way; even if I could sidestep the cost, by reading them it would still be supporting the books and therefore the gouging of others, in an indirect sense.
I don't think they're all on KU. I ended up reading them all as ebooks through the library. Had to wait for a couple of them, so just read other stuff in between.
Except one, all of them are very short indeed. Tho when I discovered the series, All Systems Red was cheap, probably to get you hooked. I liked them a lot, tho after a while it tends to repeat itself a bit. I'd say buy them one at a time and decide how far you'll go?
The justification is in murderbot itself. I'd get my hands on one of them and see if you like it. If you don't, then don't bother because the murderbot sure won't bother.