Murderbot won the Hugo for best novel in 2021. This is the first _novel_ in the series. The previous publications were novellas, and so not in the same category. I suspect that the award may have been in part for the series and not this book specifically. We see this in other years, for example with N.K. Jemisin winning the Nebula for Stone Sky, the third book in a trilogy. Was Stone Sky better than the first two, or was this just a way to recognize a great overall series?

I really like that the Hugos added a Best Series category in 2017 to hopefully avoid this sort of thing. It seems like a great series is a different beast than a great single novel.