Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.
Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first. (Pub Date: Nov 14, 2017)
Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.
I haven't read The Martian nor did I intend to, but now I really want it. From that, you can see how much I liked this one.
The story is quite different, though. First, it takes place in a city built on the moon and controlled by a Kenyan enterprise. Jazz is a street-smart young woman who is tired of only having a small capsule to call home and could really do with a private bathroom. A billionaire's offer to sabotage one of Artemis's monopolies was supposed to be her passport to a more comfortable life until she finds out the heist is against something so big that threatens not only the lives of people she loves but the whole Artemis.
Full disclosure? I'm not a sci-fi or even a fantasy novel fan. That is the very reason I had never taken interest in The Martian before. But I do like the idea of a city on the moon and having a female lead to top it off bought me here. But I had no reason to fear, Weir has a very good way to explain everything that always got me laughing instead of my usual bored-to-death whenever it's "let's teach the readers" time.
The book not only has a girl as the heroine, it barely even mentions the United States. It was patent that the author wanted to avoid the cliche and searched for different countries to compose his Artemis. It's nice to mention, he even inserted a statue of the Chinese goddess of the moon—whose name I'm sorry but I can't remember. Even though I called his effort patent, it was all very well mixed. I remember reading another book that had attempted the same and it became a circus of misfits. It was not the case in Artemis. Point to Weir.
(But knowing well about Latin America, the names chosen for the Brazilians were a little too Hispanic, in my opinion... Sanchez and Alvarez don't sound Brazilian to me.)
On the other hand, I think that the feats I liked were also what bothered me. Jazz wasn't much of a woman, I think you could rewrite the whole thing changing her pronouns to the masculine and it won't make a difference. Except for the awkward moments Weir seemed to feel the need to reassure the readers she was a woman, like making her change clothes in front of an audience, forcing a character to have romantic interest in her (he needs to work on his romantic skills if he really has to insert romance in his stories), repeating for no reason how sexy she is... They were just details so I frowned and pretended they didn't exist. Still, it was a bother.
Another issue were the excessive joking. Yes, they were funny, I liked how they soothed all the scientific explanations. It was also clear, however, that they existed for that very purpose. And while we're on the science, I don't think the book needed that much science. I wonder what someone who really understands what that was about would think but for me, while it wasn't boring, it was still an excess of details. Well, it was still amazing that he thought that far, that I'll concede.
In the end, the plot was way more simple than it really seems and it made me wonder if Jazz—and her employer—didn't go too far if that (spoiler censored) was his objective. Still, the conclusion was satisfying, and I enjoyed how he inserted some Economy talk there, I wasn't expecting that.
I'm excited to read not only The Martian but also Andy Weir's next works, since he proved he's build worlds and think very far about them. What has he got in store for us?
Rating: 4 out of 5.
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