Andy Weir has delivered another fun, absorbing and realistic science-fiction read. His 2011 novel, The Martian, could easily had been the most phenomenal success a self-published author can ever hope to achieve. Is this follow-up novel, Artemis, up to task of garnering such success? While that remains to be seen, I have confidence that fans of The Martian alone should ensure some measure of success.

Artemis is based on the moon, and instead of a story of survival, what we have here is more of a caper-styled plot with a female protagonist, Jazz Bashara. Written in first-person perspective again, Jazz has a voice that was initially quite reminiscent of the nonchalant humour of Mark Watney. But any similarities end here. While Mark was endearingly dorky, Jazz is geared towards the aggrieved smartass whom, truth be told, got on my nerves sometimes. Oh, and she is pretty much a criminal of sorts, albeit an honest one in her own words.

True to his style, the author managed to make the whole idea of a small city set on the moon highly believable by employing scientific explanations that seem logical. He is truly a science dork, who is not limited to only the field of physics and mathematics (and some botany), as the narrative in Artemis contained a lot of chemistry, and even mechanics and metalworking! One thing’s for sure, he sure knows his EVA suits well. While not as pervasive as The Martian, one can still expect a fair amount of scientific discussions and explanations. Even more impressive was how Weir managed to lay down completely sensible logistical and economic aspects around the creation, establishment and growth of a small city in another world.

While Jazz annoyed me with her petulant and belligerent attitude at times, her characterisation did make the story compelling. Fortunately, I loved most of the supporting characters, particularly her stalwart dad, Ammar, and the clichéd but adorable tech support dude, Shovoba. If you are one of the readers who appreciate diversity, this is the book for you as there is literally no American white-washing evident at all. Weir also mostly avoided controversial stereotypes when it comes to representing the different races. I’d say mostly because there is one character portrayed with the typical greed that personified this group of people. But then again, greed is generally quite universal.

The plot unfolded a tad slowly in the beginning, but once it hits the arc of hidden agendas and conspiracies, the pace picks up significantly and it became very hard to put the book down. And that’s all I can possibly say without spoilers as I conclude my review.

Even though I did not think it is equal to The Martian, Artemis is still an entertaining and engaging read which I’ll recommend for all readers, fans of science fiction or otherwise given its level of realism.

And by the way, duct tape is back!!

I am a HUGE fan of the author's previous book, 'The Martian' (which was made into a pretty popular film of the same name, FYI), so I was so excited to see he had written another book.

In this book, it's again fairly near future and we follow a pretty bad ass lady living on an established colony on the Moon. The main character, Jazz, is an incredibly flawed heroine- she's selfish, reckless, drinks a lot and is involved in a LOT of illegal smuggling. But you know what? I loved her for it. I think it completely added to the story and plot, as we follow her through a whirldwind ride of lunar based corporate espionage, capering around on the moon's surface and winding through the corridors of the 'bubbles' that make up the Moon city that is Artemis. I was indeed surprised to see who had 'won' the space race (won't spoil that for you), how they handle currency on the moon, and how people deal with the moons difference in gravity!

There's the usual scientific accuracy in the descriptions that you can expect, which was also to be found in his previous book The Martian. This is great as though this book could technically be science fiction, a lot of it is so based in scientific fact it feels like you can almost touch it. Really, we probably can in about 60 or 70 years. Basically, I took from this that I need to start eating more vegetables and exercising so I can live to be an old lady living on Artemis!

Those who loved The Martian will, I think, love this as well though the tone is slightly different, that's just because we have a different character narrating. It's still rollocking good nerd fun and I would definitely recommend it!

I like a lot of things about Artemis, Jazz is not one of them. The story would make a great movie, hopefully it is as successful as The Martian. Another great space story, featuring a person facing great adversity, and coming out stronger. Jasmine is a strong girl who has a goal in her life, and that is more money. But it is also money that landed her into a tricky situation.
Action packed and nail biting, Artemis is as good as The Martian

Special thanks to Netgalley for this ARC, because now I can boast that I have read something cool for the year.

I was so excited to lay my hands on this book! I loved The Martian and I was hoping for another great story by Andy Weir. Artemis couldn't live up to the Weirs first book though. It still is a good story but some things just felt off. Jazz is a badass young woman with a witty mouth and a brain working as fast as lightspeed - so to say. I liked her most of the time but she behaves childish and irresponsible at times. While I knew she was a 26 yrs old, she felt like a teenage girl to me. Also, the science talk. It worked really good in The Martian but for Artemis all the detailed explaining was weighing the book down somehow. It didn't seemed to be necessary to get so many details of how oxygen reacts with this and that. The science talk wasn't as necessary for this story as it was for The Martian and therefore much less entertaining. It even got boring now and then.

What I really liked (next to a story on the moon of course) was the wide diversity of Artemis. You have everything in it. Lots of people from different parts of the world living peacefully in the same bubble. You also get a gay couple and women kickin' ass and making the rules.

While Artemis wasn't a perfect read I still enjoyed it despite its flaws.

Artemis – the city on the moon. Two thousand people live in several connected domes in a close-knit community. Part of the colony is geared towards rich tourists but mostly it’s inhabited by ordinary people, workers, tradesmen, service folk. Jazz Bashara is one of them, scratching a living as a porter with a bit of smuggling on the side. One of her wealthy contacts offers her a huge amount of money for a bit of sabotage. Needless to say, things don’t turn out quite as planned; a metaphorical can of worms is opened and threatens to destroy everything Jazz holds dear.
I really enjoyed this fast-paced, joyful sci-fi caper. The characters are likable, Jazz is a feisty, sassy heroine with plenty of smartarse comebacks. Life on the moon is vividly portrayed and the workings of the city believable with plenty of entertaining science thrown in without being didactic.

So obviously there’s always going to be particular high expectations when it comes to this book because hello, The Martian is a phenomenal debut novel. This book, in my opinion, is not quite as strong as The Martian but it’s great in its own ways. But I think people going into this looking for another The Martian are going to be sorely disappointed.

The world building in this, for me, was great. I really had a great idea of what Artemis looked like and how it ran. There was a bit of an info dump in the first chapter that left me feeling a bit dizzy, and maybe some of that could have been spread out a bit but I’m pretty confident in how Artemis all works out.

One of the things that Andy Weir does best is the way characters speak to readers in this great conversational tone. It worked for Watney in his Mars Log, and in a way it works for Jazz in this. It definitely feels at times like she’s speaking directly to the reader (or to her penpal!) but Jazz is a very different character, and not quite as likeable. I kept changing my mind about her to be honest, sometimes I liked her and others times I didn’t. (view spoiler) The conversations between characters were good, humorous and felt very real, which is something I always need to see. Realistic dialogue is key for me!

I wasn’t crazy about the amount of explanation around the welding and the super smart things Jazz did to explode stuff and fix stuff etc. It was basically just all jumbled words for me and I had no idea what she was on about so it got a bit boring.

Overall, I wasn’t expecting something as amazing as The Martian so I wasn’t disappointed. This book is good in its own right but it’s not the best book I’ve ever read.

Thanks to NetGalley and to Penguin Random House UK, Ebury Publishing for providing me an ARC copy of this book that I freely chose to review.
I read Weir’s The Martian shortly after its publication (I discovered it through NetGalley. Many thanks again), before it became a movie, and loved it. Although I regularly recommend books to people I know, this must be one of the recent books I’ve recommended to more people. (In case you want to check my review, I published it on Lit World Interviews and you can check it here). Because of that, when I saw the ARC of the author’s new book was available on NetGalley, I requested it. A few days later I also received an e-mail from the publishers (well, their PR company) offering me a copy as I’d reviewed The Martian. Good minds think alike and all that. I read the book a while before its publication but I don’t expect there would be major changes with the final version.
So, how is the book? Well, I loved it. There aren’t that many books that make me laugh out loud, but this one did. Is it as good as The Martian? That’s a difficult question to answer. It is not as unique. It is very different, although in many ways it’s quite similar too. I suspect if you didn’t like The Martian you will probably not like this one either. The story is a first-person narration from the point of view of a young woman, Jazz Bashara. She lives in Artemis, the first city in the Moon, and has lived there since she was six years old (children are not allowed in the Moon until they are a certain age, although that had increased by the time of the story, so she’s probably one of the few people who has been there almost from birth, as most are immigrants from Earth). Nationality is a bit of an interesting concept in this novel (people are from wherever place on Earth they come from, but once in Artemis, they are in a Kenyan colony… I won’t explain the details, but the story of how that came to pass ends up being quite important to the plot), as are laws, work, money, economy, food… Based on that, Jazz is from Saudi Arabia, although she impersonates women from other nationalities through the book (even in the Moon, otherness unifies people, it seems). Like its predecessor, the story is full of technical details of how things work (or not) and how different they are from Earth. Jazz is a quirky character, foul-mouthed at times, strangely conversant with American pop culture, including TV series, music, etc., extremely intelligent, and like Mark in the first novel, somebody who does not express her emotions easily (she even admits that at some point in the novel). She also has a fantastic sense of humour, is witty, self-deprecating at times, one of the boys, and does not tolerate fools gladly. She is a petty criminal and will do anything to get money (and she’s very specific about the amount she requires), although we learn what she needs the money for later on (and yes, it does humanize her character). Her schemes for getting rich quick end up getting her into real trouble (she acknowledges she made some very bad decisions as a teenager, and things haven’t changed that much, whatever she might think) and eventually she realises that there are things we cannot do alone. Although she does commit crimes, she has a code of conduct, does not condone or commit violence (unless she has to defend herself), and she can be generous to a fault at times. On the other hand, she is stubborn, petulant, anti-authority, confrontational, and impulsive.
There is a cast of secondary characters that are interesting in their own right, although we don’t get to know them in depth and most are types we can connect easily with as they are very recognisable. (Psychology and complexity of characters is not the main attribute of the book). Most of Jazz’s friends are male (so are some of her enemies), and we have a geeky-inventor type who is clumsy with women (although based on the information we are given, Jazz is not great with men either), a gay friend who stole her boyfriend, a bartender always after creating cheap versions of spirits, a rich tycoon determined to get into business on the Moon, no matter what methods he has to use, and her father, a devoted Muslim who is both proud of his daughter and appalled by her in equal measure.
The plot is a caper/heist story, that has nothing to envy Ocean’s Eleven although it has the added complication of having to adapt to conditions on the Moon. Although there is a fair amount of technical explanation, I didn’t find it boring or complicated (and yes, sometimes you can guess what’s going to go wrong before it happens), although when I checked the reviews, some people felt that it slowed the story down. For me, the story flows well and it is quick-paced, although there are slower moments and others when we are running against the clock. As I’m not an expert on the subject of life on the Moon, I can’t comment on how accurate some of the situations are. Yes, there has to be a certain suspension of disbelief, more than in The Martian because here we have many characters and many more things that can go wrong (the character does not fight against nature and her own mistakes here. She also has human adversaries to contend with), but we should not forget that it is a work of fiction. Some of the reviews say there are better and more realistic novels about the Moon. As I’m not a big reader on the subject, I can’t comment, although I can easily believe that.
The other main criticism of the novel is Jazz’s character. Quite a few reviewers comment that she is not a credible woman, and her language, her behaviour, and her mannerisms are not those of a real woman. I mentioned before that she is ‘one of the boys’ or ‘one of the lads’. She seems to have mostly male friends, although she does deal with men and women in the book, not making much of a distinction between them. For me, Jazz’s character is consistent in with that of a woman who has grown up among men (she was brought up by her father and her mother is not around), who feels more comfortable with them, and who goes out of her way to fit in and not call attention to her gender by her behaviour and/ or speech. She is also somebody who has not been encouraged to be openly demonstrative or to share her feelings, and although she is our narrator, she does not talk a lot about herself (something that was also a characteristic of the Martian, where we did not learn much about Mark himself). In Artemis, apart from the first person narration, there are fragments that share e-mails between Jazz and a pen (e-mail) friend from Earth. Those interim chapters help us learn a bit more (however fragmented) about Jazz’s background; they also give us a sense of how things are on Earth, and, although it is not evident at the beginning, fill us into some of the information the narration has not provided us. Although she is not the most typical female character I’ve ever read, she is a fun woman and it’s very easy to root for her (even if sometimes you want to slap her). She does act very young at times, and hers is a strange mixture of street-wise and at times naïve that some readers will find endearing although it might irritate others. The book’s other female characters are as hard and business-like as the men, and often the most powerful and intelligent characters in the book are female (the ruler of Aramis and the owner of the Aluminium Company are both females, one from Kenia and one a Latino woman). Both seem to be formidable, although nobody is pure as snow in this novel and everybody has some skeletons in their closets. Although gender politics per se are not discussed (Jazz notes physical differences between her and other characters as is relevant to the plot, and makes the odd comment about her own appearance) one gets the sense that in Artemis people are accepted as they are and they are more concerned about what they can bring to the community than about their gender or ethnicity.
I agree with some of the comments about the dominance of references to American culture and even the language used is sometimes full of American colloquialisms. There is no clear explanation given for that, other than to assume that media and the Internet are still mostly full of content produced in the US, but even mentions of news and feeds about other countries are not elaborated upon.
I highlighted a lot of the book, but I don’t want to test your patience, and as it was an ARC copy, it is possible that there might be some minor changes, so I’d advise you to check a sample of the book to see if you like the tone of the narration. Here are a few examples:
If my neighborhood were wine, connoisseurs would describe it as “shitty, with overtones of failure and poor life decisions.”
My cart is a pain in the ass to control, but it’s good at carrying heavy things. So I decided it was male.
(Only Americans wear Hawaiian shirts on the moon.)
I left without further comment. I didn’t want to spend any more time inside the mind of an economist. It was dark and disturbing.
In summary, a great caper story, with fun characters, not too deep, but with plenty of technical and scientific information to keep your brain going. I’d recommend reading a sample of the novel, because, once again, you’ll either click with the style of the narration and the characters, or you won’t. I did and laughed all the way to the end of the book. And, if you’ve not read The Martian… well, what are you waiting for?

I got a review copy of this from netgalley, so thanks.
It was intense, fun and unexpected. The ending was so so though, but it didn't bring down the rest of the book for me. Hard to put down with things happening or going wrong all the time.
Some of the scienesy things, of course like in "The Martian", went over my head but it didn't bother me.
Do pick it up when it comes out in November if you like Sci-fi or just want a suspenseful book to spend a good couple of hours with being totally engrossed by.

3.5 stars
Set on the moon, in the city of Artemis, this is the story of a young woman of Saudi Extraction, Jazz, who operates in the grey areas of the city following a falling out with her father over some teenage escapades. While working as a smuggler, she becomes entangled in a corporate plot to take over the oxygen supplies for the city, and desperate for cash she agrees to undertake a little sabotage. Things go wrong and soon Jazz realises that she is up against a dangerous enemy, and not just her life, but the future of the lunar colony may be at stake. Our intrepid heroine comes up with a cunning plan, but will she be able to save the day?

Firstly the positives:
This is a fun filled action packed book, with plenty of action and some interesting minor characters. For those who loved the science in the Martian, it is here, but in a friendlier form. Again the author's scientific knowledge is woven into the story, from minor details like why coffee tastes terrible on the moon, to more complex descriptions of how EVAs or "Moon walks" are carried out, and the dangers that are inherent in setting foot on the lunar surface. The science is more woven into the narrative, and there are no mathematical equations in sight. The pacing of the book is very good, and it's definitely the kind of book that could be easily adapted for the screen.

Now the negatives:
I never really fell for the character of Jazz the same way I did for Mark Whatney in The Martian, and I think the biggest reason why is that at times I felt like the author was struggling with the female perspective, which meant at times her actions and dialogue just didn't quite ring true for me. When you are largely relying on a single character to drive the emotion of the book as well as the action, it's disappointing when she seems a little flat.
Overall I enjoyed the book, its a fun read, and I feel like I learned a little something along the way.

An absolute romp - enjoyable space adventure from the author of The Martian.

I read this in trepidation. The Martian is my favourite book, how could this ever live up to it? Well Andy Weir showed me he could have a pretty good go at it.
Was it the Martian? No. But it was something that completely hooked me from the start, I instantly fell in love with Jazz and her snarky whit. What a great book, Weir has done himself proud I loved it!

For Andy Weir’s second book, he had an almost impossible task of living up to his first book ‘The Martian’ (which you can read my review of here). Whilst most people seem to be saying that he has lived up to this standard, I would disagree. Whilst I will try to not compare his second book to his first, I cannot help to see what he got wrong in Artemis that he got oh-so-right in The Martian.

Lets start off with what I enjoyed about Artemis, we have a very realistic moon base. People pay for a 2 week trip to Artemis and do all kinds of crazy stuff there. They can go visit the Apollo 11 landing site amongst other activities. I wish that we had seen more of this tourist side of Artemis though as we follow a porter / part-time smuggler so all we hear is complaints as to why would anyone want to visit the moon anyway. At first I found this only slightly annoying but I could understand where she was coming from as Jazz moved to Artemis when she was 6.

I also enjoyed the writing style. Weir managed to make me interested in what would actually happen if Earth were to colonise the moon. Aside from those though, I found this book quite dull.

My main annoyance was the protagonist, Jazz. Where with Mark Watney in The Martian I care about his journey and was personally invested in trying to get him off Mars (even though I could not), Jazz constantly irritated me and reminded me of who I did not want to end up like. She constantly can up with solutions out of thin-air with no real substance as to how she got to that conclusion.

Whilst their was more that I should have liked that outweighed Jazz’s continual frustration, like how a city on the moon could actually function; the protagonist is what holds the story together and I wish that it had been the moon instead of her. Maybe I just wanted another ‘The Martian’ but Artemis surely was not.

I had high hopes for this book, having (like many) read and enjoyed Weir's "The Martian". In many ways, this is a good followup - it has the same feel as the Martian, in that Weir has obviously done his homework in terms of how a sustainable colony would be run on the moon (or if he hasn't, he handwaves the science well enough).

My main issue with this book is the main character, Jazz. It feels unfair to compare this book heavily to The Martian, but it's going to be an inevitable thing, given the success of the prior book. Mark Watney in The Martian is a fully realised character - capable and human, and it was very easy to relate to him as he struggled through his situation. Jazz isn't on the same level. Absolutely, she's set up to be a very smart and capable character, but she never has the same kind of relatability or believability as Watney. I was painfully aware of the fact that Jazz was a female character written by a male (as the male gaze slides in from time to time) and she often felt as though she was much younger than she was supposed to be (and her genius-level ability therefore much harder to believe in). It's also worth noting that Jazz is a Muslim character written by a non-Muslim author - I'm not in any position to comment on how well Weir did with this aspect, but it may be something that other readers wish to know or to avoid.

Few months ago I wrote an article about the prospects of self-publishing in Hungary. Two authors found me who were disillusioned with the firm they have chose to publish their works. Anyways, in the article I used Andy Weir’s story as an example for a successful self-published author. He is an obvious choice: The Martian was published in the regular way after it became incredibly successful through self-publishing, and it was also quickly adapted to a big-budget Hollywood movie.

At its heart, The Martian had every component needed to become popular: Mark Watney, a talented, brave hero who was also funny as he leads us through the technical and scientific difficulties of his journey to survive on Mars; a huge, international rescue operation to save his ass; and of course extraterrestrial potatoes. So a lot of humour, a lot of science, a pinch of bravery, and the perils of discovering the Solar System: this was the world champion mix.

The question is: can Andy Weir repeat this success?

In Weir’s next novel, Artemis, we are on the Moon, or in the city of Artemis to be more precise - the only human colony on our pale-faced satellite. The protagonist is Jasmine Bashara, aka Jazz, the very talented, very clever resident of Artemis who works as a… porter? Yeah. Every friend of Jazz thinks she is wasting her potential. But, as a matter of fact, Jazz is responsible for the smuggling operation which supplies every Artemisians with contraband goods. So she hasn’t really been wasting all her potential for the last twenty years.

Nevertheless, Jazz needs money. Very, very much. And that’s the point when one of her old clients, a Norwegian billionaire businessman comes up with a plan. It is complicated, but it’s a piece of cake for a woman as talented as Jazz. The job pays a lot of money. It is also illegal as hell. And as it turns out, it can really affect the future of Artemis. By the way: why everyone is suddenly crazy about the failing aluminium industry?

The start is a bit bumpy, but after we learn more about Jazz and her ways, the novel shifts to full throttle. The elements are almost the same as in The Martian: a lot of fun in the narration by the badass protagonist and loads of Moon-science instead of Mars-science. Also with some sparkling dialogues and one-liners, the Brazilian mafia, and a collection of misfit friends of Jazz. Jazz is doing a lot of illegal stuff, so forget about the heroism of Mark Watney. And also say goodbye to space potatoes: all you got in exchange is algae-based food called Gunk, which is awful by all accounts.

Weir manages to recreate the atmosphere and tone that maybe every one of his fans expect in a way that it also feels totally different from The Martian. The novel can also be considered as a good source material for a movie adaptation. In the end, Artemis is a light-hearted, entertaining read which won’t revolutionize the genre, but it can seduce newbies to read sci-fi, while it is also an interesting read for veteran readers of SF.

One question remains though: why there are no security cameras on Moon? Good for the plot, bad for the police, it seems.

Andy Weir is the author of The Martian, a book that I liked a lot, where the author displayed his ability in the hard sci-fi genre, that is the science fiction deeply based on scientific and technical details.

Having the chance to ask as advanced reading his new novel I was very happy, but in the end I did not find it so engaging and fast paced as the The Martian.

The story is set on Artemis, the only city on the Moon; the main character, Jazz Bashara, alternates legal jobs (the porter) to less legal ones (smuggling forbidden goods from Earth); despite this she is not able to gain enough money to have a normal - non poor - life. One day a contact of hers proposes a criminal activity extremely dangerous but also extremely well paid, and Jazz accepts. Unfortunately, Jazz will be involved in a conspiracy about the future of the colony.

The novel is quite engaging - it contains a thread of thriller / action - but some elements did not convince me: Jazz is extremely skilled in everything (she is smart, brave and technically capable) but she is totally unable to use them in a useful way. The criminal plot is extremely naive in its development, and the conclusion is the top of naiveté (no further details to avoid spoilers). Concerning style and narration, overall I found excessive the infodump that continuously stop the narration, and stylistically weak the letters exchanged with the friend on Earth, and I did not like the jokes between the characters and toward the reader (sex jokes mostly).

I did expect more from this novel; it is nice but very much inferior to The Martian.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me the copy necessary to write this review.

I wanted to love this book so much as I absolutely adored The Martian and really enjoy Andy Weir's writing but I just wasn't able to get into the story even halfway through the book. Jazz was a great headstrong character, and I was kind of intrigued to see what she was going to do next, but I just found myself not caring about what was happening and my attention would drift too much while reading. It didn't help that I felt like within 50% of the book, not a whole lot had happened, or at least it seemed that way. Maybe I'll pick this up again some time in the future. Andy Weir's writing is always brilliant and it's quite possible it just wasn't for me at that moment in time.

This book was so good it made me miss my tube stop twice in one day.

After the highs of The Martian I was worried that Artemis would fall short. I had so much expectation from this book that I was pretty guaranteed to be let down. Except I wasn't. I loved this book. I loved the characters, I loved the plot, I loved the science. I will admit that I am a scientist. I am in no way a physist, or a rocket scientist, just a bog standard biologist. I'm one of those Biologist who aren't so good at maths. There's a point here. Even though I LOVE science, most of this science went way over my head. The important thing to note, is that this no way dampened my enjoyment of this book.

The details that Andy Weir has put into this book is phenomenal. I can't say if all of it is right in terms of the maths and the science, but really it doesn't entirely matter, because it is great. Much like The Martian this book is told from the point of view of Jazz, our protaginist. You need to be prepared to hear the story in their voice, not your own, although for me that really works. It helps me to bond with the character, see everything from their eyes.

What I think I found particularly endearing about the characters is that the majority of them are flawed. They're not these perfectly packaged people, they're just normal. But the book is anything but. It's fast paced, action packed, and when you thought you'd come to grips with it, something else changes.

I don't even regret missing my stop twice for this. A really great read.

I thoroughly enjoyed Artemis and was once again impressed with the author's skilled handling of the scientific foundation of the narrative along with well drawn believable characters and a nail biting, edge of your seat plot.

ARC provided by NeyGalley in exchange for an honest review

Artemis is a much lighter book than The Martian which may be why I've seen some mixed reviews. Where the latter is badically Robinson Crusoe in space, Artemis has the sort of feel you get from things like Ocean's Eleven and Robin Hood.

I love a good 'rogue with principles' character so Jasmine Bashara wirks for me. In some ways she was more likeable than The Martian's Mark Watney. Jazz is a smuggler and a crook with a strong sense of civic pride and her own code of slightly skewed honour. And she's trying to make money in a society of lawless capitalism where being homeless gets you deported to Earth. No good for Jazz who has been living under the lunar atmosphere since she was six. A big job promises a huge payday but predictably the job goes south. Jazz is forced to use all her not inconsiderable intelligence and ingenuity to stay ahead of the mob, finish the job and finally make sone money.

All in all I really enjoyed this. I liked the characters, the irreverent style of Weir's previous book is still there and it's a great space adventure story. Don't expect Star Trek esque encounters with strange and beautiful aliens, this is a realistic depiction of a possible lunar colony and those who live there with plenty of science and economics (delivered in a fun way!) to give it tensile strength. My one criticism is that I never really felt Jazz was in jeopardy but then it's not The Martian and she's not fighting to survive in a vacuum. Well she is but not one caused by being the only character on a planet.
Highly recommend this for sci-fi fans and those who like their MCs intelligent and crooked.

I'm sad to say that this was quite the disappointment. A mix of too high expectations and wasted potential, I was almost considering giving this only 2 stars.

It's clear that Weir wanted to make his characters have to science the shit out of bad situations just as Mark in The Martian, but while I thought it was fun and interesting in that book, this time it felt like information overload and I was just bored by all the science and lack of an exciting plot. To me it felt like he tried too hard to make up one situation after another where characters need to improvise with their science skills but lost his momentum in the process. The whole conspiracy in here was just dull.

It didn't help that I didn't care about even a single character. They all fell flat for me. While I'm happy to say that the characters are quite diverse (main character is Arabic), most of them just felt like cliches or token characters, from the gay, boyfriend-stealing (ex-)best friend, to the science-guy who doesn't know how to talk to women, I didn't warm up to any of them. (after Weird talked about his main character, and that this would be a world without sexism, I definitely expected some more girl power in here too and not just one woman, mostly surrounded by guys)

I wasn't impressed by the ending either. The stakes are high and they really have to science the shit out of that one, but at that point, I just wanted to be done. Maybe I would have been more impressed if I had cared about these characters and/or got the impression that for once one of these characters actually doesn't know their way out of a bad situation.