OK, I have slightly mixed feelings about this book. I suspect my rating's more like 3.5 stars, but since I listened to it on Audible, the absolutely brilliant narration by actress Rosario Dawson added at least a full star. BRILLIANT.
It's the story of Jasmine (Jazz) Bashara, a lunar colony native of Saudi descent living in the Kenya-owned moon colony of Artemis, currently the only lunar settlement in existence. After a falling out with her very religious father and then her creep of an ex-boyfriend, she ekes out a meagre existence as a porter, with a more lucrative smuggling operation on the side. During the course of her normal smuggling operations she gets an offer she can't refuse to perform a bit of sabotage, and unwittingly becomes caught up in the middle of a much larger plot that will affect the future of Artemis. As she tries to save her own life while figuring out who it is that she's tangled with, she has to plot the moon's biggest ever heist.
Things I loved about it:
- The science: it is detailed, interesting, and well-thought out, as with the author's previous book "The Martian". I particularly love that there are so many things we take for granted about how life and physics work on earth that are NOT true on the moon, and the author calls them out through various plot points in ways that make you think about how many assumptions we made.
- The heroine: Jazz is a sassy, smack-talking young lady who is definitely NOT perfect, prissy, perky, manic-pixie-dream-girl, nor infallible -- all traps that a lot of male authors trying to write female characters often fall into. In fact, she's kind of an ass and makes "your mom" jokes and really abysmal life decisions to the point she's quite unlikeable at times, but I like that anyway, because it's a very rare male author who manages to write an unlikeable female heroine.
- The world: Artemis is a really interesting setting, especially since the author didn't just take a default easy route in assuming one of the main current space powers or first world nations would found the first lunar colony. Instead, there's some interesting economic background and it turns out that since a politician from Nairobi had the foresight to offer the most favorable terms and regulations, Kenya actually got the contract for the space colony and as a result it helped pull the nation into prosperity far ahead of its neighbours. A piece of back story that's really mostly irrelevant to the plot but which I nonetheless found even more enjoyable because it even exists.
- The narration: as mentioned above, Rosario Dawson does an AMAZING job narrating this audiobook and I'm sure makes all the characters at least 50% more likeable and the science at least 50% more digestible through her talents.
Things I disliked about it:
- The heroine: although I do like her for many reasons above, there are still various points where she is jarringly and obviously being written by a male author and does/says things that are ridiculous, mostly involving describing/noticing how sexy she is. She's also apparently a genius at basically anything she wants to be, has a perfect memory, is stunningly attractive, and can beat up trained assassins multiple times over despite lacking any martial arts skills of any time. Her sassy tone, despite Rosario Dawson's outstanding ability to make it palatable, really does sound very like a female Mark Watney (hero of The Martian).
- The plot: while I like a plot that has twists and things that go wrong, pretty much everything bad in the entire book that happens is due to Jazz's selfishness and stupidity, and honestly, she should never have been allowed to get away with even half of what she gets away with in the book. I just couldn't swallow that she was forgiven for so many choices that were not just stupid and selfless, but outright criminally dangerous. There's a point past which one stops cheering for the protagonist of the book and has to admit that she really, really screwed up to a point that's irredeemable, and I felt that Jazz passed that point and went right on running. It's like reading The Martian again, but with Mark Watney as a female, and everything that goes wrong is directly his fault due to his own stupid decisions instead of accidents.
Overall I enjoyed the book a lot, especially due to the audiobook's excellent narrator, and had trouble putting it on pause. I suspect I'd have found it a lot easier to put down in paper form, as the heroine's tone would have been more irritating and the science drier. I'll still definitely check out the author's next book, but I hope his next hero or heroine manages a completely different personality than yet another Mark Watney. And if it's a heroine, he really should get some female early readers to sanity check her tone.
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