Booklog 72/2017 - Andy Weir: Artemis

[jacey]

Question: how to top a book like The Martian? Answer: You probably can’t.

However this is a pretty good attempt to produce a book that will appeal to those folks who liked the Martian for its main character’s ability to ‘science the shit’ out of any situation. It’s certainly a page-turner. This time the main character is Jazz (female) who has lived in the Moon’s only city (Artemis) since she was a small child. She’s fiercely intelligent, but pretty much a delinquent, using her talents to become a small-time criminal, doing a low-pay courier job while running a smuggling racket on the side. She takes on a job that she should walk away from (the money’s too good to refuse) and after that she’s scrabbling to recover from the consequences. If you enjoyed the problem-solving in The Martian, there’s problem solving a-plenty in this, plus intrigue and nail-biting peril.