Review: Artemis

Artemis, Weir's follow up to The Martian skirts "difficult second album" territory.  It's a decent fast-paced read as before, but is softer on the science, Jaz's inner dialogue is nowhere near as compelling or convincing as the titular martian and neither is the key conceit - which is closer to conspiracy rather than cock-up.

Fair play to Weir for attempting to create a central character who is pretty the polar opposite of Watney (and likely himself), but it doesn't wholly succeed. It doesn't help that Jaz is close to being a classic Mary Sue - super-smart - academic and street, has practical engineering skills, friends in high and low places, able to tackle foes who are much bigger, stronger and experienced than her etc.  But somehow she didn't convince as a young woman.

Artemis - the moon city base itself - is quite a good example of building a realistic world as is the analysis of the emerging politics.

It's by no means a terrible book, it just feels like curiously old fashioned sci-fi - weakly drawn characters used to present some interesting ideas.

In a nutshell: Watney was from Mars alright, I'm not sure Jaz is from Venus (or the Moon).