Artemisa

Come on. It's a classic western in a frontier mining boom town on the moon. There are dusty (literally dusty) cowboys and sheriffs and posses and the old dried up mine and a mayor trying to hold it all together and one train (rocket) bringing trouble from the big city and one train that's an actual train and everything. If you get left out in the desert you're in trouble. What else do you want?

It's not quite as good as The Martian or Project Hail Mary. It takes slightly longer to get going, and the characters aren't as fun. But once it gets going, it's just as gripping.

I don't think the slightly reduced science problem solving (only slightly reduced, there's still a lot here) or the shift from guy-by-himself-trying-to-get-home to girl-doing-spoilery-stuff hurts the book at all; I just think that there needed to be a quicker starting place, a couple more likable characters, and a couple fewer sex jokes.

Mayyyyybe a woman could've looked over the main character's internal dialogue once or twice..

With all the verve that somehow made reading about Mark Watney’s potato farming efforts on Mars thrilling reading, Weir briskly and beautifully lays out an Oceans 11–style crime spree, to be carried out by the resourceful Jazz and her eclectic cadre of friends. It’s great fun, but what’s most remarkable is how carefully Weir has considered the real science behind his high-concept hijinks. He sprinkles in real chemistry, gravitational considerations, mathematics, and other hard science in concise and engaging passages this English major would probably skip over in any other book. Science is integral to the plot (and, in the unforgiving atmosphere of the Moon, a matter of life and death for Jazz), and it’s incorporated smoothly, deftly avoiding labored exposition or lecturing. The science is, in fact, delightful to read about, and it’s obvious Weir had just as much fun writing it.

See my full review on the Barnes & Noble Science Fiction & Fantasy blog.