Introduction
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a poor smugggler and thief on the moon colony of Artemis. She dreams of being rich, but won’t get involved with drugs and guns though that is where the most money is. That is until she gets an offer she can’t refuse. All it’ll take is a little sabotage and she can retire with a million Artemisan slugs. But the best laid plans never work and she must improvise or she’ll be killed by a Brazillian drug cartel assassin or die with everyone else in Artemis by poisoned air. How can she survive and get her money too?
Summary
Jazz came to Artemis as a little girl, she is 24 at the time in the novel, so the moon is all she knows. Her father is a welder who wants her to work with him, but she doesn’t want that boring vocation. She works as a porter, waiting until her plans pay off. What she wants is to earn her EVA license, so she can get big money conducting EVA tours at the Apollo 11 landing site for tourists, but she fails her test which sets the caper into motion. She longs to pull off the big score. She’s small, smart, and sassy. The novel is seen from her perspective. Any task she tries, she succeeds, but she is usually unmotivated to try. Trond, a billionaire speculator, makes her an offer she should refuse, but she decides to take it to accomplish her goal to become rich. Jazz starts her scheme but must rely on her friends; techno geek Svoboda, smuggler partner Kelvin, and her EVA master friend Dale, the gay guy who stole her boyfriend for himself. All of them and Jazz’s father get involved with her plans. To accomplish her goal, Jazz must face Rudy the cop, an assassin, the Artemis colony leader, and the architect of the Aluminum smelter that Jazz must sabotage.
Recommendation
I enjoyed reading this novel. It runs at a brisk pace. Jazz has a sarcastic voice like Mark Watney from The Martian, also written by Andy Weir, but she remains a young woman. Her challenges come quickly one after another. The science is woven into the story deftly. She analyzes her options and figures out ingenious solutions as she goes. The story barrels on to the end. The side characters are memorable, and the conclusion resolves the plot satisfactorily. Highly recommended.
Links
Link to Goodreads page for Artemis
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34928122-artemis?ac=1&from_search=true