Getting my Sci-fi on.
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The Blurb:
Jazz Bashara is a criminal.
Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.
Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first.
The Review
The Martian, also by Andy Weir, is a book I absolutely love - even despite having seen the film first, which usually ruins it for me. (EVEN Matt Damon does a good job of that one, who woulda thunk it?!) So I had high hopes for this, but was equally worried it would struggle to compete.
And in my opinion, it did struggle somewhat in the shadow of the Martian. Don't get me wrong, this is still quite a tense and fast paced sci-fi thriller but it didn't hit the spot in quite the same way. Perhaps I shouldn't treat this as a comparison of the two, but when you've enjoyed one book from an author so much, its inevitable you are going to hold them up against the same yard stick.
Jazz is a likeable protagonist with an irreverent sense of humour and a constant internal monologue. In that way, she's really similar to Mark Watney, the protagonist of the Martian. But with him, it felt like it suited the character more. He is stranded alone in an unforgiving situation where he will most certainly die, and the only way to deal with it is his constant internal sarcasm. With Jazz, it felt strange. Part of me feels that Weir doesn't manage to get in the head of a female protagonist in the same way as he did with a male one. The way she talks about her relationships, especially sexual ones, made me cringe several times. There's a lot made of her promiscuity, not something I have a problem with (I'm not a prude!) but it felt to me like it had been forced upon her as a 'masculine trait.' As if to justify that she is a female character that was practical and heroic, she also had to be a 'worldy woman' - meh, I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to put my finger on here, it just didn't sit that well with me.
With any book set in space, you can;t get away from the fact that there will be a lot of scientific jargon, and this happens in Artemis as much as it did in the Martian. However in this book, it felt like ti interrupted the rhythm of the story more and didn't always seem necessary.
What I would say is, I think this would make an epic film, definitely one I would watch! A Sci-fi movie, with a young female lead kicking ass, and with a smattering of humour sounds like the ideal recipe to me. I hope it happens.
On a side note there is a small blossoming romance in this book that I SO WANTED to become something more and I was disappointed that it wasn't followed up. But hey, I'm an old romantic, I crave that type of thing.
Yorumlar