Artemis (Andy Weir)

I read it fine, but it really was quite turgid. The main character made no sense - her plan was so transparently stupid that I failed to find her sympathetic at all. Alot of jokes seemed to fall flat, and I got the sense in the discussion that I was amongst the ones who found it more funny than most. I enjoyed the hack-eyed exposition for what I learned from it, but anyone who had more than a smattering of practical scientific knowledge found it tedious. I had no idea whether the author had done a good job of writing a protagonist of the opposite gender, and I was glad I witheld judgement as apparently he hadn't! The one good bit of the novel was an aside of letters between the main character and a pen pal of hers.

This is essentially a heist caper on the moon and at points is as much fun as one would hope from such a premise. The author attempts to integrate that narrative with a more sober one about the struggle to establish a thriving, independent lunar colony. Unfortunately the tension between these two strands is not well resolved, so that each detracts from the other. This conflict is reflected and equally unresolved in the character of the protagonist: alternating between explaning the precariousness of her lunar home and endangering it with reckless abandon, so that she never quite seems to be a coherent person. There are a couple of decent books here but neither manages to get out from under the other.

Hopefully the eventual film adaptation will also star Matt Damon as the main character so he can engineer the shit out of moon stuff!