Review: Obscura

**5++ Goodreads Stars**

In Joe Hart’s Obscura, researcher Dr. Gillian Ryan is on the verge of curing the disease that killed her husband and is threatening to destroy her 8-year-old daughter’s life. The disease erases one’s memories, much like Alzheimer’s. When Dr. Ryan’s research funding is axed, she makes a life-altering choice to work for a top-secret NASA program that promises to help her cure the disease.

As part of her assignment, Dr. Ryan must leave her daughter back on Earth for six months to investigate a mysterious case of memory loss involving several astronauts marooned at a space station. Her research on the astronauts promises a cure for her daughter, but when she arrives on the space station she learns that everything she thought about her mission was a farce. While in space, Dr. Ryan also begins to question reality as she struggles with hydrocodone withdrawals, an addiction that started after her husband passed away.

When Dr. Ryan and a team of scientists from NASA arrive at the space station, they discover that there is more than memory loss afflicting the astronauts: there’s a murder, a suicide, and an attempted murder on Dr. Ryan. Is Dr. Ryan going mad, or is someone or something else is trying to take the lives of the space station’s entire crew? In order to save her team, her research, and her daughter’s life, Dr. Ryan and her colleagues will have to figure out what dark secrets the astronauts are hiding.

This was the second book I’ve read by Joe Hart, and it did not disappoint. I read it in less than 24 hours – it was so addicting. I loved that this book mixed so many genres, and if I had to choose a genre, I’d call it a psychological space thriller. I appreciate that the author included a female lead, as many sci-fi/technological thrillers are lacking in this regard. This book will be a favorite for readers who loved Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter, Andy Weir’s The Martian, or Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous. Thank you to the author, Joe Hart, Thomas Mercer, and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of Obscura.

Review: Artemis

**3 Goodreads Stars**

I really, really, REALLY wanted to love this book because the premise sounded enticing and I enjoyed the movie version of Andy Weir’s prior book, The Martian. Unfortunately for Artemis, I just finished reading a 5 chapter excerpt of Annalee Newitz’s sci-fi thriller Autonomous, which I could not put down. Artemis paled in comparison to Autonomous. 

Let’s start with the good, which is what earned this book 3 stars. The plot was what kept me going, though a major spoiler happened fairly early in the book (which could have been drawn out much longer in my humble opinion). The book was action-packed and fast-paced. While I am not into the nitty-gritty details of how things work, the author also paid close attention to the minutiae of all the tech and gadgets in the book. Weir has built a somehwat convincing environment and world, one that I could easily imagine on the screen.

The plot involves Jazz, a lower class employee working as a freight porter on a colony on the moon (known as “Artemis”). The moon has become habitable (though questionably so for those who have little money), and has become a popular place for wealthy tourists from Earth. Jazz aspires to become one of the elite, to enjoy the pleasures reserved for the moon’s über wealthy residents, by smuggling freight deemed illegal by moon colony standards. Jazz compromises what little ethics she has by accepting an offer to engage in corporate espionage, which, if successful, will guarantee her a life of wealth and leisure.

Now to the bad. Like Artemis, Autonomous features an enterprising young female lead in a futuristic world where corporations own nations (or in the case of Artemis, the moon) and people often engage in questionable behavior simply in order to survive. Both leads are also smart, science-oriented females who use their wits to outfox society’s oppressive rules and their corporate overlords. Artemis, however, fails where Autonomous succeeds; Autonomous creates a believable character who goes by female pronouns and the name Jack, whereas Artemis trivialized the experience of rough and tough welder/smuggler named Jazz who goes by female pronouns. You can’t simply write in a female smuggler/welder to be considered a progressive author; you need to understand her motivations (beyond sexuality/sex and $$, because believe it or not women are more interesting than that: for the latter issue, see below), her struggles, and her life.

As another reviewer (https://www.goodreads.com/BookswithEmilyFox) put it, the female lead (Jazz) was sexualized to the point it felt as though the author could not possibly imagine what goes on in the mind of a savvy woman. There were numerous moments where the character mentioned how sexy she was out of the blue; in one case, Jazz discussed the possibility of a wet t-shirt contest after being splashed with a little water in what was a completely non-sexual scene. One of the scientists with whom Jazz was working also constantly asked her about her sexual behavior after devising a reusable condom that he asked her to test out (really??!). Perhaps if it was just a few isolated comments I wouldn’t care, but seemingly scientific and tense scenes were constantly interrupted by awkward sexual comments and scenarios that were really out of place (and obnoxious, and, more importantly, out of character for Jazz).

Though this is not explored in depth, Jazz and her father are from Saudi Arabia, and Jazz’s father is a practicing Muslim. I felt like this was sort of an afterthought rather than something truly explored. I’d be curious to see how this element of Jazz’s identity is examined if this book is turned into a film.

Finally, there were a few instances where I was left shaking my head at the language used. The author (in the voice of Jazz) used the words “whorish” and “ghetto” in different scenes. Just like the sex comments, these phrases seemed really out of character for Jazz, a young woman who is both poor and objectified by the men surrounding her.