Plot or Premise

A young woman on a lunar base works to save money and build some capital.

What I Liked

The story seems incredibly realistic by focusing less on the tech details and mostly on the day-to-day life of Jasmine aka Jazz. She has a very basic life, scrambling to make ends meet as a porter / courier around the station and trying every day to find any angle to get ahead just a little bit, regardless of the small corners she has to cut. She doesn’t want to be rich, she just needs to pay off a large debt and have a bit left over to improve her daily life a smidge. When a big opportunity comes along, perhaps her one and only chance to get out from under, she has to make a decision if she’s willing to sacrifice her scruples and become a full criminal. And then after deciding yes, how far her commitment to others remains.

What I Didn’t Like

Jazz is good at rationalizing cutting corners, and she makes the leap incrementally to becoming a full criminal, but some aspects of the switch don’t quite fit. Put simply without spoilers, I was reminded of the adage that if you sleep with dogs, you get up with fleas … once she commits, she gets her hands a bit dirtier in other areas. Realistic that if she was in for a penny, she was in for a pound, but the big reveal near the end of the nature of the debt doesn’t really justify everything she did to get there.

The Bottom Line

Fast-paced story with portrayal of regular lunar life