Gunpowder Moon

Gunpowder Moon is a taut hardish blend of classic sci-fi and airport thriller. In the year 2072, Helium-3 mining on the Moon provides vital fuel for a devastated Earth. Geopolitical tensions between the United States and China spill over to the harsh surface of the Moon, and when a miner is killed by a bomb, the cold war threatens to explode. A bureaucrat from the back office arrives to take control, and then a squad of Air and Space Marines, and the entire command structure is ready to start a war. It’s up to mining supervisor Dechert to get to the bottom of the plot before missiles fly.

The story moves quickly, and Dechert has an appealing voice as a narrator, an ex-Marine who saw combat in the Bekaa Valley and doesn’t ever want to see it again. The tech is worn down and gritty. It’s thematically offshore oil rigs in space, which isn’t exactly novel, but it’s well done.

The flaw in the book is the secondary characters. Even though this story takes place in a bottle, with maybe a half-dozen people in the mining outpost and a few more over comms, I had difficulty distinguishing them aside from The Girl (fortunately a surrogate daughter and not a love interest). Characterization is admittedly hard, but Gunpowder Moon does it in a rote way, like this is a novel therefore it must have characters. Still, speed is a virtue, and the tension carries the story.