I also feel like I had Artemis/Project Hail Mary confusion, because I started reading Hail Mary and was like "uh, I thought this was supposed to be set on the moon??" and only realized it was a different book a bit later.
Anyway, I really loved it! Definitely as much fun as The Martian, for me. (Artemis I tried later and simply bounced off. Maybe I'll give it another go at some point.) But this was a definite win! I can see your criticisms, and personally I didn't feel that the flashbacks worked all that well. (Someone in my comments when I talked about it said that some of the dissonance is probably because Weir naturally gravitates to writing nice, team-player heroes, and tried to write a jerk this time and it didn't work all that well because he still comes across as a nice team player even during the time when he's supposed to be a jerk.) But the amnesiac-on-a-spaceship intro was just catnip for me, and I found the whole plot tense and exciting and really a lot of fun.
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Anyway, I really loved it! Definitely as much fun as The Martian, for me. (Artemis I tried later and simply bounced off. Maybe I'll give it another go at some point.) But this was a definite win! I can see your criticisms, and personally I didn't feel that the flashbacks worked all that well. (Someone in my comments when I talked about it said that some of the dissonance is probably because Weir naturally gravitates to writing nice, team-player heroes, and tried to write a jerk this time and it didn't work all that well because he still comes across as a nice team player even during the time when he's supposed to be a jerk.) But the amnesiac-on-a-spaceship intro was just catnip for me, and I found the whole plot tense and exciting and really a lot of fun.