An absolute romp - enjoyable space adventure from the author of The Martian.

For Andy Weir’s second book, he had an almost impossible task of living up to his first book ‘The Martian’ (which you can read my review of here). Whilst most people seem to be saying that he has lived up to this standard, I would disagree. Whilst I will try to not compare his second book to his first, I cannot help to see what he got wrong in Artemis that he got oh-so-right in The Martian.

Lets start off with what I enjoyed about Artemis, we have a very realistic moon base. People pay for a 2 week trip to Artemis and do all kinds of crazy stuff there. They can go visit the Apollo 11 landing site amongst other activities. I wish that we had seen more of this tourist side of Artemis though as we follow a porter / part-time smuggler so all we hear is complaints as to why would anyone want to visit the moon anyway. At first I found this only slightly annoying but I could understand where she was coming from as Jazz moved to Artemis when she was 6.

I also enjoyed the writing style. Weir managed to make me interested in what would actually happen if Earth were to colonise the moon. Aside from those though, I found this book quite dull.

My main annoyance was the protagonist, Jazz. Where with Mark Watney in The Martian I care about his journey and was personally invested in trying to get him off Mars (even though I could not), Jazz constantly irritated me and reminded me of who I did not want to end up like. She constantly can up with solutions out of thin-air with no real substance as to how she got to that conclusion.

Whilst their was more that I should have liked that outweighed Jazz’s continual frustration, like how a city on the moon could actually function; the protagonist is what holds the story together and I wish that it had been the moon instead of her. Maybe I just wanted another ‘The Martian’ but Artemis surely was not.

I had high hopes for this book, having (like many) read and enjoyed Weir's "The Martian". In many ways, this is a good followup - it has the same feel as the Martian, in that Weir has obviously done his homework in terms of how a sustainable colony would be run on the moon (or if he hasn't, he handwaves the science well enough).

My main issue with this book is the main character, Jazz. It feels unfair to compare this book heavily to The Martian, but it's going to be an inevitable thing, given the success of the prior book. Mark Watney in The Martian is a fully realised character - capable and human, and it was very easy to relate to him as he struggled through his situation. Jazz isn't on the same level. Absolutely, she's set up to be a very smart and capable character, but she never has the same kind of relatability or believability as Watney. I was painfully aware of the fact that Jazz was a female character written by a male (as the male gaze slides in from time to time) and she often felt as though she was much younger than she was supposed to be (and her genius-level ability therefore much harder to believe in). It's also worth noting that Jazz is a Muslim character written by a non-Muslim author - I'm not in any position to comment on how well Weir did with this aspect, but it may be something that other readers wish to know or to avoid.

Few months ago I wrote an article about the prospects of self-publishing in Hungary. Two authors found me who were disillusioned with the firm they have chose to publish their works. Anyways, in the article I used Andy Weir’s story as an example for a successful self-published author. He is an obvious choice: The Martian was published in the regular way after it became incredibly successful through self-publishing, and it was also quickly adapted to a big-budget Hollywood movie.

At its heart, The Martian had every component needed to become popular: Mark Watney, a talented, brave hero who was also funny as he leads us through the technical and scientific difficulties of his journey to survive on Mars; a huge, international rescue operation to save his ass; and of course extraterrestrial potatoes. So a lot of humour, a lot of science, a pinch of bravery, and the perils of discovering the Solar System: this was the world champion mix.

The question is: can Andy Weir repeat this success?

In Weir’s next novel, Artemis, we are on the Moon, or in the city of Artemis to be more precise - the only human colony on our pale-faced satellite. The protagonist is Jasmine Bashara, aka Jazz, the very talented, very clever resident of Artemis who works as a… porter? Yeah. Every friend of Jazz thinks she is wasting her potential. But, as a matter of fact, Jazz is responsible for the smuggling operation which supplies every Artemisians with contraband goods. So she hasn’t really been wasting all her potential for the last twenty years.

Nevertheless, Jazz needs money. Very, very much. And that’s the point when one of her old clients, a Norwegian billionaire businessman comes up with a plan. It is complicated, but it’s a piece of cake for a woman as talented as Jazz. The job pays a lot of money. It is also illegal as hell. And as it turns out, it can really affect the future of Artemis. By the way: why everyone is suddenly crazy about the failing aluminium industry?

The start is a bit bumpy, but after we learn more about Jazz and her ways, the novel shifts to full throttle. The elements are almost the same as in The Martian: a lot of fun in the narration by the badass protagonist and loads of Moon-science instead of Mars-science. Also with some sparkling dialogues and one-liners, the Brazilian mafia, and a collection of misfit friends of Jazz. Jazz is doing a lot of illegal stuff, so forget about the heroism of Mark Watney. And also say goodbye to space potatoes: all you got in exchange is algae-based food called Gunk, which is awful by all accounts.

Weir manages to recreate the atmosphere and tone that maybe every one of his fans expect in a way that it also feels totally different from The Martian. The novel can also be considered as a good source material for a movie adaptation. In the end, Artemis is a light-hearted, entertaining read which won’t revolutionize the genre, but it can seduce newbies to read sci-fi, while it is also an interesting read for veteran readers of SF.

One question remains though: why there are no security cameras on Moon? Good for the plot, bad for the police, it seems.

Andy Weir is the author of The Martian, a book that I liked a lot, where the author displayed his ability in the hard sci-fi genre, that is the science fiction deeply based on scientific and technical details.

Having the chance to ask as advanced reading his new novel I was very happy, but in the end I did not find it so engaging and fast paced as the The Martian.

The story is set on Artemis, the only city on the Moon; the main character, Jazz Bashara, alternates legal jobs (the porter) to less legal ones (smuggling forbidden goods from Earth); despite this she is not able to gain enough money to have a normal - non poor - life. One day a contact of hers proposes a criminal activity extremely dangerous but also extremely well paid, and Jazz accepts. Unfortunately, Jazz will be involved in a conspiracy about the future of the colony.

The novel is quite engaging - it contains a thread of thriller / action - but some elements did not convince me: Jazz is extremely skilled in everything (she is smart, brave and technically capable) but she is totally unable to use them in a useful way. The criminal plot is extremely naive in its development, and the conclusion is the top of naiveté (no further details to avoid spoilers). Concerning style and narration, overall I found excessive the infodump that continuously stop the narration, and stylistically weak the letters exchanged with the friend on Earth, and I did not like the jokes between the characters and toward the reader (sex jokes mostly).

I did expect more from this novel; it is nice but very much inferior to The Martian.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me the copy necessary to write this review.

I wanted to love this book so much as I absolutely adored The Martian and really enjoy Andy Weir's writing but I just wasn't able to get into the story even halfway through the book. Jazz was a great headstrong character, and I was kind of intrigued to see what she was going to do next, but I just found myself not caring about what was happening and my attention would drift too much while reading. It didn't help that I felt like within 50% of the book, not a whole lot had happened, or at least it seemed that way. Maybe I'll pick this up again some time in the future. Andy Weir's writing is always brilliant and it's quite possible it just wasn't for me at that moment in time.

This book was so good it made me miss my tube stop twice in one day.

After the highs of The Martian I was worried that Artemis would fall short. I had so much expectation from this book that I was pretty guaranteed to be let down. Except I wasn't. I loved this book. I loved the characters, I loved the plot, I loved the science. I will admit that I am a scientist. I am in no way a physist, or a rocket scientist, just a bog standard biologist. I'm one of those Biologist who aren't so good at maths. There's a point here. Even though I LOVE science, most of this science went way over my head. The important thing to note, is that this no way dampened my enjoyment of this book.

The details that Andy Weir has put into this book is phenomenal. I can't say if all of it is right in terms of the maths and the science, but really it doesn't entirely matter, because it is great. Much like The Martian this book is told from the point of view of Jazz, our protaginist. You need to be prepared to hear the story in their voice, not your own, although for me that really works. It helps me to bond with the character, see everything from their eyes.

What I think I found particularly endearing about the characters is that the majority of them are flawed. They're not these perfectly packaged people, they're just normal. But the book is anything but. It's fast paced, action packed, and when you thought you'd come to grips with it, something else changes.

I don't even regret missing my stop twice for this. A really great read.

I thoroughly enjoyed Artemis and was once again impressed with the author's skilled handling of the scientific foundation of the narrative along with well drawn believable characters and a nail biting, edge of your seat plot.

ARC provided by NeyGalley in exchange for an honest review

Artemis is a much lighter book than The Martian which may be why I've seen some mixed reviews. Where the latter is badically Robinson Crusoe in space, Artemis has the sort of feel you get from things like Ocean's Eleven and Robin Hood.

I love a good 'rogue with principles' character so Jasmine Bashara wirks for me. In some ways she was more likeable than The Martian's Mark Watney. Jazz is a smuggler and a crook with a strong sense of civic pride and her own code of slightly skewed honour. And she's trying to make money in a society of lawless capitalism where being homeless gets you deported to Earth. No good for Jazz who has been living under the lunar atmosphere since she was six. A big job promises a huge payday but predictably the job goes south. Jazz is forced to use all her not inconsiderable intelligence and ingenuity to stay ahead of the mob, finish the job and finally make sone money.

All in all I really enjoyed this. I liked the characters, the irreverent style of Weir's previous book is still there and it's a great space adventure story. Don't expect Star Trek esque encounters with strange and beautiful aliens, this is a realistic depiction of a possible lunar colony and those who live there with plenty of science and economics (delivered in a fun way!) to give it tensile strength. My one criticism is that I never really felt Jazz was in jeopardy but then it's not The Martian and she's not fighting to survive in a vacuum. Well she is but not one caused by being the only character on a planet.
Highly recommend this for sci-fi fans and those who like their MCs intelligent and crooked.

I'm sad to say that this was quite the disappointment. A mix of too high expectations and wasted potential, I was almost considering giving this only 2 stars.

It's clear that Weir wanted to make his characters have to science the shit out of bad situations just as Mark in The Martian, but while I thought it was fun and interesting in that book, this time it felt like information overload and I was just bored by all the science and lack of an exciting plot. To me it felt like he tried too hard to make up one situation after another where characters need to improvise with their science skills but lost his momentum in the process. The whole conspiracy in here was just dull.

It didn't help that I didn't care about even a single character. They all fell flat for me. While I'm happy to say that the characters are quite diverse (main character is Arabic), most of them just felt like cliches or token characters, from the gay, boyfriend-stealing (ex-)best friend, to the science-guy who doesn't know how to talk to women, I didn't warm up to any of them. (after Weird talked about his main character, and that this would be a world without sexism, I definitely expected some more girl power in here too and not just one woman, mostly surrounded by guys)

I wasn't impressed by the ending either. The stakes are high and they really have to science the shit out of that one, but at that point, I just wanted to be done. Maybe I would have been more impressed if I had cared about these characters and/or got the impression that for once one of these characters actually doesn't know their way out of a bad situation.

I loved this book!! I enjoyed 'The Martian' so was looking forward to reading this - I was not disappointed. Another novel set in space, Weir has created a fantastic city on the Moon, 'Artemis', where the protagonist Jazz Bashara lives and works as a delivery girl/courier and part time smuggler. The descriptions of the city, it's interior and exterior are amazing, and, as with the 'The Martian', Weir is brilliant at describing very technical/scientific things in easy to understand ways. I don't want to give too much away here and spoil the plot for new readers, but the story is brilliant and definitely written in a way that you can imagine on the big screen!

A tightly plotted story set in a colony on the earth’s moon. A great mix of technology, adventure, danger, daring, striving against the odds, ingenuity and glimpses of both sides of the economic coin. The pace is terrific and the detail sufficient and convincing enough to please fans of the author’s last, very successful, novel and movie ‘The Martian’.

This is such a good book. I was immediately interested when I saw the setting of this book (the moon) and it does not disappoint. Artemis is well crafted and throughout the book you really get a feel for life in the first and only city on the moon. The characters are fantastic. Jazz is a great main character and the other characters are just as well written. The plot is compelling throughout, the writing is easy to get into and the science is interesting without bogging the book down. I will say the constant attempts at humour seemed a little forced at times and Jazz's thoughts sometimes seemed a bit out of place - maybe a bit juvenile for a 26 year old. Overall I thought this was a very entertaining read and I would definitely recommend it.

In space, no-one can hear you yawn…

I try to include plot summaries at the top of my reviews for context but I can’t do it for Fartemis - every time I think about this trash my mind collapses out of exhausted, frustrated, sheer boredom! The protagonist is a smuggler called Jazz Bashara. It’s set on the moon city of Fartemis. There’s a laughable half-assed “heist” plot. Oh, and I fucking haaaated reading it! AARRGH, GET IT AWAY FROM MEEEE!

To be fair, I didn’t like Andy Weir’s last novel, The Martian, so I probably should’ve known better. But I wanted to give this writer another shot to try and see what everyone else does – mebbe now he somehow got good? NOPE. This is one author I’ll never read again!

Jazz is a Muslim for diversity reasons only. Because she doesn’t act or talk like a Muslim woman nor does her religion or ethnicity play any part in the story. Same for Fartemis being run by South Africa – no reason why, just diversity! It feels all the more contrived given that the culture feels American and all the calculatingly diverse characters talk like Americans.

And let’s talk about the cheeseball dialogue because Jazz’s voice is SO ANNOYING. It’s an amalgam of conflicting nonsense. Jazz is supposedly a 26 year old woman who for some reason talks like a 14 year old boy cracking forced cringey middle-aged dad jokes – coincidentally like 45 year old Andy Weir! She’s the least convincing female character I’ve read in some time.

At no point was I at all interested in the convoluted “heist” plot. Sabotage this thing, work for this gangster, fight this gangster, double-cross, yawn, oh god, why won’t this book end… The story unfolds predictably with the usual eye-rolling cliffhangers you find in junky books like this. There are interstitial (FILLER!) chapters featuring Jazz’s pen pal which were totally irrelevant. And, like in The Martian, there are far too many overly technical passages full of (probably) real science that was immensely dull to read – this is a novel, not an engineering manual, Andy! The laughable “action” at the end revolves around welding, which is as tedious as it sounds. In fact, it reads like a novel written by the book’s autistic character, Svoboda!

I’ll give Weir that basing the currency around weight and some of the world-building is clever but I can’t say I enjoyed reading any aspect of this at any time so it easily earned the lowest rating possible. Fartemis is the complete package – of shit: a trashy YA novel full of uninteresting characters, an unexciting, forgettable plot, bad dialogue and an annoying lead all bundled up in pedantic sci-fi. Readers who enjoyed shite like Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter, Ernest Cline’s Armada, and Pierce Brownpants’ Red Rising will probably dig this but otherwise I’d recommend Fartemis to no-one, anywhere, ever!

This book intrigued me. I hadn't read the Martian but i'd seen so much about it that when this came up I wanted to read it. Jazz is a fantastic and compelling character. I love her sassy spunky attitude, and it's great to have leading female characters like this. The topic of the moon is an interesting one, and how we would live there is something I've thought about so it'd been great to actually give me their version of whats in my mind. I thought the city was solidly built, but I would have liked a little more from it. I also felt at times i was switching off in the tech elements, but that's me more than anything wrong with the book. Full review to follow on blog!

It was very difficult to not compare «Artemis» to «The Martian», and I must say that this new book was not as good as the previous one. Still very entertaining and full of science, but something was missing.

Jasmine Bashara, short Jazz, moved with her father to the only city on the Moon - Artemis, when she was just 6 years old. Growing up on the Moon can be very exciting, especially for someone as smart as Jasmine, but! Life is not easy, even on the Moon.

No matter how much I enjoyed this book, I had many MANY issues with Jasmine: everyone kept mentioning how smart she was, but she wasn't doing anything with her potential; shallow dreams, lazy, too cocky...

As expected, I really enjoyed Artemis. Weir writes wonderful books that can be relied on for interesting and entertaining reads.
https://lilolia.wordpress.com/2017/08/26/artemis-by-andy-weir/

A thoroughly enjoyable second novel, with strong characters and a good alternative setting. Weir goes back to space but manages to achieve something different.

Fast-paced sci-fi-thriller set on the moon with a kickass female protagonist. What more do you want?

Artemis centres around Jasmine "Jazz" Bashara, the wayward daughter of Ammar a master welder on the still nascent but rapidly growning lunar colony of Artemis. It is the second novel by Andy Weir, which, after The Martian which I absolutely adored, I was very much looking forward to reading.

Like The Martian, the story is told in the first person and follows a similar stylistic approach, laced with the same humour and strong scientific focus. It is however very different, as the Artemis colony already consisted of some 2000 individuals at the time the novel is set.

Artemis itself, is supposed to be a bustling place, with a stratified class system. It is a popular destination for very wealthy tourists who are offered the ability to see the Apollo 11 landing site, but it also has its fair share of administrators, blue collar workers and a lower underclass of people just trying to eke out a living. Structurally, it is architected as a series of interconnected domes, each dome forming the natural habitat for the different classes represented.

The story itself begins with Jazz, struggling to make ends meet as a porter and small-time smuggler, who is offered a job which would make her rich beyond her wildest dreams. Of course there are several sizeable catches along the way. Unfortunately the central premise of why Jazz in particular is offered this job, never really seemed satisfying or justified to me, which somewhat unfavourably coloured my impression of the story which followed.

From there, the story itself rapidly turns into fast-paced heist caper which by rights should have made it just as gripping and involving as the Martian. However, there were two things which I think really let the novel down. Firstly, I didn't really like or find Jazz all that convincing as the protagonist. She just seemed to be a bit of a cypher. Obviously brilliant, yet maverick and wilful, she was a bit too cocky and wise-cracking to make the reader warm to her. In contrast to the cocky wise-cracking Mark Watney of The Martian whose mere predicament means that the reader feels instantly sympathetic towards, Jazz just seems like an over-indulged wilful child who manages to get away with entirely too much without suffering from any more serious consequences than a few stern words of admonishment, even when her actions were actually quite serious and criminal in nature. Maybe I'm being a bit a over-critical about this but the actions in the book just didn't seem to be being treated seriously enough and the humour sometimes felt jarring and unnatural.

I also found Artemis itself to be unconvincing, it just seemed to be too constructed - at times it reminded me of the kind of colony which could be built in something like SimCity and consequently was populated by a bunch of one-dimensional Sims. I never got a feeling that there was any substance or coherence to the place - it all just seemed a bit antiseptic and sterile.

All this being said, what redeems the book and where Weir obviously excels, is, as with The Martian, in the technical details, which here for the most part revolve around chemical physics. Weir does an excellent job with the story revolving around two main set pieces, through which he plots a meticulous but thrilling course, interweaving the sciencey bits with some good old-fashioned derring-do and nail-biting suspense. In particular, things really start to hot up in the last quarter of the book which does much to offset some of the less satisfying aspects of the novel.

Overall, although I did enjoy Artemis, I do feel a bit let down as I was really hoping for great things afer something as wonderful as The Martian and ultimately I ended up disappointed.

This hasn't put me off however, and I do look forward to the third novel by Weir, if and when that might be, and hope that he manages to produce something as magical as The Martian.