I received an advance review copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. What a fun little crime caper it is. There is just enough science detail to keep the book satisfying for a nerd like me without bogging down the action. Jazz has a nice bit of self-deprecating humor which keeps the first person narrative flowing easily. There is just a hint of more to come in a possible sequel while bringing events to a close. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

One can count on Andy Weir to create strong, caustic, amazing characters who survive in the face of huge adversity to somehow save the day while saving themselves. As Mr Weir's Mark Watley's wonderful character in his debut novel, The Martian, we meet Jasmine (Jazz) Bashara, a strong willed rebellious young woman who takes nothing from anyone. The setting is the moon in the town called Artemis and where danger is something one contends with while living on the moon, (think no air and living in a vacuum). However, there is more to come in the way of danger. Danger is lurking Jazz learns after she tries to pull of the perfect crime and only finds that she has opened a can of worms that lie beneath the city and some of its inhabitants.

Jazz has a tenuous relationship with quite a few of Artemis's inhabitants, especially her father, an experienced welder who raised her alone. He is also a devout Muslim who frowns on Jazz's escapades and boy does she have escapades! Jazz is the quintessential free spirit, no one is ever going to hold her down which makes her an excellent strong minded female protagonist. She is foul mouthed, wise cracking, and full of brilliance, a woman who thinks on her feet with a mind that fully engages when push comes to shove.

As in his former book, Mr Weir has included a world of science, engineering and space living, and intertwines the novel with its tenets and in effect teaches we, who are somewhat uneducated in these subjects, some really amazing things. He does it so well as he sets Jazz up to explain most things with her jaunty, holding her feet to the fire, screw this type personality.

Along with some other great characters, Mr Weir has again created a story that shows what a brain can do. He glorifies the knowledge of science and lets the reader come to know characters who are brilliant but ever so real and human.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for the advanced copy of this novel for an unbiased review.

I don't think this is quite as good as "The Martian," but I still loved it! It's got the same fantastic blend of snarky humor, action, and science fiction. As with "The Martian," I was impressed by how much scientific detail is included without it slowing down the story too much. Some sci-fi readers might enjoy less actual scienc and others more, but Weir's writing is the perfect blend for me. I like that he kept the story in space but explored a (wo)man vs. man conflict rather than man vs. nature. There are several entertaining twists that I didn't expect. The conclusion is a bit over-the-top, in terms of drama, but I didn't mind at all because it fits the tone of the book and is just a lot of fun.

I sometimes get annoyed when a white guy writes from the perspective of a non-white person, especially a woman. I don't think it's necessarily wrong for people to explore the perspectives of other races, ethnicities, genders, etc., but it's hard to do well without appropriating the other people's experiences or using stereotypes. However, it didn't bother me in this case, at least in principle, because the setting is so different and therefore Jazz's experiences aren't expected to be similar to the experiences Middle Eastern women have on Earth. On the other hand, I don't think Weir gets the female voice quite right, which is my main complaint about the book. Some of Jazz's comments felt off, particularly her multiple observations about her own appearance and jokes about her sexuality. I like that she doesn't apologize for doing what she wants to do, but some of her internal dialogue about it isn't realistic. Still, she is strong, complex, and interesting. Male sci-fi authors don't often put females in the lead, and I like that Weir gave it a shot and at least made her a fun badass.

Though I enjoyed "The Martian" even more, I thought "Artemis" was a blast and was thrilled to discover that Andy Weir is more than a one-hit wonder.

This was, without a doubt, the most enjoyable book I've read in 2017! Andy Weir wrecks it again, and then puts it all meticulously back together. Only Weir could manage to present the lunar physics of welding in such an engaging manner. While he wavers just slightly writing a female lead character, Jazz is still endearing, realistic and an absolute blast....literally and figuratively. The support characters are even more enjoyable. So pleased to read that movie rights have already been purchased, but Artemis would make an outstanding tv series. An absolute must read for fans of The Martian (duh) and The Expanse Series. 60% of my Christmas shopping is complete with pre-orders of Artemis for all my bookish friends and family. I look forward to all of Weir's future projects.

The science in Artemis is just as great as the first one. Weir focuses on the chemistry of sustaining a living population on the moon, along with all the great physics that comes from a setting with less gravity than Earth. Weir does a good job addressing almost all of the actual things that would have to happen/be thought of when creating a home on the moon along with explaining the science behind them.

Jazz speaks at you like the book is her journal but it’s not set up as journal entries out right which I found a little confusing at first but enjoyed by the end. I also wasn’t thrilled with Jazz when the story first started but by the end I had grown to respect her and her decisions. The cast of second characters is amazing, I enjoyed everyone in her rag tag crew immensely. I also loved how much Jazz utilized her friends when she needed them, while still being a strong leader and fast thinker for the team.

The book was a bit of a slow start for me but around halfway through I couldn’t put it down. I feel like this book was set up to be the first in a series rather than a stand alone. The ending left me with several questions and didn’t wrap up everything. If this is going to be a series, I can’t wait to read the next one, if not I’m a little unhappy with how much was left in the air.

Try not to go into this book thinking about The Martian. I know that was hard for me, especially because I love The Martian so much, but, sadly, I think how much I loved his first book tainted this one a little for me. It’s hard not to compare an author’s first book to his second but I personally think Weir did a great job with a similar topic (space) while still creating a completely different environment and story once I took a step back from his other work.

Artemis is the latest novel by Andy Weir, author of the mega hit, The Martian. This novel has lots of the world building details that Weir provided in The Martian, only this time in a fictional moon city, Artemis. Jazz Bashera is a moon resident and is a Han Solo type character (she is a criminal of the petty sort who you quickly side with). The world building is thorough (sometimes too much so) and the underlying plotline is solid. But, the characters lack depth. Overall, a fun romp of a novel for a quick read. For something in the same vein with a bit more substance, try A Long Way to A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for an ARC of this story in return for my honest review. I was so excited to get the chance to read this story-Andy Weir! a society on the moon! Female main character!
I'm a little disappointed to relate that I didn't love it as much as the Martian-mostly because I wasn't sure sometimes if I liked the main character. I'm okay with narrators with shaky motives and complicated relationships which are both present here. I'm just not sure that I always enjoyed her humor-it felt forced sometimes. I also didn't like how she expected to be slut-shamed all the time but then it was never obvious why that would have even happened.
I did like the secondary characters and I felt like the whole world of Artemis was really well-thought out and read very visually. I was thoroughly entertained so I gave it 4 stars.

I know I shouldn't compare this book to The Martian, but I'm going to anyways.

While the story is fun (I mean, it is a moon caper), that's about the only thing that kept me going through this book. My two main problems with this book:

1.) It was very obvious that it was written from a guy's perspective. Jazz's actions and thoughts and words felt very much like what a man thinks a woman would do/think/say in this situation. I rolled my eyes more time than I can count. This also made it very hard for me to sympathize with her. She was just a brat and there was very little about her that made her worth rooting for. As a woman, I feel guilty saying this, but I genuinely believe this book would have been much better had the main character been a guy.

2.) Whereas in The Martian, the science-y talk seemed to help the story along, here it just felt forced and distracting. It didn't flow well with the story and it felt as if the author was just throwing it in there because he felt like his audience would be looking for it.

If you liked The Martian, or if you just like space novels in general, I think this book is worth a shot. However, I would temper expectations. Had Weir not written The Martian, I may have enjoyed this more. However, having read (and LOVED) The Martian, it was hard not to compare the two and Artemis falls way short of the bar Weir set with his first novel.

Marginally entertaining, but no where near as good as The Martian. I can't recommend it.

Jazz Bashara lives in Artemis, a city of about 2,000 people that is located... on the moon. Estranged from her father, Jazz lives in a tiny cubicle and makes her living as a smuggler, bringing rare and illegal Earth items to the citizens of Artemis. At the beginning of the story, one of her best customers asks Jazz to pull off a different type of crime, more risky, but much more profitable. Jazz agrees to the work but soon finds herself in trouble - with the Artemis police, government, and the underground mafia that operates there. She has to rely on her intelligence and street smarts, as well as a few trusted friends, to save her life and life for everyone on Artemis.

Fans of Andy Weir's previous book, The Martian will also like this one. Although it is not as heavy on the science, there is still plenty of technical jargon, but Weir writes in a way that makes it fun and interesting to read and understand. This was a really fun and funny book, with quirky characters and several laugh out loud scenes. If you love science fiction, you will probably like The Martian better than this one, but if you are new to the genre or want an easier read, then give this one a try.

This book comes out November 14th. Thanks to NetGalley for a free advanced copy; I am happy to give my honesty review.

A lunar colony doesn't seem like too far-fetched of a concept anymore, and Andy Weir's Artemis envisions one possibility of living on the moon. 

Jazz Bashara has lived in Artemis, on the moon, for a majority of her life after immigrating with her father from Saudi Arabia when she was six. Now in her twenties, she's learned many things while in Artemis, some legal, like her father's profession of welding, and others less honest, like smuggling prohibited (also read: flammable) goods to those willing to pay for them. When Jazz is offered the payday of a lifetime by one of her rich customers, she undertakes a huge, seemingly impossible, task to undermine the oxygen supplier monopoly, drawing her into the web of a larger conspiracy than she bargained for. 

With a cast of diverse characters and a female lead who exhibits ingenuity, strength, and weakness, this story was entertaining and reminded me quite a bit of Firefly with some of the exploits devised. This novel felt less science heavy than The Martian, but it still provided enough explanation for intricate processes to foster a reasonable understanding of the situation for the layman. The email correspondence between Jazz and Kelvin on Earth was initially jarring as it didn't have much of an explanation for its presence; however, as the narrative progressed it was a nice way to indirectly offer answers to questions relating to how Jazz was able to run her smuggling enterprise. While there was humor injected throughout the narrative, this book had a more sophomoric feel to it with moments in Jazz's thoughts that had me asking "Really!? She thought that about herself?", but on the whole it was an enjoyable and fun story. I also will admit that I thoroughly enjoyed The Martian so that could easily color my view of this new novel merely by (unintentional) comparison. 

Overall, I'd give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Artemis by Andy Weir is another epic jaunt into space. This time, on the colony of Artemis, which is based on the moon. Our main character Jasmine, AKA Jazz, is a porter by choice who dabbles in smuggling to make a living. Jazz grew up on the moon with her father who is one of the best welders in the community. She met her smuggling partner through a pen pal assignment at school when they were just children. Jazz and her father parted ways several years earlier due to her wild ways and not wanting to do what her father wanted (which was to use her extremely intelligent mind). Jazz is brilliant to say the least. She teaches herself science, chemistry and anything else that may interest her on the way. On one of her regular deliveries of smuggled cigars to one of the moons wealthiest citizens she stumbles into a plan to destroy some equipment for Trond, her cigar smoking citizen, in exchange for one million slugs. Slugs are the currency of Artemis. Things of course do not go as planned and when she finds Trond has been murdered her plans quickly change to one of survival. She recruits some of her closest allies to pull off a stunt that may kill them all but may also be the one thing that saves their city from being overrun by the South American cartel that is heading their way.
The book is extremely fast paced and does have a lot of science explained but overall I loved the book. Jazz is hilarious and her friends are just as engaging. I'd really like if there were another book with Jazz as the protagonist again. She was just great.

When I read Andy Weir's first book, <i>[book:The Martian|18007564]</i>, in 2014, I wasn't one of it's biggest fans. I like it, don't get me wrong, but I found it a little repetitive and indulgent in its (admittedly excellent) premise. On the other hand, it had some points that I wished other books -
particularly science fiction books - would follow (most notably, that it does not have an antagonist). In <i>Artemis</i>, his second novel, he changes the game. There are more characters. The plot is more traditional. But it still maintains a technological setting that feels close enough to our own to be really present. I've only recently become aware of the fact that there is a sub-genre called 'mundane' science fiction, but Weir does it well: it's within our solar system; space travel is hard; and there are no aliens.

<i>Artemis</i>, as the name should imply for anyone with a passing knowledge of Classics, is set on the Moon. The eponymous hero is the only lunar city, a series of bubbles with a population of around 2,000. As in <i>Futurama</i>, its main industry is tourism; but the low-gravity environment has other benefits, such as easier mobility for the daughter of a wealthy industrialist who was badly injured in a car-crash on Earth. The industrialist in question hires Jasmine Bashara - Jazz to her friends; porter, smuggler, and our narrator - to sabotage a rival so that he can take control of the production of oxygen for the city. It's a bit of a heist story, a bit of a crime story, and it's set on the Moon.

Perhaps Weir's greatest strength is how he creates the problems which his protagonists must overcome and then proceeds to solve them. The problems themselves are usually scientific, in a broad sense, by which I mean they can vary from the mechanical to the chemical, but are rarely to do with people just being bad. Furthermore, these problems tend to be fairly easily explained and their explanations follow through. The closest parallel, in my opinion, is <i>Star Trek: The Next Generation</i>, where most of the <i>Enterprise</i>'s problems are solved with working things through or coming up with a mechanical work-around; but in Weir's books I tend to find these explanations mush easier to follow because his technology is so much closer to our own. In <i>The Martian</i>, though, I found this device to be over-used as it was, essentially, the entire plot and 400+ pages of that can get a little dry. In <i>Artemis</i>, it occurs only when the story needs it (primarily towards the end, but a few times throughout) and thus it feels more like a resolution.

It does come at a price, however: Jazz's characterization. As the book is written entirely in the first person the main character really needs to sound consistent. Most of the time, she sounds a lot like Mark Watney. She also sounds like a tour guide (fair enough, it's a job to which she aspires) and a physics teacher (because that's necessary to the exposition). An example, from 23% into the book:
<blockquote>If people use more power than usual, the city becomes slightly over-pressurized. Why? The power becomes heat, which increases the air temperature, and that makes the pressure go up."</blockquote>
It's not the worst feature a book can have, but when your protagonist is supposed to be a twenty-something Arab woman who's also a dropout and a smuggler, having her sound not too distinct from your previous novel's thirty-something white dude with two PhDs <i>is</i> a failing. Another review said she sounds like a teenage boy, which is also often fair (she does seem to think about boobs a lot for a woman in a society that doesn't seem to know that bisexuality is a thing). It's telling that in his acknowledgements Weir <spoiler>(jokingly?) thanks several people "for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator"</spoiler>. I mean, in the film adaptation where you have an actor lending Jazz some character she'll be super cool. In the book? Imperfect. Kinda fun, but imperfect.

Which is a pretty good summary of <i>Artemis</i> as a whole - fun; imperfect. Weir seems to have decided to go for a more traditional story, but uses the strengths he showed in the last one well (as well as some of the weaknesses in characterization). It's not revolutionary, but as a mundane science fiction story that requires very little technological advance to be possible, it's good.

Is Andy Weir a robot sent from the future to teach us all practical STEM for when we inevitably flee our destroyed planet to live in space? Maybe.

What I do know is that <i>Artemis</i> is full of the kind of world building minutia that made <i>The Martian</i> such a treat. It is clear that Weir loves a puzzle. If you love how things work, you love solving word problems and figuring out how things work, this will be right up your alley.

The only real criticism I have is with Jazz, the main character. She sounds exactly like Mark Watney from <i>The Martian</i>, and given that I hadn't read the blurb real thoroughly, it took me multiple chapters before I even realized she was a woman (What? Jazz, could be a man's name in the future in space! Shut up.). Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the heck out of it, but I'd have liked it if there was as much attention paid to the characterizations as there was to the technical specs.

All in all, this was a fun read. If you liked <i>The Martian</i> you will probably like this.

What could Andy Weir do to follow-up on his great first book and the movie that followed; he wrote Artemis. Set on the moon, it provides a glimpse of what living on the moon and how the earth has changed after less than 100 years. An entertaining book, cool story, and some interesting characters. Whoever provided the technical information did a nice job and it’s a book that will appeal to all ages.

ARTEMIS (2017)
By Andy Weir
Crown, 320 pages.
★★★

The Martian, Andy Weir's debut novel, was a smashing success. His follow-up, Artemis, is too good to be called a sophomore slump, but it's at best a mixed bag. Fans of nerdy science will find plenty to contemplate, the literature side of it yaws more toward Dan Brown than to Ursula K. LeGuin or Robert Heinlein.

It is set in the near future in Artemis, a small city of 2,000 clustered in five bio bubbles on the Moon (Armstrong, Aldrin, Conrad, Bean, Shepard) that has solved the problem of producing enough oxygen to keep everyone inside alive. Artemis is run by the Kenyan Space Corporation (KSC) and headed by Administrator Fidelis Ngugi, the woman who figured out how to make Kenya a leader in the space program. She is one of the many politically correct boxes Weir ticks off; there are also gay characters, Latinos, Scandinavians, a hunky Ukrainian researcher, Brazilian and Chinese baddies, our protagonist, Jasmine ("Jazz") Bashara, is of Saudi extraction, and her welder father, Ammar is a devout Muslim for whom Jazz is a disappointment. Jazz, aged 27, has lived on the Moon since she was six and considers herself an Artemisian. She's certainly not a good Muslim; she's a hard drinker, sleeps around, and walks on the razor's edge. Her biggest fear is that head of security Rudy DuBois will someday bust her small-scale smuggling operation and deport her back to Earth.

Artemis is like a big extended village, but it's not a utopia—more like Deep Space Nine set on the lunar surface and stripped of its aliens. Lots of Earth stuff is conveniently ignored: the legal drinking age, corporate monopolies, petty crime, casual sexual relations, etc. Only its wealthiest members get to eat anything other than Gunk, flavored algae, and everyone is in one way or another in thrall to KSC as the Artemisian currency, slugs, is credit from the KSC. (It's shorthand for soft-landed grams and each one is pegged to a gram of Earth cargo.) Still, tourists fly to the moon to gawk and bounce around on the surface in "hamster bubbles," and many of residents such as Jazz prefer its Mild West vibe of drinking, hookups, cussing, libertarian values, and improvised ways of making a living.

Jazz, however, wouldn't mind having a bigger living space, and that sucks her into a Get Slugs Quick scheme from a regular smuggling customer, the ridiculously rich Tron Landvik. All she has to do is slip outside the city and destroy four mineral harvesters belonging to the Sanchez Aluminum Company. As such things go, Tron's stated reason for wanting them taken down isn't his real reason. Let the caper begin. It will involve murder, a crime syndicate, geeky technology, double-dealing, hair-raising danger, an unlikely set of partnerships, and beat-the-clock scenarios.

How you'll feel about all of this takes me back to my Dan Brown analogy. Do you buy into computer-like minds that are able to do the science, overcome physical threats, and concoct improvised solutions in a parsec, or does it stretch your credulity? I can't assess Weir's science—my Ph.D. is in history, not STEM—but his solutions at least sounded logical to my right-brained thinking. His human responses, however, often rang false. To me, this novel has Hollywood thriller written all over it. Its central drama is pretty much the template for such projects, especially the put-aside-existing-prejudices-for-the-good-of-all setup.

Mind, I have no objection if Artemis becomes a good Hollywood thriller, though somehow I doubt it has the capacity to match the gravitas of Blade Runner or even The Martian. Artemis is a decent read and bad girl Jazz will grow on you as she evolves. Ultimately, though, Artemis is a pretty standard thriller dressed in enough respectable scientific garb to make it appear weighty in a setting with 16% of Earth's gravity. But, hey, I like Dan Brown.

Rob Weir*

*Note: Though we bear the same last name, to my knowledge I am in no way related to Andy Weir.

At first I thought this book would be like any other syfy. Boy was I wrong! The characters are lifelike, and the plot is realistic and uncomplicated. The heroine, Jazz, is like many woman: complicated, has issues, and flawed. However, she has many redeeming qualities: self serving but selfless, loyal, loving and quirky, smart but ingnorant, honest with herself and those around her. She is the friend who tells it like it is, gets into trouble constantly and you find yourself along for the ride. The supporting characters were also well crafted and show depth of character. The descriptions are so thorough that you are transported into the environment and can practically see the scenario unfold around you.
The plot was well thought out and written. The book keeps you interested from beginning to end, then has you wanting to find out after it has ended. I would love to read a sequel!

Artemis is a fun story with diverse and unusual characters. I'm less enthusiastic about the reckless, sexually driven female trope than I used to be - but I did enjoy Jazz Bashara at the helm of this story. At least she was complex! But unlike Weir's expertly rendered Martian, his newest novel felt too heavy handed with the technical details. I drowned a little in the complex science.

Except that the characters, even Jazz, are so one dimensional you can anticipate what they are going to say or do months in advance. Jazz's character and her failings are never quite explained, and Weir gives her dialog that would make a 17 year old boy blush. In fact, I thought Jazz was a teenage boy at first. Jazz manages to anger everyone on the moon colony of only 2000 people but is capable of hiding out in such a small space and isn't detected. She takes payment to sabotage a large mining operation and when that fails agrees to disable an entire smelting operation and the main source of oxygen for the colony. But it gets better - after she destroys the smelter she and others realize that she's unleashed a gas into the entire moon colony that will kill everyone unless of course she runs a gauntlet and takes a heroic action.

A fun read with a spirited female lead character. What will the first moon colony be like? How will permanent residents make a living? How will tourists and residents interact? How will income impact living conditions? Okay, forget the economics that play in the background and enjoy the story of Jazz Bashara, a brilliant and savvy young woman who is just trying to make a living as a porter, with a few shady, well, criminal side pursuits, who gets caught up in something way bigger than she ever intended.