Jazz Bashara, the main character in Andy Weir's new novel, ARTEMIS, is one of my favorite characters so far this year (along with Eleanor and Polly from ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE and THE BOOK OF POLLY)! She is a fully realized character, snarky and strong willed. Her inner dialogue and interactions with other characters are hilarious at times. The author does a great job of revealing what life would be like on a moon colony and I enjoyed the descriptions of how everything worked. Jazz is what I'd call an "anti-hero" in fiction, and kudos to the author, as these characters are usually male. She has no problem breaking the law, if she'll make money, but she also has standards. Her desire for a better life on Artemis causes her to make some questionable decisions, but this is what drives the plot. I found the story fascinating and entertaining - exactly what I look for in fiction. I ordered two copies for my collection, but I think the holds will be high enough to justify buying more. Well done!

So much fun! Laugh out loud, intellectually stimulating (could the reader anticipate problems with the engineering etc.).

I will not be recommending this to as many younger readers as The Martian - which I handsold to many tweens and teens - due to the gratuitous sexual references. But for older teens and adults, this was a treat!

Grabbed me from the first scene, which was a good thing because it slowed down quite a bit for exposition. I did feel the main character seemed to be written as younger than her age (more 18-20 than 26), but I loved Jazz and all of her flaws.

I especially liked the international flavour of the characters. Why couldn't Kenya be the driving force for a lunar colony?

Artemis will be an easy sell for the holiday season. Thank you for allowing me to read it early, and to generate interest with my colleagues and customers.

ARTEMIS by Andy Weir was an interesting read for a non-science fiction follower. My husband and many friends read THE MARTIAN and loved it so I wanted to give this author a try. I'll state up front that I did not read THE MARTIAN so I can't make any comparisons between the two and also, that I typically do not read this type of book.

With that in mind, I enjoyed this novel. In fact, I couldn't put it down once I crossed the halfway point. I found the detail appropriately extensive which occurs when the author needs you to visualize something that you have never seen or doesn't really exist. It's hard to root for a main character that is so flawed and I struggled with that through the first half of the novel but I appreciated and applauded the way the book actually ended. I expect that fans of science fiction and Andy Weir would enjoy this latest novel.

I received an ARC of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I think Andy Weir is a genius, original, and funny! Jazz is a 26 year old woman that lives on the moon since she was 6. The place is called Artemis, her job: porter (with a little smuggling on the side) I think Jazz is one of my favorite characters, she is brilliant and funny like Mark Watney but, she is on the wrong side of the law! When Jazz found a way to earn money so she could afford an apartment, her entire plan goes “wrong” !Fast paced, very funny and very entertaining. I highly recommend!!

This is a heist caper with a heavy dose of science defining the parameters of the job, because it takes place on the moon.

Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is 26, and a “porter” on Artemis, the only city on the moon. For her job, she has clearance to pick up packages at the port and deliver them, allowing her to run a lucrative smuggling business on the side. She is trying to accumulate a great deal of money - in fact, a very specific amount of “slugs” as the moon currency is called: 416,922, to be exact, though we don’t learn why until near the end of the book.

But even aside from this mysterious debt, Jazz wants most of all to be rich, though she is very smart and everyone keeps telling her she is wasting her potential. When she is offered the job of a big heist by Trond Landvik, “one of the richest richfucks in town,” for example, and she asks him why he wants *her* to do it, he says:

“‘Jazz, I’m a businessman,’ he said. ‘My whole job is exploiting underutilized resources. And you are a massively underutilized resource. I’m not judging,’ he said. ‘Just analyzing. You’re really smart and you want money. I need someone who’s really smart and I have money. Are you interested?’”

At first she is not, but when he offers her a million slugs for the job, she jumps on it.

The heist will require sabotaging the robotic harvesters at the Sanchez Aluminum plant, after which Trond will be in a position to take over the operation. The aluminum market is currently not such a big deal now that the city’s pods are finished, but the plant’s smelter outside town also produces oxygen from processing ore. They not only make rocket fuel on the side, they supply the city with all of their breathable air. They also sell the CO2 to the food farms. Yet there is something more going on that has made Trond interested in this plant; Jazz can’t figure out (yet) what it is.

Jazz has a number of friends she calls on for help with the heist (most not knowing what they are helping her with), even including her email pen pal from Earth, Kelvin Otieno. On the moon she gets help from, inter alia, the best electrical engineer in town; a specialist in space walking; her father - an expert welder; and even a robot. There will be many obstacles, not even counting the very hostile lunar environment outside the protection of the city’s aluminum walls.

What could go wrong? Well, just about everything.

Discussion: Weir said in an interview he did “tons and tons of research” for this book, and it certainly shows. He wanted to make it accurate, even though the details of the heist are only secondary to the plot. He said:

“My strength is scientific knowledge — that's what I'm good at. So that is the avenue by which I tell plausible stories. There are a million ways to make a good story, and this is just the one I've chosen.”

What this means however, is that, to me, while the parts about the science behind the caper clearly show his enthusiasm and excitement, I found the character-driven sections less convincing.

I appreciated his efforts to make the population of the moon diverse, and even to tackle the challenge of making his protagonist a female. But I didn’t find Jazz’s “wise-ass” persona all that convincing. She seemed more like a cigar-chomping, hard-drinking mobster than a girl who loves and respects her father, is interested in a long-term love relationship, and even seems sort of lonely -or would, if Weir delved into any of her feelings to a greater extent.

Evaluation: In spite of my quibbles with characterization, there is a lot to like about this new book from the talented author of “The Martian.” It’s entertaining, and undoubtedly will end up on the big screen.

I want to start by saying I was beyond excited to read this book. I absolutely loved The Martian; I could not put it down. I don't always read science fiction because I feel lost when it gets too technical. But Andy Weir seems to make science fiction accessible for all readers. This book was no different, I still felt like I understood what was going on even when it got technical.
This book is based on a future colonized moon, called Artemis. Jazz is a smuggler of contraband who is the only person who spent most of her life on the moon. She is smart, savvy, hilarious to the point of me laughing out loud at things she said. Even though her job is technically illegal, she still stands by a code of honor; no drugs, no guns. She loves Artemis and knows what's best for the community. Jazz is made an offer of 1,000,000 slugs (moon dollars) to do a job that takes a lot of risk and will take down a company. She takes the job but, of course, as stories go, everything doesn't go as planned.
This book had all the parts to equal a wonderful story but somewhere along the way this book fell flat for me. For example, I didn't understand what purpose the letters to Kelvin and Jazz served. Unless I missed something, I felt they didn't add to the storyline at all. I felt there was times I was very interested in what was happening but then 20% of the time, I was just outright bored. It seemed more YA to me then I expected, even though the main character was mid 20s. I can't pinpoint what I didn't necessarily enjoy, I was just overall disappointed.
That being said, I think this is my personal opinion and I can absolutely see how someone else could really enjoy this story but for me it was just ok.

3.5

Artemis is a “moon city,” the first of its kind, modeled after those on earth so that those in power, those who ‘have,’ receive all the comforts of… home, and those with no power, the ‘have nots,’ possess as few comforts as possible. Since Artemis is on the moon, of course there are differences due to the difference in gravity, sun exposure, the atmosphere, so the city is made up of bubble-like structures connected by tubes.

Wealthy tourists come for visits, stay in luxurious hotels, some save a lifetime for this once-in-a-lifetime voyage. Tourism is everywhere, a lucrative business, and once they’re there, there are no other distractions to draw them away, no other destinations. Artemis is it, and it is enclosed, hallways instead of streets, up and down stairs that lead to ground level, where the tunnels connect to the other bubbles.

Jazz Bashara isn’t one of the rich and powerful, in fact, she is a porter with a side business of obtaining, providing – for a fee, of course – items unavailable in Artemis. Others might consider her a criminal; she considers it providing a service where she can control what contraband makes it to Artemis, no guns, and no narcotics. Jazz lives in the section of Artemis called Conrad Down 15, fifteen floors underground in a space no one could describe as comfortable or comforting. The people who live there refer to their space as “coffins.” A bed. A shelf. Bathroom down the hall. She yearns for a better, more comfortable life, but isn’t interested in pursuing regular channels to achieve it. Despite this, Jazz is a compelling character, with a father who seems at odds with her, her father a devout Muslim, while she isn’t interested in following any religion. Nevertheless, it doesn’t escape her that if she is caught in any illegal activities, she could be sent back to Saudi Arabia, even though she’s lived most of her life in Artemis.

There are a handful of wonderful individuals in this novel, some more likeable than others, but the spotlight really is on Jazz, and she’s quite an interesting character. One minute she feels fragile, vulnerable and rather broken, the next she’s kicking butt and taking names. The story is good, although it really felt more like a Young Adult novel to me, but that was not a negative for me, at all. Perhaps because Jazz feels so afraid of intimacy on an emotional level, and so rebellious at the same time, that she feels more as though she’s on the verge of becoming a woman than a woman in her twenties. Physically, sexually, Jazz is more willing to share intimacy, but her emotional walls are like a force field that few manage to maneuver around.

Overall, this was enjoyable, fast-paced, and fun. I enjoyed Andy Weir’s “The Martian” more than I did “Artemis,” but there were some unexpected, and memorable moments that I really enjoyed.


Pub Date: 14 Nov 2017

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Crown Publishing / Crown

I was debating whether to give this book 2 or 3 stars, and had originally gone up to 3 stars out of entertainment value, then dropped it back to 2 once I finished this review.

I have a terrible swearing habit and am not against people having sex, but man there's really an incessant bombardment of swearing and comments about sex in this book. There's a little bit of the "she's hypercompetant but her personal life is a mess!" issues. There's a little bit of a middle aged white guy writing about the sex life of a young girl in a way that seems like a high schooler's dream of how they wish women would talk about sex. The constant references she says about her sex life in the first person, vs. what she says in the emails, vs. what we do establish as her critical relationships, they don't line up. Is that supposed to be an unreliable narrator thing? And if so, why THAT and not something else? You could have had the exact same situation with rebelling against her father's religion and structure with discussions of drinking or going out or anything else without making you sit and analyze how much of a slut she is (which is really just an extension of your own values than that of the book).

In general, the book is entertaining. It has a bunch of cartoon-y stereotype characters that are still fun. The worldbuilding is good. There's the same sciency exposition that Weir used in The Martian. I just wish we'd talked like 80% less about Jazz's vagina and where it's been and used that time to discuss more about her smuggling operation (which there's some major inconsistencies as to its success and size throughout the book) or actually develop or give background to more of the relationships between her and the other characters.

Artemis is amazing. Jazz is brilliant yet she still chooses life as a porter who is able to smuggle contraband into Artemis. Jazz jumps at the chance of the heist of a life time but when things go downhill quickly she turns to her friends and family for help. Jazz's humour is fantastic and I found myself laughing out loud more than once. I learned so much from this book. I assume as with The Martian, Andy Weir's science and theories are right on point. I learned so much about welding and chemistry while reading this book. Artemis would be such an awesome place to live. I'd live on the moon. I highly recommend this book!

This is a very successful follow up to The Martian. Andy Weir has created a character that is very different but similar in many ways. "Jazz"is the main character, a young women, who has as much resolve and resiliency as the astronaut Mark Watney. She is an interesting character, that I want to read more about, and this novel is ripe for a series.
She is a resident of the moon in the city of Artemis. Like many current millennials, she is struggling to survive and get ahead. Her job as a porter and her connections afford her opportunities to earn extra money from smuggling. From there the plot twists and follows a conventional mystery plot. It is always interesting and the end is not shocking but rather an opportunity for additional adventures.
Like astronaut Mark Watney Jazz is funny and able to keep herself going even against great odds. The story is laced with scientific ideas and processes that give the story a reality that is similar to The Martian. Jazz is an excellent young character that will appeal to all ages of reader and the setting in the city of Artemis is not fantasy but a real approximation of what a city on the moon would be like to live in one day. The City is functional but it has its dark side and Jazz is adept at maneuvering between the various levels in its society.
At first I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't a man against nature story. It does deliver an interesting read and is ultimately about survival. This is a perfect book to get New Adult Readers hooked on the mystery genre.

In many ways this book compares very favorably with The Martian (no small task), it's smart, thoughtful, witty, and has some moments of very fine comedic timing. Characters were introduced well and everyone fit and made sense. Artemis is an interesting and detailed world, and the cast of characters is diverse. Main character Jazz is multi-faceted and complex. She provides much of the wit throughout the novel, although there were a couple instances of cliched sarcasm.

There is just the slightest hint of romance, so slight that I can't tell if it rounds the story out or if it should have been excluded.

All that said, there was something off about the main character's voice for me. I can't single one thing out, but most often the times I was pulled out of the story or something didn't seem to fit it was about her own inner thoughts or comments about her sexuality. Despite the fact that a gay couple seemed to be mostly accepted and successful, and one official was mentioned in passing as having two husbands, Jazz made quips and became defensive about being 'trashy', about being perceived as being sexually active frequently, and so on. She was open about being sexual, but never indicated that she got any enjoyment from it. A few lines here or there would have cemented this facet of her character, and maybe wouldn't have been necessary for a male character. For all of her allusions to boobs, wet t-shirt contests, and various sexual encounters (such as the fastest time she ever got dressed, when her boyfriends parents came home early) she never once related that she got any pleasure or satisfaction from it, and given her blatantly stated regrets about past relationships it's a glaring omission.

All in all, this is a well-written sci-fi adventure. I'll be thinking things through and wondering about Jazz's conclusions for a while, and especially how reliable of a narrator she was.

Artemis is a creative and interesting story, not quite the scientific detail as in The Martian, but still makes you think about different space concepts and living on Mars. The language was a little rough but it probably portrayed the way the main character spoke. Would make a fantastic movie.

If you liked The Martian you will be thrilled that Andy Weir has written another science fiction book. In Artemis, the time period is in the future--but not too distant a future-- where the moon has been colonized and there's an actual city (named Artemis) where people live and people visit. The heroine of the book is Jazz Bashara, in her twenties and one of the 'little people' who work on the moon. In fact she's a porter, basically a delivery girl, a pretty low level job. That really doesn't earn her enough to live so she has a little smuggling sideline to bring in more money. It's the sideline job which gets her into trouble as she accepts a job from one of her regular clients to create some major havoc.
Like his previous book, Weir throws in a fair amount of science explanation: how things work, how things are different in space and how many things can kill you in that environment. Some of the explanations can be somewhat intense. As with all good fiction you can pore over these parts or you can skim quickly to get the gist and onto the story which keeps you reading. Jazz is an interesting character, a brilliant woman who won't accept her brilliance. She seems to have spent most of her life 'not living up to her potential', a complaint of her teachers and father. Luckily when she's not worrying about what others think she is a major problem solver and she certainly needs that trait in this book. This is a great read!

A fun caper novel, set on the moon, with a strong female lead? I'll take that any day! Add Andy Weir's somewhat sardonic sense of humor to the strong female lead's inner dialogue and we've got a winner! Very fun read!

Like so many readers I loved The Martian by Andy Weir. I love the humor, the ingenuity and the suspense of the chronicle of astronaut Mark Watney as he rises to the challenge of survival on Mars in the not-so-distant future. In Artemis Weir goes a little further afield to follow the escapades of Jazz Bashara, criminal, rebel, genius and underachiever. The story takes place on the Moon where Jazz works as a lowly porter and daring smuggler. The setting is sometime in the future when colonies have created a city under domes. The majority of the plot involves Jazz and her associates sabotaging an industrial plant for money and to break the control of a corrupt corporation.. The story had its moments but included too many pages of explanation of chemistry and engineering. Where in The Martian the science was artfully included to advance the story, in this case the story was bogged down by too many dry lectures. The other weakness of the story was the character of Jazz, a confrontational and reckless young woman who was often the cause of her own misfortune. She was certainly not as appealing as Mark.
My main complaint was the contrast in theme of the two stories. Throughout The Martian I was rooting for Mark to prevail. In Artemis I was just not as deeply invested in Jazz. She was just not that sympathetic a character.
For science fiction fans the theme is a common one--the individual against the soulless corporation. I'm sure it will be very popular. I would just have liked Jazz to be a little more likable.

This was fine. I liked the later part of the book more than the beginning - I enjoyed the Ocean's 11-y heist vibe. I'm not a scientist, but as with The Martian, the science is well integrated. Hard sci-fi fans will dig this. It read like the first book in a series in a good way - I can see people wanting to read more adventures in the life of Jazz Bashara, moon smuggler.

Here's what didn't work as well for me: I don't really know how to explain this, but I didn't buy Jazz as a woman. Plenty of male writers can write believable female characters, but I don't know if Weir is one. The romantic subplot also didn't work for me. Those two characters had no chemistry!

Let's pretend for a moment that Weir didn't write The Martian. Comparing any book against that juggernaut would result in disappointment. That being said, Artemis is a fabulous story. The first half of the novel felt like a lot of set up, having to explain how the community on the moon works, what the culture is, who the main characters are. I have to say that I didn't particularly care for Jazz in the beginning. She is gruff, prickly and self-destructive. Understanding her motivations and her backstory helped to balance this, but I didn't immediately click with her.
The second half of the book clipped along at a great pace. I found myself invested in the characters, almost rushing through the chapters to find out what was going to happen. So imaginative, but realistic at the same time! Really worth the read, even if you can't help but compare it to The Martian. I am going to have to read this again, slowing it down so I can enjoy the ride all over again!

I really enjoyed this book. I don't think it's always easy for a male to write a female MC and there were a few instances where I thought that missed a little. But I thought this book was so fun. I liked Jazz and her cast of characters. Like The Martian my eyes would glaze over at the hard core science stuff. But I didn't mind it. This book reminded me of an old fashioned heist movie even though they weren't heisting anything! I highly recommend it.

I nearly bailed on this one-- but am glad I didn't.
Like many readers, I was blown away by THE MARTIAN. With such a huge breakout book, a second book has high expectations.

What this book isn't: like THE MARTIAN in theme or character
What this book is: a rouge-ish caper for the future of the moon

Jazz , our narrator, was born in Saudi Arabia, and her single father moved her to the moon colony Artemis at age six. Because of the reduced gravity, Jazz's prospects for ever living a safe life back on Earth are limited, but no fear-- she's made a life-- or multiple lives-- for herself on the moon. Not only is she a delivery girl, but also a smuggler with big ambitions, all while trying to get her permit to lead expeditions on the surface to rich tourists.

When offered a job with a fee she can't turn down, Jazz gets more attention than she'd like and that kind of attention comes with knives and death threats. A caper helps ensure not only Jazz's survival, but the future of a democratic moon colony, and her crew is up to the challenge-- almost.

The reason I nearly ditched the book early on was a "man writing woman" tone to Jazz's character. For instance, she describes how good she looks in an ensemble she's putting on as a disguise. Similarly, Jazz talks often about liking sex, or having it a lot, but never seems to have sexual attraction at all on the page. When it does happen, it feels forced. However, Jazz is entertaining to follow because of her wry sense of humor and distinct, if twisted, understanding of right and wrong.

Much of Weir's first book laid on the shoulders of the title "Martian," but the strengths in this book come in the ensemble cast of complicated, riotous personalities. Jazz's father is a favorite character in the book, as are her various personalities in power that she comes up against-- the policeman Rudy, the head of the tourist tour program, Bob, and former best friend, Dale.

Weir paints an interesting setting for this novel. Unlike THE MARTIAN, ARTEMIS focuses not one what is possible in the very near future, but what could be possible in the next fifty years. The characters live in interconnected bubbles with all the necessary components of life. Weir's books are "sciencey" sci-fi, but never so overly technical that the reader gets lost. 

Over all, the first fifty pages are a bit of a character study and the "love" plots of the book don't work well for me as a reader, but the rollicking plot and chemistry of the characters kept me hooked. As far as I'm concerned, a good follow-up book with room to grow for his third.

Jazz Bashara has always shied away from her potential, she is happy right smack dab in the middle thank you very much, this time though she is right smack dab in the middle of a heap of trouble! Andy Weir once again brings us a creative and motivated character who clears the hurdles he places in front of them with aplomb, this time on the harsh environs of the moon. Jazz is a porter with a side hustle in smuggling and in a town of 2000 folks (give or take) she's made herself the only game in town. So when a big deal comes to Artemis it goes through her fingers and this time she gets stuck like a Chinese finger-trap. There are murders and mobsters and moondust, oh my! All around this is a fun and exciting read.