This is an ARC provided by friends of NetGalley for an honest review.

Andy Weir does it again in this fast pace, Sci-fi thriller. The book is hilarious, has cool Sci-fi elements without being over the top, and an unforgettable female protagonist!


Yep I read the book...
Yep, I LOVED THE BOOK!

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What's not to love about an incredible 'heist' story in the near future that takes place in our own exquisite moon? Andy Weir popped up in my radar ever since the brilliant The Martian became a reality in our local bookstores. I was fortunate to have read the book prior to watching the movie. In my humble estimation, the book was vastly superior to the big screen adaptation, with amazing sci-fi elements, a memorable sarcastic and funny character and of course Mars itself!

Weir accomplishes a quite similar experience with Artemis! This time around, we find ourselves immersed in the first city in the Moon, known as 'Artemis'. This happens about 100 years in the 'near' future, and full colonization and self-sustenance in the Moon have become reality. There's a booming industry of 'Aluminum' mining of Moon's rocks, which gives off O2 as byproduct. The Sci-fi has many chemical and physical elements which are very believable. This just adds to the realism of the background.

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Weir's strenghts are in building kick-ass 'sci-fi' elements without being too over the top, and creating funny and memorable protagonist characters. The author, Mr. Weir himself worked much of his life as a computer programmer. His extensive scientific research, made the events in the The Martian so plausible. In Artemis, Weir displays the same level of commitmment to the sci-fi elements, and let me tell you, IT ROCKS! The 'moonwalks' are totally realistic, down to the last detail of 'decompression' hatches, and ensuring you space suit is working, so that the vacuum of space doesn't turn your brain into fried eggs...

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In 'Artemis', we have 'Jazz Bashara' , a beautiful, Saudi descent woman in her 20's, who steals the show and takes us for a hell of a ride!
Jazz is an absolute riot, she curses, likes to drink in the 'local watering hole', and has no quips about her sexuality. Oh, and she's kinda of a criminal! She keeps herself busy smuggling the occasional harmless bit of contraband to supplement her limited funds. The story unfolds at a breaknecking pace, as 'Jazz' becomes' involved in a Moon-related heist, that goes from bad to nuclear in 2 seconds...then all shit hits the fan!

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Jazz Bashara(or at least what I think she looks like!)

Artermis is a wildly entertaining sci-fi, 'heist'-like story, with the coolest background in the Moon and all the perils that a dark, non-atmospheric, vaccuum can provide! Any fans of The Martian, sci-fi thrillers, and heist-books in general, are in for a hell of a ride with this one!

5 Stars!

I really appreciated that this was a sci-fi novel that organically integrated diversity into its narrative in ways that never felt forced. I thought the decision to make the protagonist Muslim and the city ownership Kenyan was particularly innovative - it gave the book a genuinely fresh and unique feel that never slipped into cliche.

Overall, weaker than "The Martian" - I wouldn't have minded a bit more problem-solving and exploration and fewer "thriller" elements - but I'd definitely recommend it.

As we were introduced to Weir's particular brand of snark in Mark Watney from the Martian, we find it again in Jazz, a career criminal of Artemis, the first city on the moon.

Freewheeling and exciting, Weir weaves a space thriller that only he can: where everything goes wrong and one is left trying to pick up the pieces that they themselves created.

Couldn't put this book down. Love the humor combined with the science fiction. A winner for general readers.

I have to be honest, my expectations were really high dor this book because I absolutely adored The Martian. However, I couldn't even finish this one. I made it about halfway and I just couldn't finish it. I'll start with what I enjoyed. I liked the setting amd the use of scientific explanations. I like that our protagonist is female and that she's Muslim, but they don't make a big deal of it. She's just a normal person and it doesn't feel done to make a statement. What didn't I like. So Jazz wasn't the most likable and it was more that I felt either she or the author was trying to hard to make her funny and cool. It came off more forced. The plot dragged u til we finally got to the heist part but by then I just wasn't really interested. For me this just didn't have the magic of The Martian. I might try it again later but I doubt I'll feel differently about it.

Artemis by Andy Weir
I'm going to start this review by saying that I really enjoyed The Martian! I thought it was funny, smart, interesting and just a great example of science fiction. I couldn't put that book down and really appreciated the way Weir could set up his story and execute it. I sang its praises. So I was really excited to see that he had written another book, filled with more science and set on the moon. Definite win. I am supremely disappointed. This was a not a book I enjoyed. This was a book I couldn't even bring myself to finish.
The one redeeming quality of this book is that the science shines! Weir does a great job explaining what Artemis is and how it functions. The details regarding its creation and existence were well thought out and detailed. What overwhelmingly suffered in this novel were the characters. The characters, as diverse as they were, were not well thought out, were clearly lacking in depth and overall not entertaining. I love the idea of having a diverse group of characters, but not when those characters end up being stereotyped. Jazz was set up to be a rebel female character, or at least that’s what I think. If I were to ask any guy to speak the way they think women speak, or act the way they think women act, then that's what Jazz would be! Long story short, I could tell that a guy wrote Jazz's character and not someone attuned to how women act and behave But that was only part of the problem. The description of each type of ethnic group was so stereotypical, down to the fact that they all worked at the same place. Saudi Arabians were welders, Vietnamese worked in Life Support and Hungarians worked in metal working. I couldn't deal. Some of the descriptions and jokes were just cringe worthy and honestly distracting. This was a perfect example of someone trying to be a diverse writer without caring whether or not they got it right.
And now the plot. It was one bad decision after another after another, with no clear motivation for these decisions besides money. It is really hard for me to imagine that someone as smart as Jazz could be so blinded by money that she would make all of the asinine decisions that she made. I struggled through this novel, and with less than 80 pages left I realized that I was not invested enough in what happened to keep reading. I simply could not get through it anymore because I didn't trust or like any of the characters enough to believe the ending would be at all satisfying.
I'm stopping here. I'm glad I got a chance to read this now and I'm glad I'm being able to talk honestly and openly about this book. I wanted to love this book and honestly thought I would. But there were some huge missteps regarding the plot and the characterizations that I could not look past and for those reasons I can't continue. At this point a stellar ending wouldn't rescue this book for me. I can't recommend this because I genuinely didn't enjoy it.

I think the author, coming off of the huge success of THE MARTIAN, set out to create a character directly opposite of his main character in that book, Mark Watney, as possible. The protagonist in ARTEMIS, is female, non-American, a criminal/smuggler, abrasive. In fact, a reader may find that they don't like her very much in the beginning. The thing Watney and Jazz Bashara have in common are being very clever and knowing a lot of science. Think of a female Han Solo before he started his hero trajectory. But then Jazz gets her own "save the city" moments, too, after getting involved in a get rich quick scheme that goes wrong. Very wrong. And goes "wronger" until the very end and then it turns into a caper story with a team of misfits. Overall, I enjoyed reading it. It would be unfair to compare it to THE MARTIAN because that was an extraordinary story. For his sophomore effort on the national scene, I can see this being a movie, too.

5 of 5 bright shiny stars. I dove into this book without any expectations. I have not read The Martian. I do not know anything about Andy Weir. And I usually avoid science fiction novels. But I was hooked at the first chapter and I would have read this book in one setting if I could.

Jazz Bashara is a longtime resident of Artemis, a city on the moon. Sounds glamourous, right? We quickly learn that even on a lunar colony there are the Haves and the Have Nots, and just like Earth, this society has greed, manipulation, politics, crime, and corrupt individuals driven by money. But it also has just enough order, human kindness and decency woven in to make it tolerable for its inhabitants.

Jazz is a Have Not, and a part of the working class that runs Artemis. She works as daytime porter supplementing her meager income with a side job as a smuggler. You want illegal contraband like booze or cigarettes? Jazz can get it to you…. for a price. A rich businessman offers her one million “slugs” (moon currency) for a quick and easy but very illegal job. She is halfway through the job and daydreaming of how she’ll spend that money when things go horribly and unexpectedly wrong. And then she is on the run.

But not to worry, because Jazz is street and book smart (a rare combination), sassy, self-deprecating, determined, resourceful, connected, a problem solver, and fast on her feet thanks to 1/6 gravity. She is a firm believer in commitments. She is loyal and mostly moral even though she bends the law from time to time. She is a fun and likeable character with many flaws.

Andy Weir does a fantastic job of explaining Artemis’s backstory so that the reader has a clear picture of it. He writes an action packed thriller and makes science easy to understand. The physics and chemistry references don’t weight the book down at all and I hardly noticed that I was learning something. A nice benefit.

I love Artemis for so many reasons:
1. Awesome snarky, smart female Macgyver-esque badass main character
2. Diverse, entertaining, and well developed supporting characters
3. Action packed twists and turns
4. Stellar writing style
5. Laugh out loud humor
6. Weir’s vision of the lunar colony lifestyle

This book is an unexpected gem. It is one of my top five books of 2017. The writing is phenomenal, the plot is fast paced, the characters are well developed and interesting, and the setting is unusual and very memorable. If everyone wrote like Andy Weir, I would read more science fiction books. He is truly talented and I look forward to his next book already.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC. An entertaining tale of a brash young lady with a lot of spunk. Weir's in your face heroine is a delight. Recommended.

Anyone who enjoyed The Martian’s wisecracking hero will be drawn in by Jazz Bashara, the heroine of Andy Weir’s new novel, Artemis. Like her predecessor, Jazz is flippant, wildly intelligent, and tends to constantly skate on the edge of disaster. Her loony tale unfolds at breakneck speed, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll be dragging your Kindle into the bathtub because you can’t stop reading.

A rollicking and fun ride from Andy Weir! In his sophomore effort, Andy Weir once again takes a trip into outer space, but this time it's to the rocky and desolate Moon where we meet his spunky female protagonist Jazz Bashara. Jazz Bashara displays the same characteristic rebel, sarcastic, can-do attitude that Mark Watney does in The Martian, but she adds a layer of sass to it. Artemis moves fast - almost too fast! - and can easily be devoured in one sitting if you aren't paying attention. The story flies by, and you get sucked right into the lives of several Artemesians, a population of people who have moved to the Moon. The story could do with a little more pacing, and a little more world building, but the trade-off is a story that never feels like it's dragging and moves at breakneck speed.

Jazz Bashara, a stealthy smuggler, makes her living by getting people things they need, that they shouldn't be getting on the Moon. But she gets caught up in a high-stakes scheme that threatens to put her life - and those around her - in danger, when her get-rich quick plan blows up in her face.

Andy Weir paints another cast of colorful characters in this book, making the Moon population come alive with vibrancy and humor. You can count on every character in the book to deliver some witty zingers as they weave in and out of Jazz's life. The dialogue is perhaps a bit *too* zingy, with a few groaners and jokes that feel a bit too casual (especially in the heat of what is meant to be an intense or near-death experience!), but overall there is a tone of light-heartedness and optimism that shines through and is becoming a hallmark of Weir's writing.

Again, Weir is not afraid to throw in a bunch - nay, a LOT, of technical jargon - as we navigate the complexities of lunar living: airlocks, rovers, EVA suits. Weir challenges readers to get familiar, and get familiar quick, with these terms and doesn't spend time dumbing them down for you. But rest assured, once you get the hang of it, hang on for a fun adventure with a protagonist you can root for, some faithful sidekicks that turn up when you least expect, and some baddies you'll love to hate. Who knew the moon could be so fun?

I read 'The Martian' and I enjoyed it, but I found that it was hard to get through due to its dense nature. 'Artemis' is much more readable, and I enjoyed the process of reading it more. Overall, I enjoyed the story a lot. My only complaint was that it felt like Weir couldn't fully write a woman as the main character - there were a lot of cringy moments and personalizations.

I'm probably the only person who has read Artemis without first having read or watched the Martian. I was a little concerned about that, but as it turns out, Artemis is not a sequel or in any way a continuation of the Martian. It is a fully self-contained story.

Forty years ago you couldn't catch most people reading a science fiction story. It's a genre that has really gone mainstream and has a wide appeal.

Having read lots of classic science fiction, this story really brings me back to Asimov and his Caves of Steel with an otherworldly crime story, to Herbert's Dune with his giant spice harvesters and the Fremen sabotaging them in the battle against the Harkonnens, and to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Princess of Mars and Carter's desperate efforts to save a dying world by breaking into the atmosphere factory. This is not to say that Weir consciously copied ideas, just that I can hear the echoes and feel the shadows of earlier giants.

What I've always liked about this particular genre is that the author can create an entirety new society with entirely new rules and traditions and here Weir gives us a new city on the Moon with new ways of doing things brought on both by conditions on the moon and by the human need for reinventing society. Weir really excels in painting details about how things work. He's quite technical.

But the hero -or rather heroine - of this novel is no James T Kirk. Jazz is a small statured woman who has cornered the smuggling market and kind of feels like some hip skateboarding chick on the moon. Although she has her own code of conduct, she gets involved in quite an unusual caper with devastating consequences.

Crown Publishing provided me this advanced readers copy and it is quite an enjoyable read. It should have wide appeal.

I'm between 3 and 3.5 stars here.

Although it has been a few years since Andy Weir published The Martian, he hasn't been missing from the literary world, thanks to his sharing a number of free super-short stories with the reading public. (Annie's Day remains my favorite of the bunch.) Even so, I was anxious for him to come out with a new novel.

Artemis is the first city on the moon. While wealthy tourists get to experience the city's luxuries, for the ordinary citizens living there, it's almost like any other city—the struggles between the haves and have-nots, corruption, violence, crime, the usual. (Almost like any other city except for the gravity, and the fact that everything is encased in bubble-type structures to keep the extreme radiation and space dust out.)

Jazz Bashara is a low-level porter on Artemis. She longs for a better life but doesn't have the motivation to do anything more than what she does, even though she has the brains and the talent for much more. Instead, she ekes out a living as a criminal, smuggling in contraband from Earth for anyone willing to pay her. She doesn't care that it's wrong; in fact, she's more than a little proud to be gaming the system.

One day, one of Jazz's wealthy regular customers offers her a part in a scheme that seems almost too good to be true, but her part of the spoils would be enough to give her the type of life she has always dreamed of. Of course, what seems too good to be true usually is, and it isn't long before Jazz realizes she's in the middle of something much bigger than a get-rich-quick scheme—there's corruption, and people are willing to go to any lengths to protect what they believe is theirs. Jazz is going to need more than just her street smarts if she's going to survive this.

Jazz is a pretty fascinating character. She's pretty tough, smart, wily, and not embarrassed about her sexuality or her general laziness. She knows she could achieve more, but for the most part, she isn't motivated to do so through legal channels. I love the fact that Weir created a multi-cultural cast of characters without batting an eye—Jazz is a Saudi Arabian Muslim (albeit non-practicing), and there are characters from different races, religions, cultures, and sexual orientations that don't adhere to stereotypes.

Until I read Artemis, I somehow forgot how science-heavy The Martian was. But while all that science seemed to work in The Martian it seemed to weigh this book down a bit. (And no, it wasn't the gravity.) Weir has created quite a world, and certainly the descriptions helped paint the scene, but I felt at times the lengthy scientific diatribes pulled the plot off course.

The other thing that frustrated me about the book is the fact that Jazz speaks and thinks like a teenage boy. Even though you're rooting for her, after a while her lack of maturity started to grate on me.

Those criticisms notwithstanding, Weir knows how to tell a story. Even though I thought the caper (and that's the best word to describe the scheme Jazz finds herself in) was a little silly, I couldn't stop reading Artemis. It's a fun and interesting book, and you have to wonder how close to reality Weir's vision of life on the moon will come, if it ever becomes a reality.

NetGalley and Crown Publishing provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

This novel follows Jazz, a 26 year old Porter living on the Moon base Artemis. Although her dad is a welder and he taught her how to weld she decides to forge her own way. Jazz realizes that being a Porter is small beans but it does get her to met various citizens on the moon. One such citizen offers her a proposition that she instantly says yes too due to the enormous financial payout. Things don’t go as well as she had hoped as Jazz is forced to fight for her life.

Jazz as a character was well-developed. She is smart, overall a good person, swears a lot and just wants to make things right no matter the cost. This leads Jazz to make some fool hearted decisions that almost kill hundreds of people. Jazz does make it right in the end though. Jazz as a character was okay. I found she was odd at times. She is portrayed as super smart yet she acts so dumb and childish sometimes, especially whenever she thinks about sex or how sexy she was. Jazz in this aspect was written like a teenage boy not a young woman. I also didn’t understand why Jazz wouldn’t ask her father for help when she so desperately needed it, instead of being a smuggler why didn’t she become a welder or a scientist?

The plot was full of action and suspense. There were a few slow parts in the novel though. Once I got 90% of the way through the novel I was sure that all the details had been wrapped up nice and tightly until two elements were sprang on the reader. I liked the first one but I felt the second one shouldn’t have occurred. I was upset Jazz survived as I felt it was too much of a Duex-Ex moment. Although it would have been sad to see Jazz die I felt it would have ended the novel perfectly. After mulling the novel over though I am not sure if I still believe that as the reader would have missed Jazz making things up with her father by rebuilding his workshop.

The relationship between Jazz and her father was well written. There was amazing depth, love and worry between them. I felt this was a truly accurate way to portray a relationship between father and daughter.

Overall this novel was enjoyable but I still enjoyed The Martian better. Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy.

*I received this book free from NetGalley.com in return for an honest review.*
All spoilers will be tagged.

While deep down, I know that every book should be judged on its own merit, it was practically impossible for me to not go into this with sheer excitement after the absolute treat that was The Martian.
If you were like me and hoping for a spiritual successor to The Martian, then you might be disappointed (but not too disappointed!).

The story follows the exploits of a young smuggler who lives on the only city on the Moon.

What Artemis does right:
Jazz is a great protagonist; impressive yet flawed. The supporting characters are also enjoyable. You felt like there was genuine history between them. They were complex and conflicted and reacted naturally in many of the situations.
The setting and premise was, for me, the highlight of the story. This is where, I feel, The Martian fans will appreciate this for what it is. Weir did a fantastic job of making Artemis seem real and accurate and totally believable to the casual un-scientific reader. He has a fantastic way of not holding back on scientific ideas or jargon without making the story inaccessible.
Pacing was great. I never felt like the story dragged or lacked excitement.

What it could have done better:
I would have loved to have seen more regarding the relationship between Jazz and her pen-pal on Earth. it served to explain the nature of the smuggling business but it could have been so much more. He was one of the characters that attracted the most empathy and I genuinely feel like there could have been an amazing sub-plot there if it was explored a bit more.
[I also struggled for a little while with dealing with the basic plot of Jazz committing millions of dollars worth of damage. It just seemed like a dramatic leap from her usual business.
If there was more than just monetary motivation then maybe it would have been less jarring. (hide spoiler)]

This is not The Martian sequel, but, if you liked The Martian, give this a go. If contains many of the same lovable characteristics; the science, the problem solving, the quirky characters. I also feel it is a more accessible novel and will probably get the attention of a wider demographic of reader.

4/5, would certainly recommend to a friend.

I really enjoyed this book a lot - Jazz was such a great character, and her story was super fun to follow. I did feel like maybe Weir was trying a bit too hard to follow up on The Martian - where the science explanations in that book were fully integrated into the story, here they were often really noticeable and they took me out of it. It's a minor quibble though - Artemis was a lot of fun and I'm happy to recommend it!

<blockquote>“<i>Himmelen er ikke grensen</i>. It means ‘The sky is not the limit.’”</blockquote>

When I saw that Andy Weir was coming out with a new book, I was understandably excited. I enjoyed <i>The Martian</i> immensely, especially the fact that the author tried to stay true to science as much as humanly possible (you can find my short review here). Although the plot for <i>Artemis</i> didn’t sound <i>quite</i> as intriguing, the idea of a heist on the Moon did sound pretty cool.

<i>Artemis</i> tells the story of Jasmine (Jazz) Bashara, a criminal (aka a smuggler) who lives on Artemis, the first base on Earth’s Moon. She does not make much money as a porter, so when the opportunity to make 1,000,000 slugs (aka a lot of money) arises, she jumps at the chance to commit the “perfect heist.” But there is no such thing as the “perfect heist,” and she soon finds herself deep in a conspiracy that she must find a way out of, or else face terrible consequences.

I really liked <i>Artemis</i>, though maybe not quite as much as <i>The Martian</i>. The overall plot was interesting. It was a little slow in the beginning, but it soon picked up once Jazz agreed to perform the heist. From there, it was interesting to watch Jazz’s train of thoughts as she figured out the technicalities of said heist. I must say, as a chemistry student, Weir’s attention to scientific detail is something I can really appreciate and is probably one of my favorite aspects of his books (even if it does sometimes go over my head).

There was a diverse cast of characters, both in terms of personality as well as nationality. Because Artemis is on the Moon, it attracts wealthy (and sometimes not-so-wealthy) people from all over the world. Jazz herself was from Saudi Arabia, while other characters hailed from counties such as Kenya, Australia, Ukraine, Russia, Hong Kong, Brazil, Vietnam, Canada, etc. Artemis was a true melting pot of culture, and even though there were conglomerations of people of specific nationalities (for example, those that worked at the Life Support Center were Vietnamese), there was no sense of tension or animosity. Everyone was an immigrant of sorts, so everyone was equal, in a sense – except for their monetary standing, that is.

However, although I enjoyed the integration of science and a heist on the moon, I wasn’t impressed with Jazz’s voice. I feel that it’s something male authors often struggle with: satisfactorily narrating in a woman’s voice. I felt that Weir didn’t want to limit Jazz, and so he gave her a unique personality. Although she was definitely flawed, I feel that she was trying to be too many things at once: she was intelligent, didn’t live up to her potential, abrasive, crude, furtive, a definitive badass, didn’t care about her appearance but took pains to point out her “plainness” multiple times, selfish, loyal, and a loner. Unfortunately, Weir’s characterization of an obviously cool but messed up character kind of put me off a little from the story.

However, that was really my only complaint about the book. I really liked all of the characters – even Jazz – and I thought they were pretty well-defined. The plot itself was intricate and kept me sitting on the edge of my seat.

I heard a rumor that the rights to this script have been bought, and plans are currently in the works to make <i>Artemis</i> into a movie. If it’s anything like the movie <i>The Martian</i>, I absolutely can’t wait to see it!

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for an advanced copy of this eBook in exchange for an honest review.

I WILL BE POSTING MY REVIEW ON OTHER MEDIA PLATFORMS - NAMELY MY BLOG AND GOODREADS - CLOSER TO THE NOVEMBER 14, 2017 RELEASE DATE! I WILL UPDATE THE LINKS BELOW AT THAT POINT!

An interesting book but not as good as The Martian. Similar type of main character except this time, a bright, but more wreckless, snarkier female. This was corporate espionage and corruption...on the moon. I enjoyed the author's sense of humor.

This new book is a solid follow-up from The Martian. I enjoyed the female protagonist and her vivid internal thoughts- I'm not certain it was entirely convincing as an authentic female voice but Andy Weir is brilliant at internal monologue and capturing the nuance of the brilliant but flawed character. Jazz has a head I enjoyed being in for the space of the book, and the adventure was vivid and (as in the Martian) believable as could be for a tale of life and intrigue on the moon! The story opens with us seeing the heroine fail- what seems to be a new experience for her, and of course the event that plummets her into the escapades to follow. She is a smuggler, but she has a strict code of ethics, and that (plus the incidental and delightful coverage of nationality and sexuality in the new world of the moon) made it a compelling and fun read.