Cover Image: Artemis

Artemis

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I just genuinely could not get into this. It felt extremely kind of clinical and science nerdy in a way that made it to the plot did not move along at a fair clip. I just don’t think I’m a fan of his writing.

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What a trip. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the new Andy Weir (which my computer refuses to stop auto-correcting to "Weird") book is awesome. It's fun, exciting, and f*cking hilarious.

Artemis follows our main character, a bad ass Arab woman named Jazz. who grew up in Artemis- the first city on the moon. She moved to Artemis with her family when she was 6, and is now the moon's number 1 smuggler.

As the novel unfolds, a new gig gets Jazz dragged into a governmental conspiracy involving organized crime and Big Aluminum. With nowhere else to turn, she's forced to enlist the help of a few friends to try and save the city itself and it's entire population of Artemisians.

Not only is the story awesome, but the characters and the science are equally incredible and fascinating. The city feels like a main character. Not only can I visualize it, I feel like I know my way around it and could navigate the city without the help of the map we get at the front of the book.

There were definitely a few loose ends at the end of Artemis, and I hope there's a reason they weren't tied up. I'd love another book in this series! There's a lot of potential and a lot of places this could go in future novels. No pun intended.

This is easily one of the best books of the year, and could make an amazing movie if Artemis goes the way of The Marian.

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I enjoyed Artemis but did not end up loving it like I loved The Martian. I missed the hard science and deep sarcasm. Elements I had high hopes of seeing carried over.

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I loved The Martian so I was very excited for another sci-fi read from Andy Weir. This one did not disappoint. Artemis is the first and only city on the moon and this story follows Jazz as she attempts to pull off the perfect crime so she can live a better life. There is a lot of action throughout and the science that makes it all seem plausible to back it up. Recommended for fans of sci-fi.

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I love most of Weir's writings. The Martian set a fairly high bar - and I think that is the problem here. I was so invested in everything about Mark's survival that I loved the whole book. Artemis did not touch me in the same way. I didn't really care about the people or the story nearly as much. That doesn't mean this is a bad book, I just don't view it as favorably as his previous work. For what it is worth, the book right after Artemis, Project Hail Mary, once again hit all the notes that made The Martian a hit, So, for me at least, this is the one story that just doesn't quite measure up.

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My favorite part of this novel was the dialogue and interplay between the characters. Jazz is a great character and the storyline was accessible and interesting. I hope they make a movie adaptation soon. Highly recommended.

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26-year old Jasmine "Jazz" Bashara lives in Artemis, the city on the Moon which is made up of (5) spheres named after famous American astronauts like Armstrong, Aldrin, Conrad, Bean, and Shepard. Jazz is a Muslim female from Saudi Arabia but she breaks all the typical stereotypes in how she talks, how she looks, even how she deals with her own father, Ammar. She works as a porter with a sideline in earning extra slugs (currency) from smuggling goods for her customers. She's also close to being homeless which will get you a one way ticket back to Earth.

She sleeps in a tiny space fondly referred to as a coffin, despite her exceptional brain, and aspires to getting her EVA license, too bad she fails spectacularly, so that she can join the EV guild where the money is at. She was sort of a delinquent growing up, which caused issues with her father, who is a skilled welder, and she’s trying to make up for some of them. Jazz also has a friend/partner who lives on Earth and is her point man when Jazz needs certain items smuggled to the Moon. She is very flawed in a lot of ways, but very different personalities and priorities from say Mark Watney.

Jazz is approached by Trond Lanvik, a wealthy man with a 16 year old handicapped daughter who is looking to acquire Sanchez Aluminum, which currently enjoys a lucrative permanent contract with the city for free energy in exchange for providing the city's entire oxygen supply as a by-product from aluminum production, through underhanded means and offers Jazz a million slugs to sabotage the company. Jazz comes up with a plan, but it doesn't go exactly as she thought it would. In fact, she's almost caught by her nemesis before she can finish the job.

To Jazz's horror, she finds herself entangled with the Brazilian mob, and has to foil the looming threats to the community of Artemis. So armed with her outlandish and borderline crazy ideas, and the help of those closest to her, Jazz finds herself in toxic and dangerous territory where the lives of all on Artemis is at stake. There's always the threat of being deported to Earth, a place that Jazz hasn't seen since she was 6 years old. There's always suit and engineering and environmental problems to worry about, too. There are also interesting secondary characters:

There is Dale, a gay male who broke her heart by sleeping with Jazz's boyfriend and desperate to get back in Jazz's good graces. Martin Svoboda is a technical whizz, who is socially awkward but his commitment to Jazz but nothing close to a romance develops between them. This is not the Martian. Jazz is not Mark Watney. Jazz is more nuanced. She’s flawed. She makes bad decisions. She’s incredibly intelligent, but she’s always looking for the shortcut. Jazz's personality geared towards the aggrieved smartass which got on my nerves at times. Jazz also has a rebellious streak and seems take secret pleasure in using her intelligence to break the rules which causes issues with Artemis's security chief.

I am literally a geek when it comes to hoping that one day soon we will have men and women living on the moon. I am hoping that a world wide coalition will get together and build a base where future astronauts to Mars can stop over before moving on. We can also use the Moon base to travel to other places in the universe and maybe one day find actual life.

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I was pretty disappointed in this one. I know I shouldn't compare to "The Martian" but I so enjoyed that book so much that I think I expected to enjoy this one. Unfortunately, I did not.

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I haven't read The Martian (I know, I know), which I think made me like this book more than other people do. Jazz was annoying at times, but I liked her unique voice. The plot was interesting and kept me invested in the story.

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When The Martian came out it quickly became one of my all time favorite Sci-fi novels. It’s hard but I would like to think my expectations for Artemis were artificially heightened because of this. Regardless of expectations, this book just wasn’t very good.

I don’t need to fall in love with my characters nor do I need to become significantly attached to them but Weir somehow crafted a whole book of characters that I could not have cared less for. And the plot? Don’t care. This was a book where I just didn’t care what happened. It wasn’t an awful book but it just had nothing that grabbed me.

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I tried hard to love it but found it mildly entertaining instead. I liked the Martian but Artemis read like Weir took another male protagonist and decided later to monopolize on female lead.

Jazz isn’t revealed to be female until probably 20 pages into what was reading as a white male teenager. Let me pause and say that being female is a wide range and while there’s no one defining characteristic and females can range in interests and behaviors all over the place and intimate combinations, STILL I wondered if Weir had ever met any women. Everything that irkes me about typical teenage males showed up here. Sexualizing everything, profanity every sentence just cause it’s macho, suppressing healthy emotions, arrogance. I couldn’t like Jazz. She barely got some backstory and it just doesn’t explain how she behaved.

The science was ok. I felt like a lot wasn’t explained well enough. Nor were the reasons for the heists. Jazz gets out of things way too easily and without much consequence. Her character doesn’t grow. The ending focuses a lot on economics but it just didn’t make sense to me.

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It has been so long since I read this and I meant to go back and finish it even after I basically had years of reading slump. However, looking back, this book was a chore to read. At 39%, I don't remember liking any aspect of this book. And so I have finally decided to just DNF it and move on.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for the opportunity to read Artemis by Andy Weir.

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If The Martian was an astrophysics and surviving class disguised as drama and comedy, Artemis is a full semester of Chemistry, Physics and a bit of Economics packed with a rollercoaster of fun!
The protagonist, Jasmine Bashara or Jazz, is a smuggler who lives in Artemis, the only city built on the Moon. This book tells the adventures of her trying to survive without a legal job and with a strong tendency to get into trouble and despite everything, she ends up becoming the person who saves Artemis from becoming the prey of a powerful criminal organization.
I give this novel five stars and five Moons!

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Artemis was an enjoyable return to Andy Weir's storytelling. I read this second novel in anticipation of his third novel, releasing soon. Artemis drew me in quickly and kept me hooked to find out what would happen next, although the plot turned out to be pretty predictable. I liked The Martian more, but Weir's realistic science fiction will always be interesting to me.

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I am not a huge fan of science fiction, but when a book does it well, I am all in. This book was very well done. I really loved the human aspect of the story. Deserves all the hype.

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I thought Weird did a great job with the plot and the types of characters he portrayed. My biggest disconnect from the book was with the dialogue, particularly with the main character. I found her dialogue taking me out of the story quite a bit because it just didn't seem like something someone would actually say. Her speech rang false to me, and it happened frequently enough that it really affected my overall enjoyment of the book.

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I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would.

Oh the disappointment. I mean come on, I hear this book is about a heist!! on the moon!!! Of course I'm hyped. Space is like in my top ten favorite things. But alas this book didn't live up to my expectations,,,,,,at all.

THE ANNOYING MAIN CHARACTER

• Jazz Bashara is literally good at anything and everything. like??? that's not normal stop it
• She looks down on um pretty much everyone. Like if tourists are amazed by something they've never seen before, she'll get annoyed and start like bashing them in her head like um sweetie you're not doing so amazing.
• I have a feeling that she's definitely the kind of girl that says stuff like <b>"i'm one of the guys"</b> or <b>"girls are too dramatic, i only hang out with boys"</b> she hates on women a lot. even women who haven't ever said a word to her. what the hek
• Okay, so the author gives her a brain made of gold. and what does she decide to do with it ?? She smuggles stuff!!1!1!! and then she complains about being poor!!!1! when she could get a much better paying job!!!!! yay!!!11!!
• she's just really annoying okay

THE BORING PLOT

When I walked into this story, I was expecting it to be <b>interesting</b> but the biggest plot twist in this book, was me, only 30% through, wanting to dnf it. Anyway, I don't know if I'm just not the right person for this book, or if it really is as incredibly boring as I think it is but it wasn't my cup of tea.

First of all, why did there have to be so much explaining. like ew I wanted an adventure. Instead I was being told boring ish every 2 seconds. I mean, I understand why there was so much explaining. but that didn't make me like it any more and it really just made it more boring. I honestly don't even know what was going on for the last 50%. I started skimming around the 80% mark and I breathed a breath of relief at the 100% area.

No but seriously, I didn't know what was going for a lot of the book. I still don't even know what happened. I don't really care. It's over and that's all that matters.


Pros

• Dale and Svoboda were nice likable characters. But sadly were the only ones I warmed up to.
• space
• big hamster cage things you can run around in

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A bit weak for Weir's second effort, but The Martian was a hard act to follow. I liked having a female main character, even if she was a bit unbelievable, and the world he built on the moon. I look forward to his new one coming out in 2021 and hope he returns to form.

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After his absolutely stunning and impressive writing on The Martian, it's exciting to see Andy Weir's sophomore novel -- the scenery, setting and science are all incredible. Never has a modern sci-fi writer felt so grounded.

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Part of what I loved about The Martian was the depth of the scientific detail it contained. I expected something similar from Artemis and it did not deliver on that level. But it is an entirely different style of novel, which may be where part of the disconnect comes in. Once I looked at it through a that different frame of context, I found that I really enjoyed the adventure of Artemis. The story is good, fast-paced. It was a quick, entertaining read. I also enjoyed the characters. At first it was hard to separate this from The Martian, but it does stand alone as a solid book.

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