Andy Weir has given readers another exciting novel about life in space. Artemis is the first and only city on the moon and the main character, Jazz Bashara, has grown up there and space life is all she knows.

Jazz is Artemis’ resident wild child. She’s the moon’s version of Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, only maybe a bit of a softer version. Jazz has managed to disappoint her father and has never lived up to her capabilities. She has a reputation for sleeping around, drinking and using obscene language. She’s also highly intelligent, honest and a quick thinker.

When a wealthy businessman makes Jazz an offer she can’t refuse, Jazz finds herself in a sticky situation with the moon’s version of mobsters. As Jazz tries to get herself, her loved ones and the city of Artemis out of trouble, she ends up creating more trouble and risking her life in the process.

I enjoyed the story, except for all the scientific jargon. Readers with a love of space and science will most likely enjoy the story more than those who are not that interested in these subjects. Weir has a very imaginative version of life on the moon.

One extra that I liked about Artemis, was the inclusion of maps at the beginning of the book. The maps are nice to refer back to as the story progresses, giving readers a better picture of the lay of the land.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for allowing me to read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is action from page one, that’s for sure. And it definitely doesn’t get any less exciting as the story continues.

Our protagonist, Jazz, is intelligent, badass, nosy and not your typical heroine. Well, perhaps, “heroine” is the wrong word to describe her, anyway. I wouldn’t go as far as to say she’s some sort of anti-hero, but she is a bit of a morally grey character when it comes to some things and especially when it comes to money (as in: she wants money and doesn’t really care where she gets it from).

“I’m sorry, but this isn’t my thing,” I said. “You’ll have to find someone else.”
“I’ll give you a million slugs.”
“Deal.”

I really liked her from the start, though; she doesn’t let anyone talk down to her and she certainly doesn’t take anyone’s shit.

Generally, there’s a pretty cool set of characters. There are poc characters (including Jazz herself), a gay side character and a disabled side character.

One thing that annoys me, though, is how Jazz is sometimes described (or even how she describes herself). I don’t really know how to put it, but it’s clear that she’s a woman written by a man, not by a woman. She’s also incredibly childish for someone who’s supposed to be 26 years old; there were times when I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at her a bit.

The writing did take a bit to get used to, too. It’s written in an everyday language, I guess? Not really what you usually expect to read in a novel. And it was a bit coarse at times, almost unnecessarily so. But it’s definitely not so bad that it pulls you out of the story and that’s probably only my opinion, I think many people wouldn’t be bothered by it at all.

I’ll admit, I’m having a hard time rating Artemis. It was really entertaining and exciting, definitely quite the page turner, and it had an interesting plot. At the same time, the language Weir used really wasn’t my cup of tea and at times I was annoyed by some of the characters.

All in all, I can say that I certainly enjoyed Artemis. Andy Weir wrote a book that is funny, action packed, and oftentimes unpredictable. Jazz, although sometimes childish, is also clever as hell and really badass, which makes her a likeable protagonist. I can say, without any doubt, that the story will keep you hooked from page one; if you’re into sci-fi of the near-future kind, action and a set of diverse characters, I’d say go ahead and pick up this book!

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this excellent capper. Jazz Bashara is as close as you can get to a native Artemisian. She was not born on the moon (no one can be because of the gravity), but she moved there at six. She is a smuggler, but an honest one. Her word is set in stone. When someone hires her to commit a bigger crime, it all hits the fan. If you're worried that a guy can't write a convincing female, don't. Jazz is capable, likable and very, very smart. If she only applied herself, she could be running the moon. She is also insanely funny. The story is a page-turner. There is action, interesting characters and, just like in The Martian, science made easy (and fun). If anyone can build a city on the moon, it would be Andy Weir. Some parts made me gasp and others laugh, but this is also an emotional read about the value of friends and family. I didn't want the book to end and I couldn't read fast enough. I only give it five stars because there aren't any more. In my opinion, Artemis gets as many stars as can be seen from the Sea of Tranquility. Excellent.

Another fun book from Andy Weir! Hope the movie does it justice!

Jazz Bashara lives on the moon. She’s a twenty-something with lots of potential, smart and competent, and trying to get past the mistakes she made as a teenager. Her job as a porter barely pays the rent, so she smuggles harmless contraband for the locals and tourists alike. An eccentric billionaire offers Jazz the chance to commit the perfect crime for a huge reward, but the corporate sabotage is only a small piece in a much larger corrupt chess game for control of Artemis.

No, this isn’t The Martian. If what you love most about The Martian is the emotional catharsis of an underdog survival story, you should still read Artemis, but be aware this isn’t that. However, if you love the compulsively-readable science-based suspense and the over-the-top sarcastic humor, you’ll have it all over again in this crime-filled heist caper. Life on the moon feels real, thanks to the details of the world building. For example, the moon city of Artemis is made up of 5 spheres, half-underground and connected by tunnels. Moon currency is called slugs, short for ‘soft landed grams’, originating from the weight limitations of transport from the Earth. Also, if you go outside, you’ll die.

Andy Weir’s writing fills a void I didn’t know existed. He masterfully uses hard science as the centerpiece of the suspenseful story and adds a cheeky protagonist and low-brow humor to make it fun. Artemis one-ups The Martian in that the ingenuity and problem-solving skills (and bad jokes) are in the hands of a minority woman, helping to break the cis white male domination of science fiction. Don’t worry, she swears, drinks, and isn’t afraid of her sexuality.

Thanks to Netgalley and Crown Publishing for a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

I absolutely loved this book.

Read my review here https://journalingonpaper.com/2017/10/20/book-review-artemis-by-andy-weir/

ARTEMIS, by Andy Weir, is set on the moon sometime in the near future in a city called Artemis. The colonization and development of a society in Artemis is in many ways in its infancy. Jazz Bashara, the main character, is a porter, delivering items all over the moon and at the same time she is a smuggler and the two vocations work well together. Jazz is well known in Artemis, although that isn't necessarily a good thing. When a chance comes up to change her status on Artemis and right many of her transgressions, Jazz jumps at the chance.
Jazz reminds me of Han Solo, always walking the line of right and wrong, but all the time charming people with her looks and her smart mouth. Also, just like Han Solo, she is a smuggler who stumbles upon a plot much bigger than she is. Weir's creation of this society in the moon is fascinating and detailed and part of the fun of the book is finding out more and more about how the city works while the story unfolds. While some things Weir describes on the moon are hard to understand, without full comprehension of everything technical, the story is still easy to follow. As the plot thickens and the action skyrockets, the reader is hooked and yearns to find out what happens to Jazz and Artemis.
A well though out cast of characters and an exciting sci-fi story makes ARTEMIS thrilling, stimulating read that I recommend to anyone.

I absolutely loved The Martian and was not disappointed by Artemis. I appreciated Weir making his main character a smart Saudi Arabian woman who is not afraid to embrace her sexuality! It's true that Jazz and Mark (from The Martian) are extremely similar characters who share similar personality traits, but this didn't bother me too much. Artemis was a quick, fun read that I couldn't put down once I got into the thick of it. I also felt that this would be a great recommendations for YAs.

Artemis by Andy Weir was an exciting ride from beginning to end. I was initially afraid that this book wouldn’t stand up to the quality of The Martian but it DID.

The story line was fresh. A female smuggler on the moon? What could go wrong, eh?

Jazz is a 26 year old resident of Artemis, a settlement on the Moon, and has been for the past 20 years. She works and lives in the gray area of the law. Due to her numerous connection and her intelligence, an opportunity to make money comes her way. Who could resist a little vandalism for one million slugs? In the process, Jazz ends up stirring up an organized crime syndicate and has to fight and ultimately the lives of everyone on Artemis.

I loved how campy the buildings and specific areas of Artemis were named after astronauts and those who were essential in space exploration. Jazz was sarcastic and one hundred percent unique the entire way through. At times it felt overdone but it didn’t take away from the quality of the writing. This was definitely an epic read.

Would I recommend this book to others? Most definitely. I plan to order a print copy as soon as it hits shelves.

Another winner from the dude who made me want to colonize Mars! Now I want to colonize The Moon!!! The most amazing thing of all being the fact that I continue to learn from his books. I love that!!!

This has good hard science, interesting problems to solve and a somewhat complex main character who is interesting to spend time with. The setting is interesting too. It's a little less kid-friendly than The Martian was (it has some sexual situations, although nothing explicit, and a bit of violence), and sometimes it feels like some of the different ethnic/racial groups get stereotyped a bit, also it feels like a male author writing a female first-person narrator sometimes. I definitely enjoyed it and hope it gets a good movie too.

I absoluletly loved The Martian by Andy Weir so I was a bit disappointed by this book. It is by no means a bad book it just was not as great as The Martian. The characters were really strong but the story felt a bit flat to me. I do love how Andy Weir gives you on the tiny details that is something I quite enjoy. I am reviewing this book based on an ARC received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion.

Jazz is a young woman of Saudi heritage who was mostly raised on the moon by her observant Muslim father. She had a falling-out with him and is now living on her own, nonobservant in every possible way, trying to earn enough money for a comfortable existence—mostly by smuggling in high-value goods to sell to the people of Artemis, a development run by a Nigerian state/corporate partnership. When she’s offered a million slugs—a fortune—to do a small sabotage job, little does she know that it will lead to life-altering and life-threatening feats of criminal engineering, requiring her to use every relationship she has as well as her genius-level intelligence to survive. I don’t know if it will strike the same nerve as The Martian, but there’s the same mix of engineering challenges and occasional teamwork; if you wanted to learn about welding in a vacuum, you can here. Jazz seemed tilted towards the hard-boiled noir type, and she’s definitely a geek boy’s fantasy of a hot, smart woman who’s also in need of the love of a good geeky man, but she got to be the protagonist/hero and so I was ok with that. (I’m looking at you, Ready Player One.) I really appreciated the moment she’s in a physical fight with another woman and, when they realize that the bubble they’re in is in danger, they both stop trying to kill each other and switch over to survival/cooperation mode—like real people should and probably would, unlike movie characters.

In the future, humans have figured out that the moon is full of stuff we need, like aluminum and other minerals, and that people will pay good money for that and for tourism. So a little community of craftsman, engineers, sex workers, millionaires, and hospitality workers have set up shop there.

Jazz is an Artemisian. She’s lived there for 20 years, in the only city on the moon. It’s a small city, but still, it’s a permanent colony up there in space. Just don’t say “in space.” She’s also a porter. At least, that’s her official title. In reality, she’s a smuggler. She operates under the noses of the official law there because she doesn’t break the laws badly enough that they elect to take notice. One of her best clients comes to her with a truly big job, a job that will set Jazz up in a solid middle class lifestyle. Unfortunately for Jazz, things don’t go as smoothly as she’s hoped.

I like Jazz as a character. She’s stubborn as hell, and doesn’t always think things through, but she’s scrappy and smart and funny. I liked the other characters too, Svoboda the engineer, Dale her former friends, her conservative dad, the “town sheriff” – Weir does a great job building characters you honestly care about. Jazz has made some major mistakes and is trying to use this big job to fix things. I like the way the writer uses these mistakes to flesh out the characters, so you can really see how Jazz has changed from her youth. She becomes a smarter, more responsible adult. Of course, she’s still a hustler, though, and I like that too.

But it’s the worldbuilding that shines here. It’s a story ON THE MOON! Like, how cool is that? My son was asking me how it compares to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and I have to say that it holds up really well. That book was a five star read for me, just amazing and mindblowing and everything else. Well, this one is just as good. I couldn’t pick a favorite, but it’s definitely one that I’m going to be reading again.

There was some technical stuff in there that I didn’t follow, but I don’t know that it’s because it was badly written. I just have a hard time picturing things in my head sometimes. But that didn’t slow my enjoyment of the book.

Andy Weir is well on his way to being sci-fi writer of the generation.

Andy Weir's follow up novel to "The Martian" switches venues to the Moon. Artemis is long on snark, smart science, and diverse characters. There are a few plot issues regarding the main character, the mafioso's, and the governor that seem too easily wrapped up,
It's a quick read, and hard to put down. At times, it's theater of the absurd, but in a good way. More fun than the Martian without losing the scientific reality.

Andy Weir's debut novel, The Martian, was one of the best science fiction novels of the past decade, so I was naturally intrigued when I heard about his new book, Artemis. On the one hand, Weir's success means that he'll likely have a much larger audience for Artemis than he initially did for The Martian, which he had to self-publish on Amazon. On the other hand, it's nearly impossible to avoid comparing Artemis to The Martian, and unfortunately that comparison does Weir's new book no favors.

Artemis takes place on a lunar colony named, appropriately enough, Artemis. The book follows Jasmine "Jazz" Bashara, a bright young woman who has become the local fixer. She smuggles in contraband, such as cigars, for the lunar residents. Jazz is a survivor, but she's just surviving. When we meet her, most of her most important relationships have turned sour. She's a character with a lot of personal baggage whose only goal now is to save enough money to buy a room with its own private shower. When presented with a "get-rich-quick" scheme by a lunar tycoon, Jazz jumps at the opportunity. However, things don't go as planned and Jazz finds herself in the middle of a criminal conspiracy at the heart of Artemis.

Like The Martian, this book features Weir's trademark science info dumps. Characters still have to "science the shit" out of their problems, although this time there's more of a focus on chemistry than on biology. However, where Mark Whatney's encyclopedic knowledge of biology and chemistry in The Martian made sense - after all, he was one of the preeminent botanists on Earth. Jazz apparently learned about chemistry from her father, a structural welder, but she comes across as just a bit too conveniently prodigal for someone who makes a living smuggling luxury goods into the colony. That said, Weir does create some fun scenarios involving science gone awry near the end of the book.

Unfortunately, Weir's trademark humor doesn't fit this story. I laughed out loud while reading The Martian, but the humor also fit the story and characters. Whatney used humor as a coping mechanism as he figured out how to get off Mars. By contrast, Weir's attempts at humor in Artemis often fell flat or jarring. Some of the sexual humor in particular just came across uncomfortably awkward. When a scientist asks Jazz if they're friends, he responds, "You're my only friend with boobs." Later in the book, Jazz's father asks if one of Jazz's male friends is a "friend with benefits." Instead of laughing, I found myself cringing. Real people don't talk like that. I hate to psychoanalyze an author, but I found myself wondering if Weir just doesn't know how to write female protagonists.

Speaking of Jazz, I never came to like or even respect her. Part of the problem is that her self-righteous attitude doesn't ring true to the story. Jazz breaks the law, betrays people she loves, and commits acts of industrial sabotage that destroy property and risk lives, but she never seems sorry for her actions. Nor does she face any consequences. Instead, she just tries to blame others. In one scene, she tries to guilt-trip a police officer who caught her in the act of committing a major crime by reminding him that he slept with her boyfriend years ago. And, remarkably, it works!

Perhaps the greatest problem with Artemis isn't that it's bad, but rather that it's generic. The corporate conspiracy plot seems like something that has appeared in dozens of other sci-fi novels about lunar colonies (indeed, it is remarkably similar to Ian McDonald's Luna novels). Perhaps the old saying is right and there's nothing truly new under the lunar sun.

Overall, this novel was a quick and even fun read, but it also never really engaged me. If you just want a sci-fi adventure with lots of science thrown in, this might fit the bill. Just don't expect another Martian.

Artemis will be published on November 14, 2017.

[NOTE: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review]

This book has a lot of great world building and a fun read. The characters were not as strong as the ones in the Martian, but still enjoyable. Overall, a great book.

As expected after Andy Weir's "The Martian," this was a fun story with a likable and witty main character and lots of science, both behind the scenes and right up front in the plot.

Andy Weir's follow up to The Martian is an interesting story bogged down with too much explanation.
In Artemis, humans have colonized the moon with the titular city. Jazz is a cocky, sarcastic woman who makes her money on the black market while trying to save up for more legitimate work. Her desire for money for her own home in and a better life leads he to taking out a mission that not only become dangerous to the entire population on the moon.
Weir uses a lot of space to tell you things. Tell you the facts about the moon. The facts about welding on the moon. The facts about air suits on the moon. A lot of telling a very little showing. The story becomes bogged down in all the science details. While being factual always helps the story, everything was explained to the minutiae.
The novel never gets into deep morals or character development or even story. You keep reading because you want to see how Jazz does the impossible but the ending payout is luck and miracles.
A fun read but lacking great depth or quality, Artemis is a fun story that passes the time.

I love the idea of this book, a thriving city on the moon! Neighborhoods under domes (to hold the oxygen of course)! There are posh resort like neighborhoods with shops, boutiques, casinos, and also blue collar neighborhoods that lack all the conveniences. The city is Artemis. There are no streets or cars, just hallways.

Jazz is twenty-something and has lived in Artemis since she was 6 years old. She works as a porter, but smuggles contraband into Artemis on the side to try to get some bills paid. She is smart, clever, sarcastic, and unafraid!

Jazz gets involved in a dangerous mission and the action is intense. Life on the moon can be dangerous and Jazz is about to tangle with some very unsavory characters. Will she be able to pull off the mission?