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.

I love the premise of a community on the moon, and think this is a fast read. Jazz is entertaining but a little hard to like. I like the science of the moon and the dust and rocks and EVAs, great engaging detail. But sometimes it was too jam-packed with research and not enough action. I enjoyed it, but not as much as The Martian.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

When I heard Andy Weir had a new book coming out, I couldn’t wait to read it because, like pretty much everyone else, I thoroughly loved The Martian. Artemis is not The Martian so I don’t want to compare them.
Pros:
I enjoyed the humor in this book, lots of sarcasm and snark, quite a few grins and laugh out loud moments too. I did enjoy the relationships as well, this book showed how relationships can get messed up easily and are much harder to mend. I also enjoyed all the problem solving we saw and how science works to solve a lot of these issues. It was interesting to see HOW people could live on the moon, not just saying on the first page “I live on the moon somehow, don’t ask me…science or something”. We really got to see all the issues that have to be dealt with in order for humans to live on the moon in reality.
Cons:
I feel like the characters, even the main one, could have delved a little deeper. Some were a little flat for me and I could have used a little more insight and motivation for these characters. Also, as much as I feel the author “dumbed down” most of the science and physics for the layperson, like myself, I still got slightly glassed over eyes now and then. It wasn’t too distracting, I just tried really hard to understand or just kept going with the plot.
To me, Artemis is a good book about solving problems, from small ones, to life-threatening ones, to relationship-threatening ones. What I took from this book is that any problem can be solved, you just have to look for the solution.
*3.5 Stars*

Having read Weir's The Martian a few years ago (much like everyone else 😀), I was really looking forward to his next book.  After a hugely successful debut, a lot of times readers can be disappointed when a follow up is different than the book that introduced them to the author.  Artemis is different than The Martian, but I think a lot of the most charming "Weir-y" things from The Martian are still there. 

Artemis is about a smuggler with a heart of gold, Jazz (Jasmine) Bashara.  She is intelligent, intuitive, scrappy, but (as most people will tell her), she has not lived up to her potential.  The action takes place on the moon colony - the eponymous Artemis, which has a tourist attraction at the original moon landing site, a small city with different domes (neighborhoods) which correspond well to the right and wrong sides of the proverbial tracks.  Finally, there is a smelting and iron ore operation, which provides power and oxygen to the city and the landing site.  

Jazz seems to enjoy her "work" as a smuggler.  She's a complete sponge for knowledge of any type even if she doesn't notice or care about it.  When she is asked with breaking into the smelting works and destroying their machines, she comes up with a rather elaborate and scientifically intelligent plan to do so.  When that goes a bit wrong, she has to gather an Ocean's 11 rag tag team of people to finish the job and save the colony.  

Artemis is a fun spacey adventure like The Martian, but I think the points of interest that will bring Martian lovers over are the science and the intelligent scrappy heroine.  Jazz has had some hard times and is working towards a mysterious goal.  I really think readers will find in her someone they can relate to in some ways and admire in others.  

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I liked the premise of a heist on Mars involving science. But the characters, especially Jazz, felt stilted and awkward at times. Jazz just didn't read like a women in her 20s. It just felt unnatural which dampened my enjoyment of the novel.

Good read, but not quite what I was expecting. I liked the character Jazz, but there was a lot of filler in the story about the science behind everything so that made it hard to get through for me.

Favorite quote:
“It’s all part of the life-cycle of an economy. First it’s lawless capitalism until that starts to impede growth. Next comes regulation, law enforcement, and taxes. After that: public benefits and entitlements. Then, finally, overexpenditure and collapse.”“Wait. Collapse?”“Yes, collapse. An economy is a living thing. It’s born full of vitality and dies once it’s rigid and worn out. Then, through necessity, people break into smaller economic groups and the cycle begins anew, but with more economies. Baby economies, like Artemis is right now.”“Huh,” I said. “And if you want to make babies, somebody’s got to get fucked.”

Artemis by Andy Weir Is another out of this world read! This novel takes place on the moon and features the main character of Jazz. Jazz is a bit of a rebel. She operates a smuggling operation with the aid of her long time pen pal who lives in Kenya. Jazz is asked to mess with some important moon equipment in exchange for a large sum of money. This is where her troubles begin. Jazz sets off a chain reaction of events that will put not only her life in danger but also the lives of the 2000 citizens of Artemis. This tale concludes with a riveting ending that will have you up reading all night in order to see what Jazz's fate is. Read and enjoy!

I expected great things of Artemis, having thoroughly enjoyed The Martian. I was ready for space moon adventures, with a colorful supporting cast, and a new, plucky, heroine! I was looking forward to Andy Weir giving Jazz, our protagonist, a refreshingly unique voice as he had done for Mark Watney in The Martian! And, course, I was ready for more science! Oh the potential, the expectations!

And yet, here I am, trying to think of something better to say than “Well, it had an interesting premise”.

Jazz Bashara, a genius who hates to apply herself and despises the “but you have such potential” hang wringing from all of the adults in her life, is supposed to be a 26 year old woman, but is written like a petulant, tween-aged boy. On one hand, she’s a small-time smuggler, looking to make ends meet in the baby economy of Artemis, the lunar city; on the other hand, she’s secretly running the entire smuggling business from Earth to the moon with the help of her childhood pen-pal. She’s such a genius that she can learn complex engineering and chemistry in an afternoon, but it’s heavily implied that she refuses to apply herself either because she’s too busy seducing anything that moves or because she’s still heartbroken when the love of her life turned out to be gay.

Spare me.

Nor can the other characters save this novel; although the ensemble cast is diverse, each one feels like a cardboard cutout only meant to interact with Jazz at key moments. They are plot devices, not people, who show up to lecture Jazz (and by extension, the reader) about what’s happening now, serving as exposition, and telling, rather than showing.

The science at the heist itself was definitely entertaining, and as I did with The Martian, I enjoyed Weir’s more detailed glimpse into the details of why everything worked (or didn’t). And while that was certainly a small saving grace, it couldn’t carry the weight of the whole novel, even in moon gravity.

(I’m sorry I felt compelled to include that joke.)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I found the plot to move quickly, and it sucked you in from the very beginning. I loved how much science (although I have no idea whether any of it was correct or not) was woven into the plot. The only thing that came to annoy me (and the reasoning for a 4 star, rather than a 5 star review, was that the main character's voice started to annoy me by the end of the book. Because she and her thoughts drove so much of the plot, it felt like there was never any change, and her voice was very distinctive and very strong. I can imagine that it will turn some readers off from the book.

After loving The Martian so much, this book was really just a let down. I loved that there were diverse characters and loved the world building of the moon colony, Artemis, but I didn't like the main character and was disappointed that they made her some what unlikable and incompetent in comparison to the super lovable and competent male character in The Martian.

Before I started reading this book I snuck a peek at some of the reviews on Amazon. Of course there were negative reviews and so I thought, hmmm should I or shouldn't I read this. I did read The Martian (Loved it!!) and that alone convinced me to read this book. I really enjoyed reading this book, sometimes the main characters inner language bugged me, a bit too snarky for my taste. Other reviewers have commented on the plausibility of some of the events that take place, and I say "who cares". Read the book for the poor enjoyment of reading a fun read, that takes you to the moon, keeps you on edge with a cast of colorful characters. I recommend this book.