Artemis in SpecFic Buddy Reads

Dec 11, 2017 Philip rated it it was ok

Shelves: hard-scifi, 2017-releases, sci-fi, author-man

2ish stars.

Right off the bat I'll just say, I think the first half of this book is awful. It was like Weir conceded that plot set-up and characterization are things that novels should include, so he gave it his best shot and attempted to cover up his lack of ability in those areas by making lots and lots of (middle school) jokes. Once the heist starts, the action kicks in, and the surprisingly believable and interesting technical, science-y bits come into play, the book hits its stride and show 2ish stars.

Right off the bat I'll just say, I think the first half of this book is awful. It was like Weir conceded that plot set-up and characterization are things that novels should include, so he gave it his best shot and attempted to cover up his lack of ability in those areas by making lots and lots of (middle school) jokes. Once the heist starts, the action kicks in, and the surprisingly believable and interesting technical, science-y bits come into play, the book hits its stride and shows off Weir's strengths. It ends on a high note, so much so that I initially rated it 3.5 because I was left with such a good taste in my mouth. In hindsight, reflecting on the book as a whole, it's not very good.

I've read that Weir realizes that characterization isn't his greatest strength and that he'd rather focus on the story, which is fine! If the story is engaging enough, it can absolutely balance the lack of strong character work. Why, then, does Weir try so hard to make the protagonist, Jazz, seem clever, and oh-so-cool, and brilliant, but also too badass to care about living up to her obviously enormous potential, and oh yeah, she gets lots of sex, too, and she's super hot, but she just likes to chill because she's just one of the guys, your typical, relatable dudebro. But also she's a girl. How do we know she's a girl? Because she says so. A lot.

“I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”

All of the secondary characters are indistinguishable from one another except for the various races, nationalities, sexual identities, genders that they're assigned by Weir. None of these traits are ever actually evident in how the characters are portrayed, it just feels like Weir thought it would be good to have a diverse cast. Does it count as representation just because we're told that so-and-so is gay, or Irish, or Muslim? I'm not sure.

Anyway, once all of the characterization yadda yadda yadda is out of the way, the story itself ends up being exciting and a lot of fun. There's a ton of welding which, um, gets old eventually, but mostly the technical detail is interesting and contributes to the overall enjoyment level. The setting (a moon colony) is also pretty cool and Weir does a good job of making it feel real. There's tension and action and science in this science fiction. Unfortunately, it's burdened down by the author himself exposing his very apparent weaknesses.

Posted in Mr. Philip's Library ...more

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Dec 06, 2017 Lyn rated it really liked it

They’re not Martians.

Don’t call them Loonies either.

With some very subtle nods to Heinlein’s 1966 masterpiece The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Andy Weir returns to outer space after his fabulously well to do debut novel.

Some SF fans were excited about a revisit to The Martian and others were apprehensive, fearing a Sea of Tranquility sized let down. Weir neither tried to recreate The Martian nor did he run out of gas on the way to Houston. Artemis is a different kind of story with its own charms, n ...more

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Dec 09, 2017 Veronique rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read2017

3.5*

Second books are often badly received, with readers expecting either the exact ‘same’ thing or something totally different. Weir does both.

At first, Artemis looks quite far from The Martian, being set on the Moon and having a female main character. Additionally, the plot is not one of survival but resembles more ‘heist’ stories, or rather mission impossible. On the other hand, there are many similarities. Jazz has the same type of snark as Mark had, and the same problem-solving / scientific ...more

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Dec 09, 2017 Lindsay rated it liked it

A brilliant misfit gets ensnared in a scheme that will determine the future of Artemis, this city on the Moon.

Jazz Bashara is a snarky small-time criminal whose also a sort of genius slacker and who has lived most of her life on the Moon. When one of the clients for her smuggling activities proposes a high-risk, high-reward job, she jumps at the chance and straight into some very nasty trouble.

Andy Weir is still very early in his career, but from this and his previous book you can make some defe A brilliant misfit gets ensnared in a scheme that will determine the future of Artemis, this city on the Moon.

Jazz Bashara is a snarky small-time criminal whose also a sort of genius slacker and who has lived most of her life on the Moon. When one of the clients for her smuggling activities proposes a high-risk, high-reward job, she jumps at the chance and straight into some very nasty trouble.

Andy Weir is still very early in his career, but from this and his previous book you can make some defensible statements on what he's good at and what he isn't. He's great at communicating sound engineering and the logical progression of space travel and colonization. He's great at the world-building that goes along with it, thinking solidly about the problems we will face and the likely solutions that humanity will come up with based on both technology and human behavior. He's also great at the snarky humor that has saturated pop culture since the days of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

What he's not so great at? Characters, characterization and the communication in interpersonal relationships. In the Martian, with Watney alone so much of the time, the issues with this stuff were confined to the NASA team and the team on the spaceship, both of which were saturated with the same type of engineering/space/science geeks that Watney himself was. This book felt like an ambitious step up for a writer much more comfortable with descriptions of welding in a vacuum environment than communications between normal people. While I have to respect the attempt, the result is far from successful in this area of the book, particularly around Jazz and her father and her personality motivations. The outline of all that is there, but it needed more work, but lots of aspects of Jazz's character also needed more work, including the idea that the character slept around a lot which could probably just have been dropped.

Still, it's space, engineering, science and snark which is probably what you picked up an Andy Weir book for anyway. Hopefully the rest will come in later efforts. ...more

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Dec 25, 2017 Lata rated it it was ok

Shelves: bipoc-actor, sf-f-h, x2017-read

On the surface, a fun heist story. However, the characterization was silly at times, and nonsensical to implausible others. And the main character, Jazz, did not work for me, despite being, on the surface, someone I was interested in knowing more about. Jazz is lazy, smart-mouthed, and also very intelligent. She's a low-level smuggler on Artemis, and has a steady clientele. When presented with a lucrative opportunity, she grabs it, and a series of problems ensue, for her and Artemis.
Though the s ...more

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Feb 15, 2018 Sarah rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I did not enjoy The Martian so I wasn't planning on reading this one. A friend talked to me into it so here I am.

It was crap. There were some really great action scenes but overall it read like a high school nerd's ultimate fantasy. Not just (view spoiler) but there were junior detective moments, MacGyver style miraculous inventions, heroics and villainy, and ridiculous moments of "I have the upper hand! No, I have the upper hand!"

Serio ...more

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Jul 12, 2020 Di Maitland rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: action-girl, sci-fi, audiobook, on-planet-off-earth, future, heist

This would be tricky. A long forgotten rational part of my brain piped up: was this really a good idea? One million slugs. Yep, I'm fine!

4.5*s. This book was awesome! I was nervous about reading it because I absolutely adored The Martian, but I needn't have been. Its plot and setting may have been different, but it had the same colloquial style and witty banter that I'd loved, some more awesome, accessible science (and I don't often say that about science), and a new go-get-'em protagonist - and ...more

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Dec 19, 2017 Amber (Books of Amber) rated it really liked it

Along with everyone else in the world, I had been waiting for something new from Andy Weir with bated breath. I was completely ready to read more about Mark Watney because after reading The Martian he became one of my all time favourite characters. But Artemis is actually about a young woman called Jazz.

Jazz is a non-practising Muslim woman who has lived in Artemis (a city on the moon) since she was six years old. She’s very intelligent and into science, and she has a very foul mouth. I’ve seen Along with everyone else in the world, I had been waiting for something new from Andy Weir with bated breath. I was completely ready to read more about Mark Watney because after reading The Martian he became one of my all time favourite characters. But Artemis is actually about a young woman called Jazz.

Jazz is a non-practising Muslim woman who has lived in Artemis (a city on the moon) since she was six years old. She’s very intelligent and into science, and she has a very foul mouth. I’ve seen some criticism regarding the bad language that Jazz uses as well as her sexual jokes, but I didn’t have a problem with it. I don’t think it was unrealistic or a bad attempt from a male author at writing a female character. Like, you should hear the way some of my friends speak.

So yeah, I liked Jazz. There were moments where I was a bit put out by how good she was at everything, but I figured that this is a book about a city on the moon, so I could suspend my disbelief a bit.

I don’t have anything to say about the side characters because I didn’t care for any of them. I did, however, dislike how few female characters there were. Especially prominent female characters. It would have been good for Jazz to have more female friends.

In terms of the plot, it’s a heist story. The first two thirds were great as they were completely action packed, and I loved exploring Artemis and learning about the economy and politics. But the ending wasn’t fantastic, to be honest. It’s a shame, but oh well.

One other problem I had was the reusable condom. I mean, it’s not my own personal problem, but a problem with that part of the book. One of Jazz’s friends invented a reusable condom and asked Jazz to test it out. It kept coming up again and again, to the point where I was wondering if this condom would save the moon or something. But it didn’t. In fact, I don’t know what the point of this condom or the constant nagging was. Could it have been a way for the inventor to keep an eye on Jazz’s sex life? That’s the only thing I can think of and that’s pretty gross.

I will definitely be reading more from Andy Weir in the future. I was excited to learn that he is working on more science fiction, and that he is reading reviews for Artemis and taking the feedback on board. That’s pretty great. Artemis definitely had some issues with pacing and the plot, but overall it was an enjoyable book with a lot of snark. ...more

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Dec 31, 2021 Liam || Books 'n Beards rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: bought-2021, science-fiction, nope, owned-audible, 2021, audio

I really, really struggled with ARTEMIS.

I was late to the Andy Weir party, only getting to THE MARTIAN in 2019 - but I actually really enjoyed it. I think I listened to the audiobook in one marathon session during a particularly dull day at work, and I really fed off the frenetic energy and the technical details.

Having read a fair few reviews from Goodreads friends on ARTEMIS, it seems I'm not alone in not being in love with this (to put it mildly). Weir really doesn't write characters very wel I really, really struggled with ARTEMIS.

I was late to the Andy Weir party, only getting to THE MARTIAN in 2019 - but I actually really enjoyed it. I think I listened to the audiobook in one marathon session during a particularly dull day at work, and I really fed off the frenetic energy and the technical details.

Having read a fair few reviews from Goodreads friends on ARTEMIS, it seems I'm not alone in not being in love with this (to put it mildly). Weir really doesn't write characters very well at all - a failing that he is apparently aware of, which makes me question why he decided to branch out from White Science Guy Watney to Saudi Welding Girl Jazz.

Rosario Dawson does an... admiral job of trying to bring Jazz to life in a way that isn't irritating, but on the whole fails. As a character she is just so.. ugh. I don't even have words. Between Weir's obsession with cramming in as many pop culture references as an episode of Bing Bang Theory and his apparently utter lack of understanding about what females think about (which, to be fair, I'm also not very well versed in - but I'm pretty sure it's more than 'I'm hot', 'I like sex', and 'Wow I'm a girl'), every moment lived with Jazz is a moment I'll never get back. A moment tinged with the feel of chili dust in my eyes or something.

The plot feels unfocused and unengaging - I really struggled to understand why the things that were happening, were happening. This may be my fault because I kept loading up Hardspace: Shipbreaker (for what it's worth, a better story about powertools in space) in the background, but I also put a fair helping of blame onto the book for not being enjoyable enough to command my full attention.

The last 2~ hours were a slog for me - I had to sit myself down on December 31st and force myself to listen to them, because otherwise it just wasn't going to happen.

This might be my last Weir - I'll have to check out reviews for his other books, but I think that THE MARTIAN was both a blessing and a curse in that he nailed his format out of the box, with a lone character who didn't have to.. converse with other human beings. You can accept peoples' internal monologues being douchey and obnoxious, but less so when every word out of their mouths is.

A no from me, and a lovely way to end 2021. ...more

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Feb 04, 2018 Missy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 3-star

Hmmm. Well. I didn’t love this book, but I didn’t hate it either. It’s was mediocre. Quick reading.

The perspective was weird. First person which was fine, but then the narrator would speak directly to the reader telling them to get their head out of the gutter. It was awkward. And the emails to Kelvin? Why were those necessary? Also, who is Kelvin?!

Kelly, if this on your to read shelf, you can downgrade it to you Meh shelf.

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