Artemis in SpecFic Buddy Reads

Aug 26, 2017 Bradley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, 2017-shelf, worldbuilding-sf

This book was great.

I admit to worrying that he wouldn't be able to keep up the quality from The Martian, and this is definitely a very different kind of tale from that, being half a heist novel but otherwise just a great adventure, but he pulls it off. Better than pulling it off, even. I love his characters and the feel of the moon city, Artemis, is vital and detailed.

But you know what the best part is?

I was thoroughly entertained during the entire read. The pacing is great, the reveals belie ...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 06, 2017 Trish rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This was a fun romp across the lunar surface with some schemes thrown in for good measure.

Welcome to Artemis, the (so far) only city on the moon. It consists of several bubbles (dome-shaped habitats), each offering either workshops or tourist attractions or offices (which means some are shiny and some are not). In this world lives Jazz, a 26-year-old woman with a lot of potential. But since she hates the very word, she never got a PhD, never became a welding master like her father and also flunk This was a fun romp across the lunar surface with some schemes thrown in for good measure.

Welcome to Artemis, the (so far) only city on the moon. It consists of several bubbles (dome-shaped habitats), each offering either workshops or tourist attractions or offices (which means some are shiny and some are not). In this world lives Jazz, a 26-year-old woman with a lot of potential. But since she hates the very word, she never got a PhD, never became a welding master like her father and also flunked her EVA test recently (meaning she's not allowed to enter the EVA guild which, in turn, means she can't cash in on all the tourists wanting a little walk on the moon's surface).
She's from the rather poor side of town so of course she wants to make some money. However, some poor decisions in her past mean that she had to work her way up and even now, in a relatively comfortable spot, she longs for more (honestly: who wouldn't want for a bedroom in which you can stand upright and your own bathroom). Enter a rich Russian with a very tempting business proposition. Well, Jazz is stupid enough to take the job ... and everything goes donwhill from there - especially since this little lunar problem extends farther than Jazz could have ever anticipated.

Weir managed to write something completely different from his first novel and I'm glad. I didn't want Artemis to be just a copy of The Martian and it really isn't. Again, he managed to bring to life an enigmatic MC. Enigmatic but, in this case, also a bit shady and even annoying but that was done on purpose (why should every MC be an angel with a white vest?). I think it's also no coincidence that Weir's MCs mostly distinguish themselves through ingenuity and intelligence; it's hard to attach a label to them and if you weren't told which gender they have, it would be up to your imagination. This is great characterisation! Many criticized it but I like it because I can't even begin to tell people how sick I am of what women supposedly are like. The author doesn't seem to give a damn but instead created a fun character - AND IT WORKS.

The plot is a bit slow(er) in the beginning but not terribly so. The readers need to get their bearings so we are introduced to Artemis' architectural as well as social and "political" structures (and its history and relationship with Earth) but it doesn't take long before we notice a thing or two not adding up and it was fun guessing at just how deep a shit Jazz was in.

A few things were fairly obvious, (view spoiler) but that didn't really marr the enjoyment of watching these people stomp around.

What is once again remarkable is the sheer knowledge of the author and how well he always researches stuff. As far as I could tell (and I did test some of his statements), every technical detail was correct (it pays to work with engineers, chemists and welders) and that boosted my enjoyment of the novel on top of everything else.

So yeah, total recommendation - for the audiobook too because although Rosario Dawson (the narrator) got on my bad side with her Marvel character Claire (not her fault, the character is written that way but still), she completely nailed it here and it was so much fun listening to her. ...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 05, 2017 Nataliya rated it liked it

Shelves: 2017-reads

I thought it was okay, really. But I did not love it. I found the protagonist a bit irritating and her narrative voice very juvenile. Many readers compared her voice to Mark Watney’s, but to me Mark’s snarky humor in his very dangerous predicament sounded fun and served as a good coping mechanism in the face of huge odds against him. Jazz (this book’s protagonist) on the other hand seemed juvenile for no good reason, and the plot failed to engage me that much.

It was still entertaining though, a ...more

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Dec 25, 2017 Lata rated it it was ok

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

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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Nov 19, 2017 Suzanne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, science-fiction

I enjoyed this! The dialogue made me laugh, and I liked the lunar setting/story. 4.5 stars

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Oct 25, 2017 Christina Pilkington rated it liked it

I'm rating this book 3 stars simply because this time I actually enjoyed all the science parts of the book (unlike with the Martian), but if it was based solely on the characters, I would have rated this book one star.

In the Martian, the character of Mark Watney appealed more to me than the science parts of the book. I enjoyed Mark's snarky character; it seemed to fit with the overall story and added to the suspense of the book. Also, Mark was the main character of the book. We did get some oth ...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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Nov 18, 2017 Kent rated it really liked it

3.5 stars

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Jun 21, 2018 Cindy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi, great-reads, audiobooks

Jazz is a badass smuggler with an attitude and a tiny bank account living on Artemis, the moon’s only habitable city. I listened to the audiobook, excellently performed by Rosario Dawson. Weir’s vision of everyday life on the moon and the locals’ attitudes toward tourists is both plausible and amusing. The story itself has plenty of science and engineering, making it a perfect STEM Book for teens too. Spunky gal solves a mystery on the moon: what’s not to like?!

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