SFF180 🚀 ‘Artemis’ by Andy Weir ★★½

A woman scraping by in a lunar city as a porter and part-time smuggler gets herself caught up in an elaborate, life or death criminal conspiracy, in this erratic second novel by the author of the blockbuster THE MARTIAN.
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[@Greengiraffe10]

I think you nailed it on the head with this reviews as to why this book didn’t hit it out of the park. I was so disappointed as the premise was amazing.

[@tottman]

Enjoyed your take on the book, but I enjoyed it quite a bit more than you. I agree with you that the dome exit to commit the sabotage and then sneak back into the dome was easily the most exciting and well-written part, but I didn't think the rest of the book lagged that far behind. I also thought the science here was less prominent than in The Martian and feathered into the story a little better. I didn't find the welding bit to slow the story down as much as you did, particularly as it played an important part in the events that put all of the Artemis domes in danger. I mostly agree with your assessment of Jazz as Mark Watney-lite, but I enjoyed the snark more than some. If Weir can improve on his characterization a little bit, I think he'll really hit his stride as a writer. I also liked the Artemis setting enough to be interested in more stories there.

[@WhatCassRead]

I just popped in because I had a few people tell me we hit on a lot of the same topics in our reviews, and I’m now subbed and a fan! If you want to watch my reviews on Artemis, I just posted them this week as well, but you are a lot more succinct in your review than I am! Haha! Can’t wait to see more!

[@SFF180]

Welcome Cass! I will go have a look. 🙂

[@CreatureFeature666]

I just finished checking out a few other reviews of Artemis and yours is on the money. Overall I enjoyed it ok, but the negatives you list are exactly why I wouldn’t give it five stars. I enjoyed listening to your review.

[@alilbitmads]

COMPETITIVE SNARKING *click* IS NOW MY BRAND! Excellent review!

[@GeryNH]

I don't even plan to read half of the books you review, but I still enjoy watching your video-reviews about them :3

[@michaelfeeney6108]

Thanks for the review. I’m the only person I know who hated The Martian and thought the whole thing was cringe worthy. A rare DNF for me.

[@ClaireRousseau]

Yeah, if you're going to go all Neal Stephenson on the science info-dumps, you should balance that by being able to craft a crystal-clear, entertaining and gorgeous dozen-line sentence the way Stephenson does...

[@ClaireRousseau]

I just got to the Scalzi joke and woke up the cat laughing. ^_^

[@oberstul1941]

Good review; made me want to read this book sooner than later. The part that really got my attention was the comparison to Scalzi. Personally, i would have been inclined to believe you about his Skype writing prowess if he hadn't written the same book twice (still hurting about the Last Colony/Zoe's tale debacle)

[@SFF180]

To be fair, Zoë’s Tale fixed a few problems with The Last Colony.

[@treelinehugger]

Great review! I want to compare the book with the movie Casablanca. Rick Blaine is an intelligent, charismatic, strong man who is still bitter and cynical from a lost love. In business, he regularly breaks the law. Although he appears to be selfish and self-serving, he ultimately sacrifices everything for a cause. He is a complex character. Now, imagine replacing the lead actor, Humphrey Bogart, with a short, sassy, and sexy young actress, Jenna Ortega. The movie would utterly fail. It's not believable because, contrary to recent delusional academic constructions, men and women are not interchangeable. For the same reasons, I found Jazz's character in Artemis unbelievable. Women who are intelligent, sexy, short, and young find easier ways to make money than petty smuggling. They might be criminals, but they are more likely to work in an air-conditioned office. I also found Jazz unlikable and immoral. I never felt like cheering for her. I like everything about the book except the DEI protagonist. Dear God, when will DEI end?!!!

[@TheFancyHatLadyReads]

I gave this one a few more points for its sheer readability than you did, but... I also never actually read The Martian and didn't have that point of comparison for the characters. What annoyed me the most was how Weir used Jazz's... shall I say lack of caring?... to wriggle out of really addressing any of the bigger socio-economic issues the book raised.

[@SFF180]

Right, the whole divide between the rich and poor was kind of rote. The fact that Jazz was so ready to commit such a colossal series of felonies on Trond’s behalf just to afford an apartment with a private bathroom could have been treated, perhaps, less glibly?

[@verrekijkersophie7478]

For me, this book was a dnf..

[@2LegHumanist]

I really like hard sci-fi and there is so little of it around that I take what I can get. I give Artemis and the Martian 4 stars mainly for that reason. Where it loses me is that, to me, good hard sci-fi is sci-fi that provides you with an experience of what it would actually be like to be in whatever sci-fi scenario the story is set in. It doesn't need to give you a science lesson, it can just use the real science to provide the realistic environment in which to set the story. So to me, Weir in both the Martian and in Artemis, goes too far in explaining the detail of the science and in doing so comes off a lot of the time as though he is delivering a science lesson. There are places where it is appropriate to do that. In Artemis it makes sense that he would explain how the atmosphere in the lunar habitat became contaminated with chloroform. But for the most part the characters could just experience the consequences of the science without detailed explanations. I make exactly the same criticism of Kim Stanley Robinson in the Mars series. Too much science lesson. Just let the characters loose in the environment and show us what it's like. I really enjoyed Charles Sheffield's Between the Strokes of Night. No science lessons, but super-realistic science and brilliant novel ways of getting around the distance problem in space travel.

[@SFF180]

In The Martian I found the hard science well suited to the story, and incorporated into the narrative very skillfully, because understanding it was essential to the plot: rescuing Watney from Mars. But it was less crucial to understanding the plot of Artemis, which involves this rather uninteresting conspiracy. And so the hard-science passages in Artemis feel much more intrusive to the narrative than supportive of it.

[@IanCordingley]

Weir probably would have been my favourite author if I was twelve years old.

[@vicky9407]

It won the best sci-fi category on the goodreads awards!

[@SFF180]

Because of course it did.

[@jamesholder13]

Nice review. Probably will take a pass on it.

[@andiecurlybooks]

X2 ass...Lol :)

[@robberesford904]

Just realised, the Martian is essentially Robinson Crusoe.

[@SFF180]

And there is a classic movie called _Robinson Crusoe on Mars_ as well!

[@robberesford904]

SFF180 i guess that's why they call them "classics".