Summary: A smuggler tries to save her city.
I really liked The Martian and Project Hail Mary. And I have heard a lot of negative things about Artemis. So even thought I bought it on audiobook at some point in time when it was on sale, I had not previously started it.
Artemis is different for Andy Weir and I am glad he tried something new. I didn’t like it as much as his other two books, but I also didn’t think it was as bad as its reputation. The protagonist is a 26 year old woman. Her father immigrated to the moon when she was six and she has grown up there. Her father is a devote muslim man, a welder, and for a variety of reasons, Jazz Bashara did not want to follow in the steps of her father.
I think Weir does have some problems writing a female protagonist. And he is writing a crook with a strong moral streak which is hard to do well. And the setting of the Artemis city on the moon, a small town with about 2000 permanent residents, but a lot of tourists, is also a hard setting to write well. Any small town has a problem being known as the local smuggler and I think Jazz is both smart and doesn’t seem to worry about that.
I think the main problem most reviews I have read have is that Jazz and most of the other characters are not particularly likable. She is fine. But she feels an obligation to her honor, while making a lot of bad decisions. She knows she has made a lot of bad decisions in her past, especially as a teen girl rebelling against her fairly strict father. But her actual father seems kind and caring and forgiving, which doesn’t seem to be what Jazz perceives him to be. Jazz has a lot of friends who care for her and would like to help her, but mostly she wants to make it on her own. And that seems to be trying to do everything with additional levels of difficulty turned up.
The Martian and Project Hail Mary are mostly books with a single guy trying to solve problems. And that isn’t this book. I broadly enjoyed Artemis and Jazz and her friends. But I also thought that the book needed more work to clean up plot holes and setting problems.
Artemis: A Novel by Andy Weir Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook