Artemis by Andy Weir

I stumbled on Artemis when searching for reading material for my Kindle.  As is so often the case, I had purchased and borrowed a number of non-fiction books but found that my appetite did not match my ability to read “serious” books; particularly when busy and stressed.

I was able to grab Artemis for three bucks and decided to dive in.  I had heard of the movie, The Martian, but not read the book. Oh, well.

Jazz Bashara is a criminal.

Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you’re not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you’ve got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.

Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she’s stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first.

What I liked:

• The world building and conceptualization of life on the moon; the politics, the economics, the culture, etc.  It was entertaining to think about how this might all work.

• And the characters were interesting as well.  Jazz and her father, her friends, coworkers, and various Artemis leaders were plausible and brought something to what is essentially a heist plot. 

Not so much:

• Weir had a tendency to get into the technical details of things like welding and engineering a bit much; slowed the plot down at times.
• Jazz and other character’s snarky attitude and general immaturity seemed a bit over-the-top after a while.  The one liners and sophomoric humor starts out OK but just gets old at some point.  Could be this is just not my style.

Bottom line:

All in all, it served its purpose in that it kept me entertained while not requiring much deep thought on my part.  But I have to say it didn’t make me want to run out and buy The Martian.