Artemis

This was Brilliant, can't fault a book set on the moon - The science in it was fascinating and makes me want to live on the moon lol

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did.

Let's start with this: as with

The Martian, it's got good detailed sci-fi that manages to explain without being laborious. I enjoyed the world, and I enjoyed the overall plot.

I really didn't like the characters.

I wanted so badly to like Jazz, but she's honestly a selfish asshole who makes snap decisions with horrible consequences. Rather than being a hero you root for, she pretty much goes out of her way to be a dick to everyone. She's smart (except when she needs to be glaringly dumb about some things for plot purposes -

I'm sorry, there is no way it takes her that long to figure out the Administrator's involvement when she was invited to the tail end of a meeting between Trond and the Administrator

), but she uses her intelligence as a club to keep everyone away, and she is also really prickly about anyone pointing out that she's smart. And why? Like, we're never given any reason why this is such a button for her. Honestly, it just seems like she has always aspired to be a lazy asshole who skates through life. And the other problem is that her narrative sounds like a whiny 18 year old. I was stunned when, at around the midway point of the book, she says she's 26.

Other characters were equally shit. Rudy, the douche police officer... who has decided she's a hardcore criminal because she made the mistake of letting her boyfriend smoke pot in her dad's office, and he invited friends... they got out of control and started a fire. Honestly, it was a dumb decision, but it's the kind of shit a 17 year old does and it does not make her a felon - the fact that he fought to deport her over that is bananas. Even her DAD blames the shitty boyfriend. But Rudy apparently places 100% of the blame on Jazz and he's hated her ever since. It makes him a giant asshole, and no wonder there's a crime problem on Artemis - no one is ever going to call that judgmental bag of shit for help on anything. Him pressing Jazz repeatedly to trust him - now, after his toxic behavior towards her for years - was eye-rollingly dumb. Also dumb: her going ga-ga for his muscles every time she saw him. It made her seem utterly vapid.

I'm not going to to into detail on the other characters, because it would get spoilery, but let's just say that with a couple minor exceptions (by which I mean, minor characters) they were pretty much all douchebags.

I also wasn't thrilled with the resolution of the plot.

Look, this whole shitshow was basically put in play by the Administrator, who crossed so many lines that she was actually tipping off assassins as to Jazz's whereabouts at one point. And she gets away with zero consequences. Now, I'm not arguing that Jazz should have avoided all consequences - she definitely needed to be held accountable for the mess - but for the Administrator to somehow come across like the good guy - only interested in the well-being of Artemis - when she's a freaking mob boss... it's unacceptable. The deal Jazz SHOULD have made, at the end, was "If I am exiled, I'm talking to every reporter on Earth about what YOU DID." Ngugi's career is basically shot when it comes out that she was working with Trond to sabotage Sanchez - what company would open a business on Artemis under and Administrator who will happily torch their business if she decides it is for the "greater good"? And then basically, these two assholes could have held each other in check via mutually assured destruction.

So, it was disappointing. After a story like

The Martian, which was like ... showcasing the best parts of humanity, coming together for a crisis and figuring out what to do ... this was just like wallowing in the shit of humanity.

Meh.

this is a fun space caper science romp

i think because this book has more characters than

the martian, and they of course interact with each other, it shows a weakness in weir as a writer

he has some work to do when it comes to writing dialogue and interaction

i had heard complaints that his treatment of the main character, a woman, was sexist, and i did not find that to be the case at all

although jazz is the kind of person who spends so much time figuring out how to cheat on the test, it would have been faster to just study for it

there's no character resolution, but the plot is fun and fast and weir makes science fun

Hands down one of the best books I have ever read. Things I loved:

- It was funny enough to literally make me laugh out loud multiple times.

- The science was completely believable and grounded the piece (without being boring), and the information given was never extraneous but always relevant to the plot.

- The world felt real, from the above-referenced science to the economics of creating and maintaining a city on the moon.

- Love them or hate them, the characters were extraordinarily well-developed.

- From a plotting perspective, the book was on-point: character arcs, subplots, and the overarching plot line all converged to that absolutely surprising (but well-foreshadowed and, in hindsight, inevitable) ending that tied everything up for me.

- I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.

- I've never read anything like this before, either in tone or plot.

In fact, the only thing I can say that I didn't love about the book was that it is so vulgar. (My dad would probably really enjoy this, but I just...can't bring myself to recommend it to him because of some of the content.)

The author’s style was bad enough in The Martian, but got a million times worse when he attempted to write from the perspective of a woman.

I really liked this book. Weir goes into so much detail about how a colony on the moon would operate and his main character is a firecracker. I love how she breaks most norms of how a female character is usually portrayed. I will be reading The Martian because I liked his writing so much.

Writing plot