Book review: Artemis - the 2nd Andy Weir book

I've been on a tear lately as far as reading is concerned and this has everything to do with me suffering from insomnia as of late because of some issues I am facing in my life. My brain wont switch off at night and books, combined with a sleeping pill (just half dose) of some sort has been aiding me in getting to sleep lately. When my eyes get heavy, I put the book down and instead try to reflect on what I just read instead of what is bothering me in my own life. For the most part it works.

So after reading Andy Weir's first book The Martian I had the good fortune of not just knowing that his 2nd novel existed, but my friend also had a copy of it. Seeing as how I live in Vietnam, had he not had it, I would likely never have gotten my hands on a copy.

I learned from reading The Martian that author Andy specializes in science fiction with a lot of facts mixed in there about elements and how they react with one another. He is clearly a very intelligent person that tries to keep the physics nerds happy while also creating a somewhat realistic story for the regular audience. I'm sure Neil DeGrasse Tyson would probably have a field day with the facts presented in the books but us normal folks don't know any better and therefore it is really interesting to me.

Artemis takes place on the moon at a colony that revolves around gathering the resources on the moon as well as providing tourism trips for wealthy Earthlings. There is a group of about 2000 people that live on the moon full-time and our main character Jasmine or "Jazz" has lived there since she was 6 years old.

The story progresses with Jasmine being our narrator and telling us how difficult it is to be poor on the moon and how she is subjected to the misery of being witness to the wealth of tourists and some of the elite of the moon's permanent residents, but also how she would much rather be living on the moon than back on earth.

To supplement her very modest income Jasmine gets involved in contraband smuggling and one day she is proposed with a plan that could make her a millionaire overnight if she does something extremely illegal. Because this will end up being a victimless crime (no death) and that she is one of the only people on the moon that has lived almost all of her life there, she is a perfect person for the job. Unfortunately the mission ends up getting her wrapped up in international-as-well-as-the-moon organized crime. That's all I can really say about that without spoiling the story. The people she is up against are much better equipped and financed than she is, but it is rather humorous about how her enemies are at a disadvantage because they are ill-equipped for battle in a 1/6 gravity environment. She on the other hand, has ALWAYS lived in this sort of environment so despite her small stature, she is much better at basically everything than the people who are pursuing her.

So I will say this: The book is a page turner and it is engaging for the most part. I managed to get through it in less than a week which for someone like me, is pretty damn good when you consider it is more than 300 pages long. The story is ever changing and there are even maps provided at the beginning that detail our fictional colony on the moon. So yeah, the story is for the most part, sound.

Here's what I don't like though: It is basically The Martian with different characters and a slightly different story. When I was finished with it I was kind of reminded about how Dan Brown, after the success of The Da Vinci Code, he started cranking out novels that were essentially exactly the same story but with different characters and different settings. Unfortunately, that is what Artemis is. It follows the almost exact same formula that the Martian does in that it spend the entire book spitting stats and interesting tidbits about the inhospitable environment that is either moon or Mars at us and then there is a shit-ton of action all right at the end which comes at us, honestly, too fast compared to the rest of the book. In order to create tension throughout the story as a whole, there are a series of mini-missions that are completed along the way, some of which aren't really related to the overall story in any sort of meaningful way. Then at the end we shove every single character that we have encountered at all along the way into a "fast as you can" mission that takes place in 1/20th of the book.

This is exactly how The Martian went and I guess it works but I wasn't as receptive to it probably because of the fact that I had only just a few days prior finished reading Andy Weir's first book. Someone who spaces them out a bit might appreciate it more than I do.

It seems as though Andy wrote this book with film elements in mind because he almost certainly made more money off the blockbuster success of the Matt Damon film than he did from writing the book. This is likely why he didn't deviate from topic matters that he understands and knows he excels at, as well as why he didn't deviate from the writing style that made the original novel a success. The idea apparently worked because months before the book was even published the rights to the film was purchased for an undisclosed amount of money by 20th Century Studios.

I'm glad that I read it because it was easy to digest but then again I appreciate science fiction. I don't think you have to be in order to enjoy this because like I said, it is a page turner and there was only around 3 or 4 words in the entire thing whose meaning I had to look up.

If you have access to a library the likes which exist in North America, I would go and borrow this one. I wouldn't spend any money on it though. If you are going to do that, buy The Martian instead because it is a far better book.