Book Review: Artemis by Andy Weir

Artemis by Andy Weir
Narrator: Rosario Dawson
Published by Audible Studios on 11-14-17
Genres: Science-Fiction
Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
Format: Audiobook
Source: Purchased
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Overal Rating:

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.

I purchased this audiobook not long after it came out. The Martian had been one of my favorite books of the year and I was sure anything Andy Weir wrote was going to be magnificent. I was wrong.

Despite having owned this audiobook for a few years, I didn’t get to read it until now. I don’t have a good enough reason, I was busy listening to other audiobooks and I also didn’t want to compare it to the Martian. Waiting was a good call because this book was not good, and I would have been angry if I read it too soon after the Martian.

I had trouble getting into the story because I simply didn’t like Jazz. She is all the things I despite on another fellow human, and her main goal in life is becoming rich. She has some redeeming qualities but they are just not enough. I didn’t get hooked on the heist she decided to take part in. I found the whole concept complicated and uninteresting and there was nothing that got me going. Jazz is a despicable person and she is not even well written as a character. This is one of those occasions on why I don’t get why a male author dares to write a female male character if he doesn’t know how to do it. It’s clear Weir knows knowing about the female psyche, and wrote a 26-year-old woman like she were a 15-year-old boy, with sexist comments included and a terrible sense of humor that reminded me too much of Mark Watney. It worked on him because of the life-threatening situation he was in but it didn’t work very well for everyday Jazz. The rest of the characters are one-dimensional and there’s nothing that made any of them special in any way.

There’s a parallel narrative where young Jazz writes letters to a friend in Kenia. I expected something to come out of it, something that tied up both narratives towards the end, something special that cast a new light over the story, but alas, there was nothing. At least nothing good enough to add interest to the story. Totally skippable material.

I also had some issues with the writing itself. We’re reminded all the time about the reduced gravity on the Moon compared to Earth. Because you can jump so much on the Moon, things and people are much lighter, and you know, some things are just possible or easier because of the lower gravity on the Moon. On and on and on. We already know that the book is set on the Moon, you can tell us a couple of times about the effects the lower gravity has on things but now that it’s clear, please give me something else. Stop reminding me about the low gravity on the Moon because I got it, alright?

There’s some techy stuff towards the end, mainly about welding that I wasn’t too interested in. At which point, I was just too bored and I wanted the book to finish. I hate leaving a bad review, but The Martian created great expectations and I just can’t believe how anyone can say this is a well-written book. I hope Andy Weir will learn from his mistakes and will write another great book, I just don’t want to believe that The Martian was a fluke.

Rosario Dawson’s narration was okay. She did a good job bringing Jazz to life and some voices were very well thought out and interpreted. Sadly, some of the characters sounded exactly like Jazz, so some of the dialogs were a bit confusing.

 

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