Artemis by Andy Weir
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Author Andy Weir tries to juggle too many balls here. But despite the lower lunar gravity (pun intended) he drops a lot of them.

The protagonist, Jazz, is basically a male engineer's fantasy of what a tough female protagonist would be like. An Arab Lara Croft if you will. While the author does establish that she is gifted, I quickly grew tired of her "You sound like my dad!" eye-roll moments. Not every 20-year old millennial needs to be a whiny (wo)man-child. Moments of genuine grace, even a few, go a long way in readers rooting for the protagonist.

There is (a lot of) multi-ethnic representation of characters in the story. Citizens of most races and nationalities get at least a passing mention. While the author does well to give his characters qualities that often differ from stereotypes, they come off as totally one dimensional. There is the strict/tough-love dad, the nerd longing for the heroine, the gay/platonic partner, the devious administrator, and the sleazy industrialist. But instead of the being all Americans, they are Arab, Ukrainian, American(?), Kenyan, and Norwegian respectively.

Like the The Martian, the villain in Artemis is the emptiness and vacuum of space. Jazz's improvised escape plans and a couple chase sequences are among the only engaging parts of the story.

Despite nailing the science, the author clearly struggled setting up the Artemis universe and writing from a point of view of a female protagonist. 4/5 for the effort. 1/5 for the novel.



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