Artemis
I adored Andy Weir's debut novel, The Martian. I probably am not alone on that. Of course, I was insanely excited to see what Andy Weir would do with his second novel. Sadly it was the dreaded sophomore slump. Artemis starts incredibly strong. You open up on the moon, in a colony called Artemis. We're introduced to Jazz, a young woman on her own, running a small smuggling operation. We learn that she's been estranged from her dad, dirt poor, and barely getting by.
She's a character that I think like Mark Watney in The Martian is easy to get behind. Sadly though Weir really struggled to develop her character. At some point, I turned from rooting for the stories protagonist Jazz to actively rooting against her. Weir does an atrocious job of making you care for her. She's not shades of gray, she's pretty much just a bad person. And unlike in many cases where she might try to right her wrongs, she just keeps going on doing terrible things.
Even when we got to the conclusion of Artemis I really wasn't sure what I wanted to happen. There's also a major feeling of deja vu in Artemis. A lot of the problem-solving Jazz does felt incredibly familiar to what Mark did in The Martian. Add in some disco and we'd have a match.
I wanted to love Artemis. The premise is great. The idea of a colony on the moon that allows people to come and visit and vacation there sounds like a dream. But poorly written characters, some cringe-worthy dialogue, and a convoluted plot that is laughably bad and it's hard for me to recommend this book at all. You're better off re-reading The Martian for the fourth time.
