Book Review: Artemis by Andy Weir

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BOOK review
Started on: 20 November 2017
Finished on: 12 December 2017

Artemis by Andy Weir

Title : Artemis
Author : Andy Weir
Publisher : Crown Publishing Group
Pages : 305 pages / 384 pages (e-book)
Year of Publication : 2017
Price : Rp 226,374 (https://www.bookdepository.com/)

Rating: 3/5

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"I live in Conrad Down 15, a grungy area fifteen floors underground in Conrad Bubble. If my neighborhood were wine, connoisseurs would describe it as 'shitty, with overtones of failure and poor life decisions.'"

Jazz Bashara has lived and grew up in Artemis, a city on the moon. Her father is a good and honest man who works as a welder; but Jazz is the complete opposite of him. She lives as a working class citizen who works as a porter and makes extra money on the side by smuggling contraband for rich people. Until one day, Jazz delivered a contraband for one of the richest man in Artemis: Trond Landvik—the CEO of Landvik Industries that focused on telecommunications. He gave Jazz an extremely tempting job offer for a million slugs, which will instantly get her out of debt and live the life she's always dreamed of. In the end, Jazz decided to take up the offer, not knowing what she's getting herself into.

"People will trust a reliable criminal more readily than a shady businessman."

"I had forty minutes left to fix the city's air or everyone would die. And it would be my fault."

image source: here. edited by me.

I was pretty sad when I finished this book because I wasn't able to love Artemis as much as I hoped I would. To be honest, I did start this book with a really high expectation—mostly because Andy Weir's first book, The Martian, is one of my favorite books in 2015. So when I heard Andy Weir is publishing a new book, I was highly anticipating its' release and wanted to start reading it right away. The story sets on Artemis—a city on the moon, which sounds very intriguing because I've never read any other fiction book that took place on the moon. Unfortunately, it's quite difficult for me to understand the world building. Even though there are some interesting facts about living on the moon but I don't see its' relevance to the storyline. There's also a lot of scientific information and weird names to take in; and somehow it's not as interesting as how Andy Weir presented all the scientific stuff in The Martian. I'm not really a science-person to begin with, so most of the information just flew over my head.

Moreover, the plot of the story was also unable to keep me interested. At some point, I was beginning to get confused and literally have no idea what's the point of everything that's going on. There are some scenes that are action-packed and fun to read (the reason why I still gave it a decent 3/5 star rating), but I still feel like the whole plot is a bit all over the place. Most of the time I just kept on reading with hope that the story will get better. Sadly, I did not get what I expected. The ending feels a bit overblown, for me personally at least. Although there's a part of the ending that I find really sweet and adorable; yet it wasn't able to win my heart enough.

No. I was a smuggler, not a saboteur. And something smelled off about the whole thing.
"I'm sorry, but this isn't my thing," I said. "You'll have to find someone else."
"I'll give you a million slugs."
"Deal."

The characters (especially the main character) is where I really put my expectations on, actually, because I love Mark Watney from The Martian a little too much. However, Jazz Bashara was not able to make me love her character. I guess she does have a similar sarcasm as Mark Watney, but to be honest, there are times when I find her remarks quite annoying. Some of them seems very childish and not appropriate during the situation at hand; which sometimes makes me roll my eyes at her dialogues 🙄. Besides Jazz, there are so many other characters involved; and at the start, I don't know which one to focus on. I thought Jazz's emails with Kelvin would reveal something important at the end; which I was completely wrong about. Several other characters that I thought would play a huge role, but actually they're just minor characters who don't contribute much to the plot.

One of the most interesting character for me is Martin Svoboda. He's a genius kind of guy who's extremely smart to the point he became a bit weird and eccentric 😂. Svoboda is a good and loyal friend to Jazz who's willing to help her anytime. Without him, I don't think Jazz would be able to pull off all the things that she did in this book. And I find Jazz's relationship with her father, Ammar Bashara, quite adorable and sweet in their own way. They have a pretty bad relationship in the past, but the ending wrapped it up nicely 😊💕

"And let me tell you: there's no one I hate more than teenage Jazz Bashara. That stupid bitch made every bad decision a stupid bitch could make. She's responsible for where I am today."

For me, Artemis is overall an 'okay' book. Would not say it's bad, because it does have some interesting elements that I've never read in other books before. But wouldn't say it's that great either, because there are definitely flaws in the characterization and storyline. One thing I also admire in this book is the fact that Jazz is a Saudi Arabian whose father is a devoted muslim. This is the kind of diversity that I love to see in books.

by.stefaniesugia♥ .