Hi Steemians!
Today I'm coming to you with yet another book review and this time, you better prepare yourselves for a rant. The book in question is the upcoming novel "Artemis" by Andy Weir, to be released November 14th. Andy Weir is also the author of "The Martian", which I've heard lots about but have not read yet - it does look quite invitingly down at me from my TBR shelf however.
(picture credit: Nerdist)
I was lucky enough to receive an Advanced Reader's Copy of this book from Netgalley and finished it a few days ago.
This book is set on the moon in a space town called Artemis and follows the main character, Jazz Bashara, a woman in her early twenties, who barely scrapes by on the money she earns smuggling contraband into the lunar city. One day she is given a job to sabotage the company who has monopolized the aluminium production on the moon and, as a byproduct, creates oxygen to keep the entire city alive. She accepts because she needs the money - and, unsurprisingly, shit hits the fan (extra points if you can infer some sort of oxygen pun from that).
Let's start with the good parts first.
The science. While it was a little much at times, I really could appreciate the knowledge that must have gone into writing this book - assuming everything is accurate (which a physics noob such as myself has no way of verifying). Everything that happens in Artemis or out in space - accidentally or otherwise - is explained in terms that even I could understand. As I said, sometimes I grew a bit bored of the lengthy passages detailing absolutely everything, but at its core it did make the novel seem a little bit more belieavable and more fun to read.
The setting. It's set on the moon. THE MOON. Usually settings in space make me super anxious and/or claustrophobic (even though that's sort of paradoxical), but I guess since at least some kind of planetary ground was involved for people to move around on it lessend the effects of that a little. This kind of ties in with the science part, but I did really enjoy reading about all the shenanigans on the moon and the extra little things necessary to make life there possible.
The plot. While not being uber-original or plot-twisty, it was fine and, well, fun. I had hoped for a little more though, from such an accredited author.
AND NOW. The negative(s).
- Jazz motherf* Bashara (are we allowed to curse on here? I'm still new.) She is probably the worst, THE WORST main character I have ever read about. She's also the narrator of the story which makes it essentially impossible to evade her throughout the entire book.
The biggest problem: she does not read like a real person, let alone a real woman. She always either acts overly sexual or overly aggressive when it doesn't seem to be called for. Random, unrelated sexual innuendos and jokes continuously pop up in otherwise action-packed, suspenseful scenes and ruin the mood. I'm really not that sensitive, but this book had me actively yelling at my phone for her to just stop.
Completely unnecessary lines were for example (keep in mind these are quotes from the ARC so I can't guarantee they're also in the finished version:
We both stripped down to our underwear. (What? I'm supposed to be demure around a gay guy?)
Dale handed me my jumpsuit. I put it on faster than I'd ever put on clothes before. Well... second fastest (my high school boyfriend's parents came home earlier than expected one day).
The biggest time sink was when I had to run and hide from the debris. I knew what I had to do - I just didn't like it. I'd have to blow the remaining two at the same time. Please don't quote that last sentence out of context.
Umm, can you not.
She has an ongoing petty feud with her former best friend that makes her seem like a 14-year-old, yet at the same time she's supposed to be this allround scientific genius who is instantly able to understand everything about anything... really?
In general her character seems to be a strange, messy caricature of what the author thinks women are like - her obsession with gossip, the "you stole my boyfriend so I hate you" thing, her "I'm so beautiful look at me" attitude she keeps bringing up. I'm not saying these traits are inherently not womanly. To me, they just seemed to be so arbitrarily assembled and flat out didn't make sense in the overall story. After all, Jazz is pretty much always caught up in a high-stakes situation with a relatively low success chance and her and/or other people's lives at stake. Considering that, her attitude and actions just didn't add up a lot of the times.
Plus, as I already said: Jazz is an asshole (she admits so herself and even seems proud of it?). Yet her ex-best friend is still somehow hell-bent on winning her back. Why would he work so hard on that? She never comes across as a particularly good friend; she's always snarky as hell and rude to people who are trying to help her.
Overall, consider me unimpressed.
I guess if you're a huge Andy Weir fan and don't mind the main character's personality being a weird conglomerate of what is stereotypically considered "female traits", then... go ahead and read this book. Otherwise, I would give it a pass.
Happy reading!
xx,
ivymuse