Bronze Anthology Book Review

Artemis by Andy Weir (2017)

ISBN: 9780553448122

Overview
If you were to live on the moon, where would you sleep? What would you eat? How would you earn money? How would you breath? What would life be like… up there?

The author of the highly acclaimed book turned movie, The Martian, has returned and taken us back to outer space. Unlike The Martian, however, Artemis takes place on the moon and features a female protagonist. She is pulled into a conspiracy that threatens to kill her unless she thwarts the plan first. Artemis is the winner of the 2017 Goodreads Science Fiction Choice Awards.

In Three Words
Moon

Conspiracy

Greed

Overall Thoughts
When a story hooks you, a movie begins to play in your mind. The black text falls away and a picture of the scenery and the characters pushes to the front of your mind. Unfortunately, it was often the scenery and the characters in this story that fell away, while the black text stood out. This was especially true during the technical and scientific jargon and reasoning, which were both difficult to follow and tedious to understand.

Peppered throughout the story were emails between Jazz, the main character, and her earth-bound pen pal. These emails added little to the story and in the end, went nowhere. For that matter, the story went nowhere… after all the trials Jazz faced, she ended in the exact same position she began – the same physically, the same mentally, and the same emotionally.

Our Bronze Star Rating

It is a good read for anyone interested in considering all of the ramifications of a city on the moon, such as the living conditions or the economy. It is not a good read for anyone that feels that no amount of intelligence can compensate for a character that constantly hurls curses and throws sex in your face.

Overall, it is a three bronze star read; minus one star since it is not a book that I would re-read, because the only aspect of the story that was special or unique was the setting. It was a basic conspiracy story with the added twist of being set on the moon. If it had not been set on the moon, the book would have flopped. Minus a second star for lewdness of the main character; why spend all that time developing a remarkable setting and then fill it with an unrelatable and obscene main character?