Book Club March 2018- Artemis
By: Andy Weir
Published Year: 2017
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Pages: 305
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): Jazz Bashara is a criminal.
Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.
Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first.
What I thought
Being completely honest, when Denise picked this book I was a bit apprehensive. The summary did not appeal to me, so I felt myself putting off reading it a bit. I will happily admit, that my initial feelings were wrong and I’m glad that I was forced to read this book.
Artemis is a city on the moon. It is made up of aluminum bubbles that are connected by tunnels. Jazz has lived on Artemis for 20 years, since she was 6 years old, with her father. She has never known life on Earth. The population of people living on Artemis full time is pretty small, with the majority of people being tourists. Even though Jazz is a genius, she works as a smuggler. When offered the opportunity to work a job for one of her longtime customers, she finds herself in the middle of a situation a lot more dangerous than she originally expected.
As soon as I started reading this book, it reminded me of a grown up version of the Disney Channel Original Movie, Zenon Girl of the 21st Century. Honestly, if you have ever seen that movie, it is so similar. Both have feisty female characters who aren’t living up to their potential, who stumble upon a larger scheme, while originally only trying to serve themselves, and have to end up saving their city.
This book was a lot of fun and pretty easy to read. There are bits that get a little to scientific for my tastes, but I was appreciated them. I like when authors think out how certain aspects of their world would be possible. So, even though there were parts I didn’t understand and skimmed over, I appreciated them being there.
I definitely had a love/hate relationship with Jazz. I understood that at her ore she was a good person, but the whole “super genius with wasted potential” thing got a bit annoying. It seemed like she was a genius when it was convenient to the story, but then she was just so lazy at times. She also was not a good daughter, and her dad seemed so wonderful, so I felt bad for him. I did enjoy the secondary characters, so it was fun to see her interact with them more as the story went on.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and I would gladly read a sequel to see how Jazz and Artemis grow
What Book Club Thought
Everyone enjoyed the story. I think I actually had the most issues with it, but everyone finished the book and everyone liked it! We definitely haven’t had a book that we’ve all enjoyed in a while. One of the book club members agreed that it seemed like it was left open to a sequel.
.