'Artemis' by Andy Weir
'Artemis' by Andy Weir

The good

  • Fun setting: a colony on the moon!

  • Lots of speculation about the future: How we might design domes as habitation shelters on the moon? How would we produce oxygen? What sort of economy would the moon have? What sort of legal system? How would space tourism work? And so on. There is plenty to nerd out too, but it doesn’t go nearly as deep as The Martian, which felt like a better balance.

  • Plenty of well-written, exciting action sequences, mostly focused around science, technology, and thinking quickly on your feet.

  • A few interesting heists / plots.

  • A few interesting characters and relationships.

  • I listened to the audiobook, which was read by Rosario Dawson, and she does a superb job. I think her performance added a lot to the story, papering over the main not-so-good part mentioned below.

The not so good

  • There’s a bit too much prepubescent boy humor in the book; lots of corny boob and sex jokes that feel out of place on the main character, an incredibly intelligent 26 year old smuggler. That said, this didn’t bother me nearly as much as other reviewers, in part as Rosario Dawson’s performance managed to salvage something even from this cheesy humor, and in part because I found these jokes easy to ignore and focus on the bigger story.

Rating: 4 stars