A review by safekeeper
Artemis by Andy Weir

  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

2.5

JFC.  The Martian had some genuenely fascinating MacGuyverisms and some pretty good humour throughout, but with Artemis, Weir just wants to introduce you the reader to the finer points of welding.  That's before getting into the cardboard cut-out characters, incredibly stilted dialogue, ethnically diverse characters from all over Earth who all for some reason all talk and act like white American men, the incredibly xenophobic remark that there was no minimum age of consent on the Moon because the Moon was ethnically diverse and "no one cared who you slept with, as long as it was consensual" (WTF?), a patronizing narrator ("okay, you can stop pretending to know what a niqab is"), a female protagonist who sexualizes herself and her surroundings every chance they get, and a plot that makes no sense. Seriously, I don't know what went on in Weir's head when they came up with this moon logic, or how they managed to get it past the editors:

"No, you can't exile me from the Moon because there are no drugs on the Moon. See, there used to be people smuggling stuff to the Moon but I'm so good at my smuggling side job that I drove them all out of business, so now I'm the only smuggler on the Moon and I don't smuggle narcotics. So if you exile me, other smugglers will fill the vacuum and they will definitely smuggle drugs to the Moon."
--Andy Weir

(As a side note, this works. She gets to stay on the Moon.)

Which is right up there with the Moon sheriff going, 
"Okay, so I just caught you trying to sabotage the oxygen systems we all need to live, but I'm really lonely so I won't turn you in if you'll just be my friend. Deal?"
--Andy Weir

WTAF.