Bonus Book April 2024: ‘Artemis’ by Andy Weir

BOOK DESCRIPTION

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.

Maude’s Book Club Questions For ‘Artemis’ by Andy Weir

• The main character ‘Jazz’ is either hailed as being very realistic and fun, or over-the-top and unrealistic. What are your thoughts? 

• Is Jazz an easy or difficult character to root for, given her morally grey yet ethically sound ventures? 

• Would you describe this book as good vs evil, anti-capitalism or anti-hero? 

• Do you think Andy Weir did a good job futurizing what the moon could be? 

• Would you visit Artemis? Did you find it appealing? 

• What did you think of Andy Weir’s plot device to use e-message penpalling to convey information? 

• Do you think Andy should have written a protag as a woman of colour? How did this help/hurt the book?

• Can you relate to Jazz’s pressured expectations of being more than she is, given her intelligence and brilliance? Did this character arc have enough of a pay off? 

• Do you enjoy the immense detail of the factually accurate science, or is it something you glossed over? 

• Explain the differences between Jazz talking through the science and tech aspects VS Ryland Grace from Project Hail Mary. (Maude’s thoughts: Ryland being a junior science teacher means that he’s open to explaining science in digestible ways that remains authentic) 

• What worked in this book? What didn’t? 

• For a ‘heist’ plot, did you think there were clear enough roles with everyone’s job within the heist? Did it feel enough like an ensemble, or was it Jazz’s story only? Would this have been better as a 3rd person story, instead of just from Jazz’s perspective? 

• Did you prefer a smaller, contained story, or would the book have benefited from expanding the characters and plot? 

• Do you think this book suffered from the shadow cast by Andy’s widely successful debut novel The Martian? Does reading order matter with how you rank Weir’s books?