Having a colony on the moon has been a dream of humankind every since we had the capability of traveling to the moon. In Andy Weir’s Artemis, we get a glimpse of a complete society located on the moon. The characters, setting, and writing style kept me interested in the plot throughout the entire book.

Artemis is told from the point of view of Jazz Bashara, her colorful personality and friends keep the reader interested through winding roads of the moon society, Artemis. Jazz begins the story with an account of her EVA, a journey into space, with a leak in her EVA suit. After returning to Artemis, she begins complaining about her situation, how poor she is, how small her living space is, and how much her job sucks with very vulgar language. She takes the reader through her life as smuggling porter or a delivery person. Jazz vaguely talks about her social history, her hatred of an old friend for an unknown reason and her father being a very good welder. In the first part of this book, this is all Weir is willing to reveal about these characters, which kept me wanting to continue reading. After this, the action begins to pick up, Jazz runs into a billionaire conducting shady business with a visitor from Hong Kong. Weir reveals almost nothing about this topic until Jazz is pulled into the deal and hired to sabotage another company. Revealing anymore about the characters and story will spoil it, so I will leave to be read.  The characters reveal themselves over time creating characters that you want to learn and care about. These characters would have never been this interesting without the setting of Artemis.

Artemis’s economy, fragile state, guilds, and criminal underbelly create the plot and a different experience for the reader. There are many different groups in Artemis that control Artemis. At the top, there is the Administration and Law Enforcement who have reign over every other group in Artemis. The guilds are groups of workers that band together to create monopolies on their respective category. The independent workers are people who work but are not part of guilds. The criminal underbelly consists of smugglers, drug dealers, and other petty criminals. Each of these groups contributes to the economy of Artemis in different ways. Weir uses his genius to brings these groups together to fight a common enemy to their home, the Brazilian mafia. To keep their home from bankruptcy they must work together. The setting allows them to do this in an incredible fashion, with explosions, science, and the extreme vacuum of space. The setting creates the story and makes much more interesting than it would be on Earth. Not only does setting make this book interesting, but Weir’s writing style elevates the book in a different way.

Weir’s writing is very straightforward and descriptive creating a great feeling of realism. He does significant research behind the science of his novel. If it’s something that has not been invented yet or doesn't exist., he finds ways to make it incredibly believable: ”When you short out a 2.4 megawatt per hour battery, it gets very, very hot. Like extremely hot. And it’d be sitting in a sealed reservoir full of wax and compressed oxygen. And the reservoir was an airtight compartment.  Let me give you the math on that: Wax + oxygen = fire. Fire + confined volume = bomb”(Weir 108). Weir uses science in a funny way to give a very realistic feeling. Weir does not leave holes in the plot, he ties up every loose end. For example, the plot of this story was quite complicated, with many characters and aliases, but Wier found a way to widdle down the complication to something that became very easy to understand. Not only does Weir create great stories his dialog is incredibly smooth and emphasized well. He has his characters curse at the perfect time to relieve tension or to emphasize the severity of a situation. Weir gives me the feeling that I am in the moment that he is writing about.  

I thought that this book was phenomenal. The plot may have started slow, but things picked up quickly and it was hard to put down. This book, I believe, appeals to every aspect of a great novel, well written, fascinating, and funny. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys compelling fictional page-turners full of science, technology, logic, cliffhangers, mystery, and economics.