Artemis

I liked this book. I didn't love it. I'd say closer to 3.5 stars than 4, but I like to give the benefit of the doubt. And after reading all the other reviews, I'm going to stick with 4. Furthermore, I'm going to continue to enjoy my life and not inject all this insane projection into books that don't deserve them. We live in [current year] where people get ostracized for portraying a different ethnicity or a transgender in a film or whatever other insane issue people are complaining about today. Girls that just want to have a pretty prom dress get called out for “cultural appropriation.”

So Andy Weir writes a novel that has a Saudi girl as the main character. One of her best friends is gay. Multiple highly influential and powerful people in the book are women, and non-white to boot. Hell, the KENYAN Space Agency is the main company. Kenya. Not the US. Not anywhere in Europe. Kenya. And back to Jazz, despite her father's religious teachings, she's sexually active (her body, her right, amirite?). She's also incredibly intelligent and literally reads new science for a couple of hours and seems to completely understand it. And she's spunky and self-reliant and nobody is going to tell her what she can or cannot do. Quite frankly, I've just listed off multiple personality and story traits that almost always annoy me about a book, because it comes off as nothing but virtue signalling. A “look at me, I care about diversity too!” characters and setting. Normally, I'd be the one 1-starring this because I hate the main character so much, and all the “progressives” would be telling me how misogynistic and white male privileged I am. Yet I liked Jazz, and I didn't care that she was female, or Saudi, or any of the things I listed. And here I am defending her to a bunch of people that would literally have their heads explode if they cast a white guy as Black Panther.

I think I know why. Because Andy Weir is a white male. So he obviously can't know how to write anything but a white male. I mean, let's forget the fact that authors have been writing wonderful characters of the opposite gender and differently nationalities, religions, and beliefs for centuries. Let's forget the fact that MANY of the female reviewers of this book (yes, I assumed their gender) have reviewed absolutely atrocious books (at least in terms of the female main characters) like Twilight and 50 Shades and any number of novels with a bare-chested man with flowing hair on the cover, and reviewed them HIGHER THAN THIS BOOK. Go ahead and verify that, I'll wait. Read the reviews too, but don't eat beforehand if you are squeamish. You know what I'm saying is true.

So which is it? Is a strong, diverse, independent, intelligent woman what you really want? Or is it a helpless, bumbling, sexually repressed klutz that finally meets that strong, virile man that sets them straight with a little discipline and tough (or is that rough?) love? Because you don't get to have it both ways.

Now, this isn't to say that people have to like the book. Honestly, it wasn't anywhere near as entertaining as The Martian for me. I'm a huge believer in everyone having their own opinions and shouldn't be called out for it. Like the one reviewer, if you don't like to read about welding, you don't like to read about welding. (There's honestly not anywhere near as much as the review would lead you to believe, but hey, you can think any welding is too much, and I'm ok with that.) But the number of people complaining about the main character not acting like a “real” person...that's why it's a freaking book!! I know there are probably a small number of people that want to read about someone doing normal everyday things, but most of us don't. Perhaps you would have liked a book from the perspective of one of the normal residents of Artemis who just experienced the events of this book, but had no idea why or how any of it happened? Me, I'd rather read about the extraordinary events of an extraordinary character. My life is super boring enough already, I don't need to read about it too. Of course Jazz is a freaking genius and precocious and even annoying at times; that's why she's the main character!

Next time I suggest that Andy Weir write a novel about a shirtless guy with flowing long hair, who meets a klutzy girl that only finds her true strength and spirit after much pining after the shirtless guy. Sure, I won't read it, but billions of women will, and they'll rate it higher than they did Artemis.