“The Martian” and “Artemis” dual book review
hi everybody welcome back to my channel my name
is kayla stukins today i’m going to be doing my
fifth book review on my channel and it is actually
a dual review so i’m gonna be doing two books by
andy weir both the martian and artemis so these
books are both sci-fi novels so if you really
like science and you really love like drama
within your sci-fi novels these are definitely
books for you so firstly i’m going to be talking
about the martian so the martian is basically a
survival sci-fi story so basically this guy named
mark watney he is one of the first people to ever
be on the moon him and his crew are on a mars
expedition exploration mission and all of a sudden
it’s their sixth day on mars and this freak storm
happens and all of his crew books it and runs away
to flee mars but they think he’s dead so they
leave him there you know they have a strict
policy not to bring the body back because it’s too
heavy so they leave him there and but it turns out
he survived it so he is now on mars all alone
with little to no chance of survival and he has
to figure out some way to
enough for someone to come and get him and the
next people aren’t supposed to come for like years
so he has to figure out how to survive for years
on a lonely planet with like no nothing
you know so first off i want to talk about
the style of this book so the narrative style
is pretty cool he mark frequently has these
little logs that he calls just vlog entry and so
it’s different days and the soul is basically a
martian day which is 37 i think 36 minutes longer
than a normal day so he is telling about his
time on mars through these
log entries so it’s never in
i guess the present tense it’s always
he is accounting recounting his day
after the fact through these vlogs a few times
he’ll have audio logs where it’s happening as
he’s going about the events but most the time
it’s these logs which is a really cool way
to tell us exactly what day it is because we
know he has to survive for like a couple years
so it’s a great way to keep track of the days and
see it as it counts down next i want to talk about
mark watney as a character i think watney is one
of the most likable and funny characters in any
book that i’ve ever read it’s just something
about him the jokes he makes that just kind of
draws you to him it describes in the book how his
natural coping mechanism is humor and laughter so
when he’s dealing with something like this or when
he’s trying to calm down his crewmates back before
they left him he will crack a joke or you know
just laugh at something as a way to cope which
as someone whose coping mechanism is laughter i
thought that was really cool to see another thing
i think is cool about his character is that
he is not necessarily one of the best people
to have a great chance at surviving on mars
he’s literally a botanist mechanical engineer
i think it’s mechanical but he’s a botanist
engineer stuck on mars you know he knows how to
make plants but i think making him a botanist and
making him also an engineer is a great character
to have as well it kind of gives him an upper hand
because what are the things you need to survive on
mars or anywhere really you need oxygen you need
water and you need food what can a botanist do
make food what can an engineer do figure out some
sort of fancy equipment to get your oxygen and
get you water so like he is a very very smart and
intuitive character he is going through all these
complex chemical and just science reactions and a
lot of them he’s like i’ve never done this before
but this kind of makes sense so let’s try it out
he also uses everything around him to try and
survive he uses like bags he uses like his own
urine you know he uses anything around him that
he can that is gonna work he even makes like a
water purifier or something some sort of equipment
with another crewmate’s like um spacesuit like
he is smart and uses his resources very very well
because he’s on a foreign planet like what is he
gonna do if he dies up there like if he needs help
there’s no one there to help him he’s alone on
an entire planet i just think his character was
written very very well weir did a really good
job at making watney very very likable wadi is
so funny this is literally one of the only books
if maybe the only book i’ve ever openly laughed at
multiple times it was just the jokes were a little
cheesy sometimes but that’s kind of what makes it
funny it’s cause like he is alone on this planet
and you know he’s probably gonna die there’s a
big chance he might die so he’s just like cracking
jokes and there’s a lot of times where he’s like
hmm you know my chances of survival are really
going up right now you know maybe i should stop
being so weird in these vlogs because maybe
somebody’s actually going to see them and i’m
going to be alive to see that it’s just it’s very
funny and my next point i’m going to talk about
is the science of it all so this is obviously a
very science-driven sci-fi book there’s a lot of
a lot of science in here if you are a science
nerd this is a great book for you but if you
don’t necessarily like science i still think
you’re going to enjoy this book a lot the
science is for the most part understandable even
if you have no science background whatsoever
like the only knowledge of science i really
have is like there’s my regular elementary and
high school education but i still
could understand it because he made it
understandable in a way where you did maybe
didn’t understand the science but you understood
the stakes of what was going on also i loved
the reason why he was explaining all of this
because for a book filled with so much science you
can almost err on the side of info dumping whereas
you basically just tell tell tell tell tell and
it gets old listening to it over and over again
you’re like there’s too much information right now
but when you have a case like this book where he’s
trapped on mars and he’s making these audio logs
and just regular entry logs to his crewmates to
nasa to the people of earth it makes sense
for him to explain these processes because
like the ordinary people of earth who don’t know
science are not going to understand you know i
love that they had a justification for why he
was telling you all this science it wasn’t just
telling you for the point of telling you so
you understood the book which is true but there
was also a reason why he was telling you all of
this he describes these things in detail because
he knows that one day someone’s going to find
these records whether or not he lives or dies
someone’s gonna find them and have to go through
them and maybe release it to the public because
it’s such a big case like someone got stuck on
mars alive alone more than like that never happens
so he makes it makes sense which they also
have scenes like this back at nasa where
they’re trying to figure out how to get watney
back to the ground and they do use a lot of
scientific like jargon and really scientific
terms there but they also we wrote a character
in her name is annie she’s a reporter who asked
a bunch of questions cause how would she know
you know like she’s not a nasa nerd she doesn’t
know these scientific things so i think putting
a character in like her who doesn’t know what’s
going on so she can ask questions and thus give
the audience answers is very very smart thing to
do it wasn’t just a bunch of really really smart
nasa people in a room just talking about what
to do there was constantly someone who needed
to explain to them so that it was explained
to the audience as well you know if that
character wasn’t written in the books there
would be realistically no reason for them to
explain all the terms that nasa the nasa people
were explaining andy weir also did a very good
job at still keeping the suspense in the book even
if you didn’t necessarily understand the science
of it the majority of the books still kept you on
your toes because you’re wondering what’s going
to happen next you know as soon as something good
happens something bad happens you know the rover
crashes his food gets blown up you know this
that and the other the heel the seal breaks you
know it still kept you on your toes even if the
science was kind of lost on you and there were
some parts of science that i didn’t understand but
i still again understood the stakes of what was
going on and understand that that was serious
what just happened i also really enjoyed how
you know this was very much pitched as like a
solo man on mars trying to escape but they also
dealt with the politics of it all it was still
a survival novel but they talked about how nasa
and his crewmates and just the general population
of the world was responding to such an unforeseen
crisis like this you know how they were working
with other space stations and making deals
particularly the chinese space station who
gave up a really pricey piece of equipment
to in order to save watney you know an astronaut
that’s not even theirs and while they obviously
value human life they still wanted something out
of it you know they’re one of their astronauts
on the moon and i still wanted something
in return it also shows you know how they
deal with the increasing pressure of the public
and the public eye and how they view nasa after
a situation like this goes wrong there’s a
lot of scenes where we see annie or another
reporter giving a speech about what’s happening to
watney and you know even them having to withhold
certain pieces of information from the public in
order to you know make sure they can deal with it
without adding more drama to it and then
one of my favorites i guess my top favorite
way they showed this was with his crew you
know his crew left him behind on accident
and the higher ups at nasa decided not to tell
them that watney was still alive they didn’t
want them to have to deal with that while they
were coming back from mars you know they thought
it was too much they didn’t tell him and even
watney figured they would tell him and he was
rightly upset when i didn’t you know and then we
see the crew decide to spend like 500 more days
in space just to go back and get watney you know
because that’s their crew they don’t leave anybody
behind if they can help it and you know we get to
meet the crew’s families through like these video
call letter things which i thought was really cool
we get to see you know while they’re so supportive
of their loved ones being astronauts and going
out there to save people and they save their
crewmate they’re still a little mad because it’s
like you know you’re gonna be gone for 500 more
days which is understandable you know i like that
they had both sides of that and then for the end
i’m gonna go just a little bit into it he if he
read the book he was saved right they got him and
he came back and i just loved how the whole book
is him having to rely on himself like some scenes
he doesn’t have communication with nasa he has
no one to help him he has to kind of figure out
how to survive on his own this entire book and
then when it comes down to it at the very very
end of the book where he needs to be saved it’s
his crew that has to do it he has to rely on his
crew to pull him out of the spaceship and get
him back onto theirs you know what i mean the
very last part he’s been surviving on his own
this entire time he has to rely on someone else
which i thought was very cool i i’ve never really
read a sci-fi book before either before this book
i’ve read this book like three or four times it
is very very good i’ve read it in one sitting
once it’s it’s a very very good novel and even
though i know at the end he survives it still
gets you it gets me entertained
every single time i read it
i give this book a 5 out of 5. it is one of
my favorite novels ever if not my favorite
it is very very good and i recommend anyone to
read this book even if you’ve read it before read
it again you know what i mean all right so now
i’m going to go on to artemis also by andy weir
so this book is very different from the martian
if you like the martian i think you’ll enjoy
this book but if you’re expecting as good a
quality as the martian you’re just not going
to get it something i forgot to mention in the
martian but i want to show you with this as well
is the maps they put at the beginning of the
book so an artemis it has this map of like the
civilization that she’s living on it just to keep
you so they’re talking about these landmarks you
can actually see them there’s also that in the
martian as well which i thought was very cool
so you could go back and you know know where
they’re talking about and follow along his
journey to safety anyway so the story of artemis
is a story of this 26 year old girl named jazz
she lives in the first ever colony on the moon
called artemis and she is a porter which means
she basically delivers stuff to people’s doors
she’s like amazon but on the moon but she also
doubles as a smuggler which means she takes
in stolen contraband from earth and gets it to
people who buy it on the moon and she’s approached
by one of her regular clients and he’s basically
like hey i need you to do this for this job for me
it’s illegal but i need you to destroy like these
oxygen harvesters or something like that so that
i can basically take over one of the businesses
on the moon and get a lot of money and give you
a lot of money so so she’s doing this job because
she’s poor and she needs more money but then
along the way she kind of gets herself into this
war that’s kind of bigger than herself you know
the issue between the mafia so it’s kind of
yeah she gets into trouble with the mafia
so that’s fun um yeah space of the plot she
was like oh let me just go do my criminal
thing and then all of a sudden it’s
a war between people of artemis and the
mafia so yep let’s go so out of the gay i
think the world building is pretty good it really
describes the difference between each of the five
bubbles that are in artemis which if you
looked at these these are the five little
bubbles of like where people can live or work
it shows the divide between the upper and lower
classes of artemis you know jazz is so poor she
lives in a very very poor part of town and has
basically lived there her whole life since she
was six when she moved to artemis she makes the
majority of her living smuggling contraband into
the city to the really rich people in town which
in artemis it’s really no different than on earth
if you’re really rich you can basically get away
with anything like the higher-ups in this city
basically know that this whole smuggling thing
is going on but they don’t really care because
it’s bringing them revenue you know what i mean
and there’s also tourists from earth that come
in these rich people come in to earth to see
this lunar colony you know this high-tech
colony on the moon basically if you’re not rich
and you’re just living there then you are super
poor and you’re just trying to make a living
because you know they need a working class
there’s even a line in there that’s basically
like if you have to ask how much something is
then you can’t afford it it is very expensive
because it’s on the moon i just do wish there was
a little more world building in artemis for the
city itself you know in the martian you don’t
have to go too much into the world building of
mars because it’s just quite literally mars
there’s nothing too fantastical about it we
know we’ve all heard of mars whether if you don’t
know the landmarks you know what mars is and and
the martian the layout and the structure and the
gravity of mars is described in detail how it
works including real life names we can recognize
like pathfinder or suggerner it’s real life things
that actually existed whereas an artemis the story
takes place in this fictional colony on the moon
that needs to be fully developed and explained
to the reader because we have no idea what this
colony looks like or what anything similar
to that would look like whereas mars
we can have a semi-good idea it’s red and bear
you know you know it’s not like on earth where
you can have a book take place on earth in some
small town area where everyone kind of knows what
that’s like you know we’ve all seen a movie about
a small town or we’ve all lived in a small town we
can identify those certain places we’re on this
colony in the moon we need to have it explained
completely i just don’t think it was explained
enough for my taste in the book so now let’s talk
about jazz our main character so jazz is described
as this really tough doesn’t need anybody doesn’t
care about anybody type of person she doesn’t
trust many people you know because of what
kind of things happen between her friend dale and
then her father i mean her best friend is kevin
and he doesn’t even live on the moon you know he
lives on earth and they’re like pen pals but this
inability to trust people helps her stay alive
she’s very cautious around people and always has a
back-up plan in case something goes wrong there’s
a really good judge of character she can tell when
someone’s being shady especially when she had that
final confrontation with the leader of the colony
she kind of instantly knew something was up you
know at the end she’s basically worked alone her
entire life but in order to save her hometown
she has to trust people and trust dale again
trust her father again trust people other than
herself to get the job done because she can’t
do it alone which i thought was a great moment
of character development for her finally having
to trust somebody i thought it was well done i
would however have loved to see more of jazz’s
life as a smuggler and as a porter we only really
got to see it with trond who was the one who made
the proposition to her for this job but i would
have just loved to see more of her day-to-day life
doing this job you know because
that would have been a great way to
show the world a little more if she just had
it you had a couple chapters of her just doing
her normal job which there were some in
there but i just wanted a little more
just kind of get the context of this place
like as if you would have said she was just
a deliverer for amazon like on the earth we all
know what that looks like but i just wanted to
see how different it was for the moon and i wish
we would have dived just a little more into the
socioeconomic and like class divide and struggles
between the people on the moon and to see how
again how it’s different than on the earth again
it was in there but i just wanted a little more
you know what i’m saying she also has a pen pal
relationship like i said with this man named kevin
this boy named kevin her friend from earth which
shows scenes from her growing up scenes from how
her father stopped talking it just shows her
growing up on the moon which again gives a
little reason for her to be explaining this
complex science stuff to kevin because again
he doesn’t know what the moon is like so she
explains it to him through the letters there were
a couple issues i had with the writing of jazz i
thought in some areas of her character she wasn’t
she wasn’t written very well i mean you have
a person of color she’s a person of color
and you write in that she has to refer to someone
as hitler’s wet dream which as a person of color
maybe don’t do that that just felt like very
weird to me it just kind of didn’t sit right with
me i didn’t like that but okay also it felt like
her character was obviously you know written
by a white male you know which leads to a lot
of awkward moments between her and like other male
characters and scenes where jazz just doesn’t feel
like a real human being in some cases there was
a moment in the book where she tells the audience
that she’s 26 and i genuinely didn’t believe it
because she seemed like a teenager like she seemed
a lot younger than that it’s just she didn’t
really feel like she was written her age but
i liked her overall it was just there were certain
few issues i had with her and overall the science
in this book i think was a bit of a letdown from
the martian it just didn’t intrigue me as much
as martian did a lot of the science felt like
info dumping and it didn’t really make as much
sense to me as it did in the martian i think they
are both written pretty well however i feel like
there was more of a reason for the martian to go
into deep detail about these scientific processes
more so than in artemis because you know the
martian had these logs that watney was describing
and the whole book was basically those logs
whereas artemis only had these letters to kevin
every other chapter and like only in the beginning
of the book there’s a point where they stop
happening in the confrontation at the end around
page like 195 with the leader of this colony just
didn’t feel very authentic it felt very cheesy
like the dialogue felt very much like haha
i have been a bad guy all alongs haha tihi guess
what i’m the bad guy and it’s also a very overused
trope for the leader of the civilization or like
the civilization in the woods or they’re going to
go escape to actually being a bad guy it just felt
very cliche and he kind of sensed it was coming
like if you’re watching a movie like a ya movie
or like just a movie in general where the leader
of the city or the leader of the saviors in the
forest is played by a well-known or renowned actor
actress you almost always know they’re gonna be
bad and it’s just it’s i think it’s overused in
a lot of books and you know this the scene where
she’s kind of trying to rouse up the rest of
her team to you know go up against these bad guys
again just felt very cheesy the dialogue just felt
let me say it again say it with me a little
cheesy i think he’s much better at writing
just strict science but hey how can
i complain i can’t write books so
it was enjoyable also the whole plot point with
the mafia just kind of didn’t make much sense to
me like i understood why they had to go up against
these bad guys but it it just felt like it kind of
came out of nowhere and the ending with basically
just them agreeing to have a standoff we’re like i
won’t do anything to you if you don’t do anything
to me and the leader still stays in office even
though she tried to kill jazz the bad guys for
this company who are part of the mafia still
get to stay even though they try to kill jazz
and it’s just like we started where we ended
you know we ended where we started with jazz
poor again and still smuggling and still
being a porter and it’s just like what was the
point of the whole book why did i read this book
nothing was solved like it was sure like it was
the company was sold to tron’s daughter but like
what i was following jazz’s storyline and i i
was supposed to be enjoying her and connecting
to her and then her story didn’t even really go
anywhere she just learned to trust people more
which i guess is a very good plot development just
even still when she was like hugging her father at
the game she was like but don’t tell anybody i
hugged them because that would make me look weak
and it’s like what did she what was the character
development you know what i mean it just it just
felt like it lacked a little bit for me now for a
little comparison i know i’ve been comparing them
a little bit here and there but let’s be honest
nothing was ever going to compare to this book
you know this is one of the best books i’ve ever
read and the artemis was not ever going to even
come close i feel like if this book was released
on its own and not connected to andy weir’s name
and to the martian it would have i would have
enjoyed it a lot more just because i didn’t
have any expectations going into it like if it
would have been some unknown random writer that i
didn’t recognize the name it would have been a lot
more enjoyable so i had a lot of time in the book
disconnect myself from andy weir’s name and just
read it as a solo book which greatly benefited my
experience i think the plot of the martian was
a lot more enjoyable the martian was a story of
survival and ingenuity with a really wise and
smart character whose natural coping mechanism
was laughter which made it very enjoyable to
read artemis was kind of convoluted it was
kind of confusing it was a little boring at some
parts i had a female character who felt like it
was obviously written by a white man despite her
being a person of color but again i don’t think
any character is gonna be better than watney
he’s again like i said he’s one of the most
likable and funny characters i’ve ever read about
the jokes in artemis just don’t hit as well as in
the martian there’s some jokes in artemis that
just bordered on cringey that i just didn’t
didn’t really hit right like i didn’t laugh
at all in artemis where i laughed a ton
in the martian even after the third
fourth read it was still funny to me
you know artemis also kind of got caught up
in a lot of unfulfilled plot points about
the mafia which wasn’t it totally explained
how they dealt with the moon and stuff
the science in the martian is also a lot more
believable and interesting like i mentioned before
however there is something in both books that i
think was a little lacking which is the character
development for some of the smaller characters
like in the martian less character development for
his crewmates and people of nasa and his
family and all that and for artemis there’s
less character development for the people she
surrounds herself with which in the martian having
less character development makes a little more
sense because it’s a lone mission he’s on his own
so you don’t necessarily have to go more
into the character you focus so much of
the character development into wanting into
that one character and i think it balanced
well with not really knowing more so about
his people you still figured out a lot about
their characters but there was just not as
much which made more sense in the martian
whereas an artemis you know there were these
people that were actively a part of the story
line and were surrounded by her so i just felt
like there should be a little bit more character
character development for them as opposed to just
really smaller plot points you know you could
make them developed a little bit more in my
opinion they’re still developed well just again
i want some more so i gave artemis a three out
of five i still loved it it was a very good book
but just compared to the martian you know it’s not
gonna get five out of five or four out of five and
then just on its own i feel like it’s a 3.5 out of
five but on goodreads i put it as a three out of
five because you can’t have half stars so three
out of five and five out of five i really love
these books if you’re a science nerd i definitely
recommend reading these books if you’re gonna pick
just one cause you don’t wanna read two books i
understand read this one read this one if you’re
more more into the science aspect of it and you
really really really want to know just more about
science and that mars definitely do this one if
you’re looking for more of just a mystery how they
gonna solve it thriller yeah that kind of novel
this one got a book for both people you know so
do what you want read it don’t read it don’t care
if you’re watching this you’ve probably read it
but it’s okay okay bye thanks for watching today
i’ll see you in my next video next week i am doing
the seven and a half deaths of evelyn hardcastle i
believe by stuart turton i’ve read a couple pages
of it really enjoying it so far so i hope i have
a good review next week so bye everyone love you
you
