Artemis by Andy Weir
Published 2017 · 305 pages · 83,875 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Science Fiction, Thriller & Suspense
How hard is Artemis to read?
Artemis scores 25 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 30 out of 100
- Weir uses engineering and chemistry terms for welding, airlocks, and smelting, but explains each in plain language. Jazz's slangy narration keeps the prose close to Beach Read in accessibility.
- Sentence structure: 27 out of 100
- Sentences are short, direct, and conversational, like a wisecracking first-person confession. Nothing demands the unpacking that The Great Gatsby's rhythmic prose sometimes does.
- Abstraction: 28 out of 100
- The story rests on concrete problems: pressure, oxygen, metal, money. Ideas about economics and class arise through plot rather than argument, near the level of The Housemaid's plot-driven narration.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Weir packs in physics, metallurgy, and lunar economics, and the heist relies on them. The facts are delivered one problem at a time, so the density stays manageable, a little above The Housemaid.
- Narrative indirection: 22 out of 100
- Jazz tells readers what she thinks and plans, and the heist logic is spelled out. The main inference is how much she leaves unsaid about her past and her motives.
- Symbolic density: 18 out of 100
- The domes, the welds, and the smuggled goods carry modest meaning, but the book is built around literal events. It is closer to Beach Read than to The Remains of the Day.
- Ironic distance: 24 out of 100
- Jazz's sarcasm creates humor, yet the narration is sincere about danger and loyalty. Readers do not need to decode a gap between what she says and what Weir means.
- Resolution withholding: 18 out of 100
- The caper ends with its central problems solved and the conspiracy answered. Beach Read's genre-expected ending is the closer comparison.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- The story is linear, told in Jazz's first-person voice with occasional emailed letters from her pen pal Kelvin that fill in her history. It is a little more varied than Beach Read's linear structure.
How Artemis is regarded
Artemis holds a literary regard score of 28 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.