Criminal masterminds. Machine guns. Leprechauns.
For some reason, I missed the train on the Artemis Fowl Express growing up. I don’t know why; my brother thought this book was the coolest thing since the Nerf gun, and it has a shiny cover, like a holographic Pokemon card. And I LOVED holographic Pokemon cards. This should have been a no-brainer for young Ashleigh.
(Then again, now that I think about it, maybe it was because my brother enjoyed this book so much that I never read it…you know, the typical petty need to be “different” from your twin. He liked it, so I didn’t. That happened a lot—it’s why I didn’t enjoy Ender’s Game, and never picked up Inkheart or The Thief Lord. This also might mean I have some deep-seeded competitive issues that will no doubt come up in therapy.)
That said, I’m not sure what I was expecting when I picked up this book, as my only reference was a smattering of reviews from middle school boys who gave it such high praise to say it was “cool”, “sweet”, and, from the bigger fans, “awesome”. What I got was a 10-year-old boy’s fever dream, filled with action, guns, and kleptomaniac farting dwarfs. Probably should have seen it coming.
In this first book from Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series, we meet the titular Artemis Fowl himself, a 12-year-old criminal mastermind and genius who wants to restore the Fowl name by scrounging up a couple million dollars. However, Artemis goes about this in an unusual fashion: tracking down the legendary gold of the leprechauns.
Of course, the leprechauns are real, and a part of an underground fairy colony known as the People. The phrase “leprechaun” is revealed to be derivative of the LEPRecon (Lower Elements Police Recon) division, which deals with tracking down fairies who go missing to preserve the secrets of their world. Their gold isn’t something you find at the end of a rainbow—instead, it’s a ransom reward for hostage fairies.
So, Artemis goes out to capture a fairy called Captain Holly Short, a member of the LEPRecon force herself. The majority of the book is spent detailing the hostage situation, as Artemis tries to negotiate a high enough ransom, Holly tries to escape, and the rest of the LEPRecon division tries to spring Holly from her captures. This is, of course, filled with plenty of magical hijinks, machine guns, and cheesy dialogue.
“Subtle” is not a word I would use to describe this book. It reads like an action film, naming specific weaponry that I’m positive made young boys weak at the knees at the mention of all the heavy artillery and “advanced” technology (“advanced” in quotes because most of the tech in the book involved video loops, audio bugs, and blowing up images to get a closer look. The future is now, it appears.) It’s also pretty violent for a young adult book, but in a way that anime is violent: everyone gets hurt to the point of death, and then magically recovers because screw-you-medicine-I-have-more-faces-to-punch.
Colfer’s writing also lacks the subtle finesse he might have been aiming for, as much of the narrative makes explicit call-outs on the human race (“Humans are so barbaric, how could they be so violent, look at your choices, YES I AM TALKING TO YOU TINY HUMAN WHO IS READING THIS BOOK”). A lot of the dialogue is pretty cheesy, but in a way that is audience-appropriate.
Bottom line? I liked this book okay, but definitely felt like I was not a part of the target audience (which is actually a good sign for me—whew, I’m not a 12-year-old boy after all!) I think a lot of people enjoy this book because of the memories they keep of it from when they first read it, and I’m glad that I at least know what they’re talking about now.
Ashleigh Reads 