A friend of mine has been trying to get me to read Artemis Fowl for literally years, and I finally conceded. Why did I wait so long to read this book? Why did I keep putting this off? Artemis Fowl is fantastic!
Artemis Fowl is a twelve-year-old super genius and the son of a ne’er do well age-old Irish crime family called the Fowls. His father has gone missing after losing a large quantity of the family fortune and his mother has locked herself in her bedroom in a storm of grief.
So Artemis devises to get his family’s fortune back….with fairy gold. I will not give away anything else, because the fun of this book is finding out what exactly that means. This is an absolutely hilarious romp of a book with great characters, excellent banter, and an on-fire plot that literally races itself to the finish line.
I think my favorite thing about this book is that Colfer’s faerie creatures actually do things! And not only do they do things, they’re ninety percent of the plot! If you’ve read several of my other spouting reviews about faerie fiction, you know that I have a serious issue with the faeries being convenient plot devices or un-described filler.
Colfer went beyond the usual and created not just characters, but a whole civilization and history for his faerie creatures. They have social constructs, technologies, flaws, desires, drive, and their own set of societal rules. Colfer creates this wonderful world and then forms his plot around the faeries own rules and regulations and their long history of trying not to deal with humans.
It’s a fun story, but there’s also depth, and while Colfer doesn’t reach Discworld levels of depth and social nuance, there’s enough in it to keep it all believable and have you guessing right up until his conclusion.
This was a great read, and I highly recommend it.
If I recall correctly from my own reading of these books (quite a few years ago now – and I never did get round to reading the last few in the series), the first book was good and showed a lot of promise, but the books got even better as the series went on, and the world-building and character work really got a chance to shine. It’s a really fun and creatively done YA series, I should probably actually get round to re-reading the first few and reading the final ones.
Im definitely looking forward to reading the rest of the series