'Twelve-year-old Artemis Fowl is a millionaire, a genius, and above all, a criminal mastermind. But even Artemis doesn't know what he's taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit. These aren't the fairies of bedtime stories—they're dangerous! Full of unexpected twists and turns, Artemis Fowl is a riveting, magical adventure.'
I'd heard about the Artemis Fowl books for a while, but had never gotten around to reading them despite managing to acquire the entire series. This was largely due to having worked in a charity shop before becoming too ill to work and the set coming in one day. When the upcoming film was announced, and with the set sitting on a shelf in my library, I decided that it was probably about time that I got round to actually reading one.
To be honest, I'm not really sure what I was expecting going into it, I knew that Artemis is supposed to be some kind of super villain kid, and that their are fairies and magical creatures, but I wasn't expecting such a small story.
I've found that a lot of stories that involve younger people discovering about a hidden world of magic or the supernatural tend to take on a grand tone to it. Harry is the chosen one in Harry Potter, and whilst we don't learn the significance and importance of what Valkyrie Cain will become in Skulduggery Pleasant she does help defeat a powerful evil. These books throw the heroes into grand adventure and high stakes, but that's not the case with Artemis Fowl.
This could be because in essence Artemis isn't the hero of this particular story, but it the bad guy, but I think it also came down to the fact that despite involving fairies, trolls, and dwarfs, this story was about kidnapping and ransom. There was no grand adventure or any epic revelations, it's just about a group of police officers trying to get one of their colleagues back from a kidnapper.
I think that this might be part of the reason why I didn't really feel like the book clicked with me at any point. There was nothing overtly wrong with it, and it was entertaining enough, but it never really drew me in or made me care about anyone. There was a point in the book where it looked like one of the main characters was dead, and I didn't really care. There was no shock or disappointment, no cheer as it was revealed they were okay; I was reading it with a sense of detachment.
This was one of the biggest issues for me, that I felt detached for the whole book. I didn't learn enough about the fairy folk or their world to find them interesting, and the stuff I did learn seemed to only ever be related to the specific things happening their and then. Because of this I didn't really care that their world might become exposed, because I didn't know what their world was already. I didn't every learn enough about Artemis to care about his plots either. Yes, he wants money to try and continue to get by with his rich lifestyle, and to perhaps find his father; but he came across as a device to start the plot rather than a real person.
The characters that felt the most real were the non-human ones, but thanks to the pace at which the story progressed we never got to spend enough time with them to see what they were really like. They were always reacting to things, and the readers never got a chance to see what they were like in anything but a 'work' scenario. I get that these characters are fairy cops, but they're also people. Show that a bit more. Show what Holly's thinking, about how being taken prisoner is effecting her; then I'll start to care if she makes it out or not.
There are a lot of books aimed at younger readers that are able to keep adults entertained too, many of which have gone on to become globally successful franchises. I have to be honest though, I don't see much of that on offer in Artemis Fowl. The book is fine, and it will certainly appeal to the intended age group, but I don't think it's got enough to it to grab people who come to it later in life. I understand that this might be something that changes with the series over time, as a lot of books seem to mature as they progress through a series, growing with their fans, so I'll probably give the second book a go and see if this is the case here.
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