Review: Artemis Fowl

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was excited when my 7-year-old daughter brought this home from the library - finally something I wanted to read too! We could read it together (other than fables, fairy tails, and the like)! So I started reading it right away, and it was pretty good!

It's still a children's book, the plotting and characterization are fun, but not amazingly good; the premise is good, but somewhat childish (it's a book about Elves as international secret agents and a 12yo super-villain). It's probably not for a 7yo - my daughter ended not reading it, she will get back to it when she is older…. Although there isn't much violence or anything really bad, it has a lot of geographical, historical and social detail that are more accessible to older readers (and adults). It also has quite a bit of worldbuilding, and it's the kind of worldbuilding that I like - instead of inventing its own fantastical world from scratch, it uses traditional myths and legends (in this case, fairies, dwarves, goblins, trolls, etc…), and makes them real (with many twists). It feels like you're learning something (despite the changes and twists).

I was surprised that the protagonist is not really the protagonist - that is, the protagonist is not Artemis Fowl, but Holly Short, the Elf Secret Agent. The book makes no secret of this - Artemis is the villain, he refers to himself as the villain, he is definitely the villain of this story through-and-through. Usually when a story centers on a "villain", he is the anti-hero, or the lesser of two evils. The protagonist might be a "bad" guy (for example, a thief, like in Robin Hood or Ocean 11), but the "good" guys are way worse. But no, in this case, the good guys are definitely the good guys - Holly Short is a great character! And although Artemis is not really that bad, he is a brat, and is not likable at all!

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