Artemis Fowl

I had heard good things about the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer, so I put them on my birthday wish list last year. As it happens, I got one. I actually read Artemis Fowl, the first book in the series, a couple of months ago. And it was good enough that I bought the next two, The Arctic Incident and The Eternity Code. This series is fun, extremely well written, and if not for the lack of real violence or dead and the repeated appearance by a character who uses flatualance to get things done you might mistake them for “adult” books.

The recommended reader level of these books is grades 5-7, but I’d recommend them to just about anyone. The plot runs like this… Artemis Fowl is an eleven year old boy genius, son to the head of a long standing crime family. His father, trying to do some legit business may have gotten himself killed, at the very least he’s gone missing in action. In the meantime, Artemis has been running the family business, along with the help of his bodyguard, Butler. Artemis stumbles upon fairies. It turns out they exist, but its not exactly like the story books. There are no leprechauns… instead, you’ve got the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance, LEP Recon. And other things are different too, but one thing remains, if you can trick them out of their gold, its yours to keep. The family funds have dried up, and Artemis puts into action a plan to win himself some fairy gold. The first book goes from there, and later books deal with Artemis and the People (as the fairies call themselves) and their ever crossing paths.

This series gets my gold seal of approval. Its a good, fast, fun read.