readers won't be as impressed with this book as it is with itself
Written: Nov 14 '02
Product Rating:
Pros: combines technology and magic in a way not often seen in kids' books
Cons: awful writing; flat characters; dull plot; no stakes; predictable
The Bottom Line: An innovative approach: combining kids' sense of wonder with the integration of technology into their lives. But other than this one neat idea, the book is entirely intolerable.
In these post-Potter times, kids' fiction has been enjoying a wild and crazy boom in the magic department. The book “Artemis Fowl” is a new middle-grade fantasy novel that's been thrown about lately in circles where that sort of thing gets thrown about. And one of the big studios just secured the rights, so someone must think there’s money in them thar franchise options. Let’s take a look at the story.
It opens with a flash and a bang and a wallop of exposition, with a mildly stirring scene in which we are introduced to ARTEMIS FOWL and his butler named BUTLER. Artemis is twelve or something, and a pasty smarmy irritating brat. Butler is older and beefy, and has implicit trust and obedience in Artemis. It’s hard to tell which of these characters is more intolerable – Artemis is smugger than smug, but maybe Butler’s obedience to this jerk is even worse. Anyway, the two of them bully their way through Ho Chi Minh (that’s right – this book fancies itself an international caper, despite the city being populated entirely by stereotypes) and finally locate their quarry – a sickly fairy. They poison the fairy, then present her with an antidote in exchange for access to her top-secret book of fairy-type-secrets. From here, we enjoy an excitingly trendy journey of catchy pop-tech jargon: Artemis photographs the fairy's book’s pages with a digital camera, and the information is stored on some memory chips, and then gets transferred to a portable phone, then gets emailed somewhere, and winds up on a server. Okay, that’s neat, I guess. But this book is in love with showing off how suave it is. I mean really in love, like, it simply can’t stop showing off. Whee! Artemis is in Ho Chi Minh! Whee! He’s got a muscley bodyguard to push people around for him! Whee! He poisons the crippled fairy! Oooh, this kid is one tough cookie. Most of the descriptions of Artemis sound like PR copy: while the punk never really does anything that impressive, the narrator is completely smitten with him.
So anyway, one thing leads to another, and we wind up switching gears for a while to follow HOLLY, an underdog sort of soldier. She’s the first female member of an organization called LEPrecon (look, it’s a pun, oh ho ho ho ha ha ha ha). It seems that all of the supernatural organisms of Tolkien persuasion live underground, in a technologically superior dirt-based ecosystem. It’s mildly edgy. Mildly.
Holly’s got a generic angry Commanding Officer and a generic technical supervisor (a centaur named – I kid you not – FOALY). She’s sent to the surface to chase a runaway troll, and she has to resort to unorthodox measures to prevent civilian casualties. A standard 70’s cop drama scene ensues – why, you rebel leprechaun, I oughta have your badge, but that was mighty fine work back there, now get out of my office – that sort of thing. Long story short, Holly eventually gets captured by Artemis. He needs a hostage in order to bargain with the fairy-types, now that he’s decoded all of the secrets in the book. And you can decode them too – there’s a pictograph running across the bottom margin of every page. Basically, the author typed out a quickie message, stretched it across each page, and converted it all to his own made-up version of Zaph Dingbats. If, like me, you’re one of those kids who took delight in decoding Zaphcode when it first came out, you’ll take great delight in hunching over this book until 4 in the morning, muttering “wasp character equals A, squiggly line equals B,” until it yields up its undoubtedly fabulous mysteries. I personally can’t offer any insight to the puzzle, since stewing until 4 in the morning over Dingbats has taken its toll on my vision and patience. But, hey, bucko, I bet it says something really cool.
Anyway, back in the plot, Holly’s been kidnapped by that jerky Artemis. There’s a subplot about his mom being crazy and Artemis tearfully having to take care of her, and also his dad having mysteriously disappeared, and it all seems to add up to Artemis just wanting to be a normal boy with a normal life and a normal bodyguard. He sure had a funny way of going about it, if that’s his goal. The other LEPrecon folks are worried that a human has learned their secrets, and even more worried by Artemis’ clever sneaky ability to evade their attempts to regain the kidnapped Holly. The LEPrecons enlist the help of a convict, an expert at breaking and entering, to penetrate Artemis’ mansion. At this point, the book has borrowed from so many formulas we basically know how it’ll end – but wait, not all is lost.
Somewhere in all of this, we go through a couple scenes of technology-magic, in which a fairly enjoyable dichotomy emerges – the heroes (protagonists Artemis and Holly) of this universe know how to simultaneously manipulate both magic and technology. Kids, I think, will relate to and enjoy this idea. These days, kids have discovered that they can relate to each other emotionally through technology, and with less risk. Nowadays, having a conversation isn’t always as simple as writing a letter or calling someone up on the phone. Kids talk to each other through a medium of technology – watch, for example, how two kids sharing a computer or video game interact, or how they appropriate to their language what they see on the screen. Media’s become such a big part of kids’ lives, especially in the past ten years, that kids' conversations have become increasingly mediated. That’s not to say that a child can’t have a conversation without email and a cell phone, but since technology plays so significant a part in their emotional development, they are eager to use it in their own emotional discourse. To paraphrase: blah blah blah blah blah. Kids consume via technology, and kids utilize technology to communicate. And there’s a healthy balance of imagination and magic in this book to go along with it.
Here’s a book that combines kids’ ability to relate through media with their sense of wonder and unknown. Most good kids’ books have an element of exploration; the feeling, “hey, something completely unexpected and impossible is happening, and it’s up to me to figure out what’s going on.” That’s what kids like because that’s what’s going on in their lives. So Artemis Fowl (the book, not the character) has these vital elements that can probably be credited with its success.
I say that because, alas, there’s really not much else that you can credit for its success. The plot bumps along from here – there’s rescues, a couple mini-cliffhangers, some fighting and explosions (another way kids mediate their emotions), and ultimately everyone gets out to fight another day. Artemis’ big moment comes when he shows a moment of vulnerability, and his snotty exterior cracks slightly. Oh so slightly. Just a teeny tiny itsy bitsy amount. At this rate, if we’re ever going to grow to like this kid, it’s going to have to be an awfully long series. Meanwhile, the other characters and relationships add up to little more than their stock-types permit, and whatever was at stake here is utterly forgotten. There’s an engaging fantasy world that’s built in this book; what a shame that it’s populated with such dismal writing.
Artemis Fowl is a one of the greatest criminal minds the world has ever seen. He is heir to the Fowl family empire—a centuries old clan of internati...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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