New Obsession Book Review:
Artemis Fowl
Artemis Fowl
I haven't done a book review in a long time and what better time than late at night when I should be doing homework? Neverthless, I will endeavor to be brief. Besides, it suffices to say that this is my book of the week, if not the month. I admit I was skeptical when my sister first told me about the Artemis Fowl series. Fairies and computers shouldn't mix in my mind. I normally find the combination of magic and technology to be rather vulgar. But I do like listening to audiobooks, and I'd run out of good ones, so I reserved Artemis Fowl from the library (as it is perpetually checked out, something I ought to have taken as a sign). Anyway, the first few pages (or rather minutes) didn't grab me particularly. Artemis seemed too perfect; it seemed the author was setting himself up for failure. How do you make someone relate to an evil genius after all? Certainly I like villains, but if Artemis had no flaws, then he wasn't human. Characters without flaws are also annoying since you never worry about their safety. Unfortunately flaws in evil geniuses normally involve insanity or some obsession with vengeance or world domination. Artemis seemed too well put together for any of these things. And he is. I soon came to appreciate the beauty of his character. He wasn't perfect. Just close enough to be absolutely awesome and make you wish you were him. The author manages to keep you in suspense while still keeping Artemis his confident self. By not revealing all of the 12 year old criminal mastermind's schemes, you have the sense that Artemis has a plan, and a good one, but cannot normally fathom what it is. This keeps Artemis in control but it also keeps readers interested in finding out what happens next. By the end I was rooting for his evil scheme to gain riches he didn't even need to succeed.
Then there's the Irish accent. I'm a sucker for Irish accents. I know, you're saying, Cherie, Artemis is only 12! That was another reason I didn't pick it up at first. In spite of Harry Potter, I still couldn't see myself enjoying a book where I couldn't have a good fictional crush. But that's in the first book. He was born in 1989 and is thus only 4 years younger than me, which makes him 17 and only one year away from adulthood. Besides, in my fantasy world he's old enough.
2 comments:
I have to say, I disagree--Artemis is a cool character, and I thought the book had some promise when I first started it, but I was quite disappointed.
I think that the trouble was that the author was not smart enough to pull off a reasonable evil genius.
Someone with Artemis's connection, wealth and intelligence could easily make hundreds of millions of dollars rather easily. Instead he spends a ludicrous amount of effort (and perhaps tens of millions) in an extremely risky venture with paltry rewards.
I can suspend disbelief enough to have fairies with computers, but you're telling me the most powerful force in the world can't beat a smart boy and a strong man?
I believe that if you want to write about someone extremely intelligent convincingly, you have to be quite intelligent yourself. Read Card's Ender's Game and his Bean Quartet, and be convinced that Card is very intelligent himself.
I'm willng to believe that Artemis already had most of the equipment needed to do this, so it didn't necessarily cost him much more than maybe a few plane tickets (possibly not even that since he may have his own personal jet). I even think that it's not so much the reward but more the compulsion to come up with dastardly deeds that motivates him since they said the Fowl family didn't like be legitimate and he clearly doesn't need the money. Besides, the fairies obviously aren't the most powerful force in the world since they have to live underground in fear of humans.
The only qualm I have with the story is that I spotted a major hole in the author's logic concerning escaping the time stop.
***SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T READ IT!***
He says that people can't change states naturally within the timestop. But if they fell asleep, they could escape. He knew this because his mother disappeared from her room after taking sleeping pills. UNFORTUNATELY, she took the pills BEFORE the timestop so she would have been asleep WHEN the time stop happened and thus there would have been no change of states. I was really disappointed when I spotted this, but it's a writing error and not a character flaw.
***END SPOILER***
But if not for that small consistency error, the story made sense to me. Besides, one reason I don't like the mix of sci-fi and fantasy is I don't care for hard core sci-fi--too sciency for me. I care about people, not computers. I've always had the impression that I wouldn't like Ender's Game because of this.
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