Sunday, February 4, 2007

A Fowl Post

Alright, it’s time for another one of roboartemis’s literary gushes. I ran to the library today and checked out Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony, the 5th book in the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin (pronounced “Owen”) Colfer. Colfer is an excellent author of suspenseful, thrilling fantasy, so obviously he’s not American ^_^ (in fact, he’s Irish). For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it follows the various schemes and adventures of Artemis Fowl II, a genius criminal mastermind of the extremely rich persuasion. Oh, and he’s only 12 years old (at the beginning of the series anyway). In the first novel, we enter the universe of this series in the opening stages of what is to become Artemis’s first of many magical capers. With a mind set that only a child could posses, he decides to help boost the family fortunes by stealing gold from fairies. Of course, fairies are not exactly the traditional folk of European legend. They (dwarfs, sprites, pixies, centaurs, folk-lore style elves, etc) live in a society full of highly advanced technology that allows them to stay hidden from humankind, who drove them underground ten thousand years ago. Most fairy races do, however, possess magic as well. One of the greatest parts of this series is Colfer’s liberal doses of humor and puns. For example, the fairy police force is called the Lower Elements Police, or LEP for short, and one of the main characters is a member of the LEPrecon squad (she also makes mention of how the squad uniforms several hundred years ago used to involve green knickerbockers ^_^). And there is a fairy psychologist by the name of Dr. J. Argon (double ^_^). The books are also sprinkled with delightful one-liners. Very giggle-worthy. And of course, you can’t help but root for the arrogant and apparently almost amoral anti-hero Artemis (although that fact that he shares the name of my favorite Greek goddess probably has something to do with it ^_^). As enjoyable, and probably vindicated, as the fairy characters are, their condescending view of humanity makes you want them to suffer from a proverbial sucker-punch. Of course, all this humor would be wasted if Colfer’s characters and situations didn’t live-up to it, but he does indeed know his craft. By the 5th book, the universe was so well established that I at one point though to myself, “You know, it would be so likely for [blank] to happen,” and later on, it did. After that I thought, “It would be very much in character for Artemis if [same blank] was really a trick,” and it was. Not to say that the books are entirely predictable. Usually it’s only small things. The kinds of things that help you realize that Colfer has a certain style, and that his characters have personality. A lot of parts are rather Ocean’s Eleven/Italian Job-esque, where you don’t know all the pieces to the puzzle until everything falls into place (and preferably a place full of delightful puns ^_^). -Quotations of the day- “Artemis Fowl Senior had bought a cargo ship, stocked it with 250 thousand cans of cola, and set course for Murmansk in Northern Russia, where he had arranged a business deal that could prove profitable for decades to come. Unfortunately, the Russian Mafiya decided they did not want an Irish tycoon cutting himself a slice of their market, and sank the Fowl Star in the Bay of Kola.” “Artemis avoided other teenagers and resented being sent to school, preferring to spend his time plotting his next crime. So, even though his involvement with the goblin uprising during this year was to be traumatic, terrifying, and dangerous, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to him. At least he spent some time outdoors, and got to meet some new people. It’s a pity most of them were trying to kill him.” “When would people learn that a mind such as his could not be dissected? He himself had read more psychology textbooks than the counselor. He had even contributed an article to The Psychologists’ Journal, under the pseudonym Dr. F. Roy Dean Schlippe.” -Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident- “Artemis focused on the important things he had left behind, and realized that they were all people. Mother, Father, Butler, Foaly, and Mulch. Possessions that he had believed important now meant nothing. Except maybe his collection of Impressionist art.” -Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony-(as I said, puns and one-liners ^_^)

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