Artemis Fowl [books]
Posted by N8 in artemis fowl, i'm working on my 5th grade reading level, N8, soft fantasy for kids for adults but not in a sexual way
In preping this review, I learned that the author, Eoin Colfer, has described his Artemis Fowl series as "Die Hard with faries." A nice tagline, but it immediately confused the hell out of me about the three books I just read. I mention the tagline not to knock the quality of the series but as an example of how an author sometimes understands least what is most compelling about their work for a reader. Especially in this growing category of Kids' Books For Adults.
There is much to recommend the Artemis Fowl series. It documents the criminal case files of a 13 year-old boy-genius underworld schemer who plots to extort gold from the Fairy kingdom, and the individual plots are interesting, well-paced, and enjoyable to move through. To the extent that I can even understand the Die Hard comparison, I think it must be based on the taking of hostages as a common plot point.
The Artemis Fowl series was written and released to surf the wake generated by the Harry Potter wave. J. K. Rowling and her Death-Eating horde of PR people demonstrated that millions of adults will buy books ostensibly written for children, especially if they are "epic" enough. To the extent that Colfer attempts to accomidate this perceived demand for Bigness, the series strains under the weight of that expectation. The novels suffer greatly under the weight of the superlatives used to describe everyone and everything, an unfortunate strain since the protagonist is a perfectly compelling character if he is allowed to have limitations. But the perceived need to accomplish, by fiat and repetition that Artemis Fowl is a genius's genius unfortunately does not make it so, particularly when his capabilities are stacked against what is actually happening in the story. I was reminded over and over again of every creative writing teacher's injunction to show rather than tell.
Where the series succeeds most is when it drops the larger than life struggle, focuses on the characterizations -- the "showing" through action -- and begins to clicks along smartly as the well plotted plot unfurls. That's something the Harry Potter series and many of the other series never accomplished: a plot that swept you along with it. [Ed note: I really wish I had the hours of my life back spent reading the fifth and weakest of those books where nothing happens that isn't bookended by 30 pages of Harry sulking.] Colfer succeeds admirably telling his stories when he forgets about telling the reader who to feel about the characters, and that success redeems the editorial choice to dramtically overstate the capacity of his primary character.
At the risk of Goldy Loxing the genre of Kid Books For Adults beyond what it is reasonable to expect for such fiction, I will continue to enjoy series like Artemis Fowl for its clever plotting and lightness while simultaneously hoping that they will ditch some of the unfortunate conventions of the Potter flagship and become less obviously dictated by the marketting needs of the publishers.
