Sakyadhita BooKMarKs

I’m going to go out on a limb here. Let me get right to the point: This is a terrible book.

Harsh? Maybe, but that’s how it is. About the time Artemis Fowl hit the market, I heard it claimed that Eoin Colfer was 14 when he wrote it. On some simple checking of dates, the claim seems unlikely (he was 36 when it was published). But the book is so badly written that it’s believable. If this was fanfic, everyone would be pointing at the protagonist and shouting “Gary Stu! Gary Stu!” (If that doesn’t ring any bells, try looking up “Mary Sue” instead.) The descriptive style … well, what can one say about the descriptive style? Phil Foglio uses some very similar characterisations in his Myth books. (Compare Guido and Nunzio to Fowl’s butler, for example.) The difference is, Foglio is writing humorous — and occasionally risqué — parody (and doing a good job of it) … but Colfer is serious. And it just doesn’t work. The characters are cardboard and flat; the plot is predictable and stereotyped, and yet manages to strain even a teenager’s willing suspension of disbelief with its excesses of “But wait, there’s more.”

Granted, this is supposed to be “young adult” fiction. But so is Harry Potter; and the qualkity of writing and plot development in Harry Potter are so far above Artemis Fowl that there’s scarcely any comparision. I know if anyone had given me a copy of Artemis Fowl when I was a “young adult”, I’d have been insulted that they thought my reading level was so low.