When I was going through some books at home , I saw one which I never really noticed to have called Artemis Fowl. I read the blurb on the back of the book and I understood it was a fantasy book, one of my favourite book genres. The blurb intrigued me a lot because it mentioned fantastical creatures like fairies and farting dwarfs, and also about mind-blowing technology. These elements convinced me to choose this novel, considering also my tastes. As previously said, it is a fantasy book, like the ones that Eoin Colfer (the author of this novel and all the other Artemis Fowl ones) wrote throughout his career. In many other novels he wrote, he always included mythical creatures or in general non-existent things to represent his style of writing, which is usually composed by quite a lot of low-frequency words, especially to describe sometimes the uniqueness of many of his characters.
The story is set in a Vietnamese city called Ho Chi Minh, and the main characters are Artemis Fowl, his bodyguard Domovoi Butler and her smaller sister Julien Butler, who capture a fairy for a big ransom of gold called Holly Short, who is another main character of this novel. They all want to restore the fortune of the Fowl family. As I was reading the novel, I would get more and more involved with the characters through their attitudes, expressions and ideas. The characters speak about how they can restore the fortune of the Fowl family, also with the help of the fairy they kidnapped. The author makes them speak using a lot of low- frequency words, as I said previously, like “intoned”, “summoned” “resonating”; words which we don’t certainly hear very often. There are many words like these in the novel.
The quotes I particularly appreciated in this novel were for example: “If I win, I’m a prodigy. If I lose, then I’m crazy. That’s the way history is written.” Then: “The problem is that I know the textbook answers to any question you ask.” And “Stay back, human. You don’t know what you’re dealing with”. They made me reflect on Artemis’ personality traits. In these quotations, Artemis nearly always tends to emphasize the fact that he was a prodigy and a genius. He is twelve years old, but speaks like an old wise wizard who makes crazy spells. I was surprised by the knowledge he has at only twelve years of age.
I think that people who like fantasy books containing unrealistic things, suspense and mystery would like this book a lot because while reading it, it gives a sense of mysteriousness, and that something is still missing to “complete” the plot, and that, together with its unpredictable sense it gave me, it made me keep reading the novel with immense pleasure. I think people from my age and on can read it. Considering the author’s style of writing, there probably will be some words that many people might not know. In fact, sometimes I had to use the dictionary to find the meaning of some words. These words made me really understand the characters’ attitudes and feelings more depth. It is a marvelous book!
P.S. I tried to give out as few spoilers as I could.
Michele Year 9