Just Finished Rereading the First Three Artemis Fowl Books by Eoin Colfer

A few years ago I began reading Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series, which is composed of eight books and aimed at a younger reading audience...but that never stopped me.  Back then I got through the third book of the then-ongoing series and forgot about it...now that it's finished (the final book came out in 2012) I decided to revisit this often hilarious fantasy/sci-fi venture into human/fairy history and relations...

The star of Artemis Fowl is the title character, a precocious boy genius who not only follows in his father's unscrupulous ways but plans to become the greatest criminal mastermind the world has ever known.  Each book has him growing a bit older while hatching a new scheme.  Artemis lives on his family's estate in Ireland with his parents, his trusted bodyguard Butler, and Butler's young sister Juliet...who is also in training to become a bodyguard.  In the first book, simply titled Artemis Fowl, Artemis's father has been kidnapped in northern Russia.  Book number two, The Arctic Incident, our young hero's plot revolves around rescuing him.  Oh, before I go any further, I need to introduce a very crucial element of this series: the world of fairies and its most important characters...

Fairies, which call themselves simply "the people" and comprise all sorts of fantasy creatures while referring to us ordinary humans as "mud people", had been the original inhabitants of the world's surface land but were driven underground millennia ago by the humans.  They have a much more advanced society both technologically and magically, and they abide by a special book (which Artemis seeks in volume one) that lays out all of their laws and limitations.  The standout characters here are Holly Short and Foaly...the former is a daring, brave young female elf striving for advancement within that society's police force (the LEP) and...like us mud people...fighting against gender-based discrimination.  Foaly is a centaur who is a digital and technological super-genius...he and Artemis eventually grow a kind of mutual respect for each other's mental abilities.  Oh, and probably my favorite character is a dwarf by the name of Mulch Diggums, a petty criminal who gets around by burrowing underground at high speeds...how he manages this is pure comedy...

Book one, Artemis Fowl, has Artemis encountering fairies and how they respond to him.  Book two, The Arctic Incident, has Artemis on a voyage to rescue his father off the northern Siberian coast from the Russian mafia while a goblin rebellion seeks to overthrow the fairy society...with a couple from the latter manipulating the goblins (they also have criminal masterminds down there).  And book three, The Eternity Code, has Artemis dealing with an American crime boss who has stolen an invention of his...which he in turn had designed with stolen fairy technology.  The stakes are no less than the survival of the fairies.  No, I'm not going to tell what happens in these stories...besides, you'll enjoy reading them for yourself and the books are pretty short...

There is an enormous amount of humor in this series, but the storyline itself is serious as Artemis, who starts as a totally selfish, arrogant, and amoral eleven-year-old, grows through his two-year experiences in these first three books into someone who is more compassionate and humble.  Whether or not this positive development continues has a lot to do with what happens at the start of the next book, for The Eternity Code's ending...which I won't reveal...nevertheless hinted that Artemis may be due for a return to his old nefarious ways.  Well, since I plan to not stop until I finish all eight books this time around, I guess I'll discover the answer soon enough...