Artemis Fowl

[catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Michelle Apostolides" 
<michelleapostolides at l...> wrote:
> Anyone read/reading this ? Can anyone tell me what they think of 
this,
> please ?
> 
> Michelle

I bought this book today out of curiosity.  I've read about a third 
of it so far, and I'm not even sure if I'm going to bother with the 
rest of it, as I found it very disappointing.

I actually agree with the negative reviews.  Far from being the "new 
Harry Potter" or whatever, it is rather a crude tale of a 12 year old 
criminal mastermind, who decides that a sure fire way of extorting 
money would be to kidnap a fairy.  One reviewer said that the book 
reads more like a screen play than a novel.  This is true.  The pace 
is very racy, with elaborate descriptions of the kind of 
technological gadgets one would find in the latest Mission Impossible 
movie.  The characterisations are slim and cliched, and what upset me 
the most was that rather than create a magical world of the fairy 
world, the fairy heroine is a member of the fairy equivalent of the 
FBI - gun toting, relying on technology, woman in a man's world, 
trying to prove herself with a gruff, sexist boss who constantly 
wants to move her into traffic control.  In other words, there is 
nothing really original about it.

>From what I have read so far, there is also no real demarkation 
between who the good guys and the bad guys are.  Holly bemoans the 
fact that "mud people" (the humans) are polluting the planet, but she 
and her kind rely on technology for almost everything and the world 
in which they live (underground) is overcrowded and polluted as well. 
I don't find anyone so far to be likeable or sympathetic, and this is 
probably the main reason I have lost interest.

It may do beter as a film - this seems to be the main purpose behind 
the novel - but I doubt it.

Catherine