Artemis Fowl, the young genius criminal

Book- Artemis Fowl
Author- Eoin Colfer

It's a cheap, entertaining and brilliant book for kids and adult alike.

I first stumbled upon this book in a bookstore and read the synopsis at the back cover. I was not interested at first but since it was cheap (only RM15.90, it's really rare to find books by foreign authors this cheap in Malaysia), I decided to give it a try.

I found the first 2 chapters of the book to be quite boring because I really don't understand what was happening. But as I read on, it's getting more and more interesting. The story is engaging and the characters are totally funny and adorable even when they were cursing in fairies language, the Gnommish.

Artemis Fowl tells a story about a 12-year-old boy who were planning to rob a bank, not just any bank, a fairies bank. Being a genius, he successfully discovered a whole unknown world of fairies. These fairies are far more advanced than humans and so it will only take a genius like him to come out with a flawless plan to separate the fairies from their precious gold. The results; a kidnapped fairy, a ransom, a pissed-off commander, an angry troll, an injured butler, a blue-rinse (you'll understand what it means once you read the book), and a whole lot of chaos. And also, a satisfied reader (which, of course, referring to me!).

What makes this book fun for me is the characters. The main characters like Artemis Fowl, Butler, Holly, Commander Root and Foaly always come out with funny and sarcastic dialogues. They have their own objectives and each characters descriptions helped me to shape their personality more. Even the minor characters are fun to read about.

Another thing that was fun about this book is that the references were everywhere. Even when you thought that that was the first time the character was introduced, the author had actually mentioned the character before in the early pages of the book. I would flipped back the pages and went, "Oh! So that guy was HIM!". I had fun doing that. :-P

Reading the book, I realized that although Artemis Fowl may seem like a cold criminal (amid a young one!), but he was actually a good person. He was like wearing an evil facade to mask the real him inside. And judging by the story, we will see the good side of him...eventually. For now, you have to buy this book to read all about his genius plans to get the fairies' gold. Will he succeed? Well, I'll leave you to find it out yourself.