Book 32: The Arctic Incident (Artemis Fowl, Book 2) – Eoin Colfer

I struggled to limit my non-‘review’ commentary on the last book and luckily this is a pretty long series so I get to stretch it out over quite a few books.

I really want to say that I wish they make this series into films, however I don’t want them to ruin the series. It took me until the fifth Harry Potter movie to just let go of the fact that they were never going to stay true to the books. it was at that point that I realized they’d made a great first and fifth movies adaptation, and that the others were quite crap. Another example is Eragon, what is probably a mediocre novel, but the fact that it was written by a 16-year-old and it is a fascinating story, with two (and a third on the way) follow up novels in the cycle, they could’ve waited and made an amazing film, ESPECIALLY with John Malkovich signed on to play the bad guy!

So now onto the book. In book two of the Artemis Fowl series, Artemis is another year older and the enemies of both the LEP and Artemis have increased. We see a tenuous thread of continuation from the previous story and we see Artemis facing his first major emotional growth challenge, his father is alive. The Russian Mafia is now holding him hostage and demanding a ransom. However, this plot line is almost immediately derailed by a separate and if possible more devious plot line.

A rogue pixie, Opal Koboi, has teamed up with a disgraced commander of the LEP (Lower Elements Police) to stage a goblin rebellion to take over Haven City and to ultimately take over the Underworld. Needless to say there are a lot of fascinating characters introduced and we learn even more about the plethora of characters in Colfer’s created world.

Again I would fully recommend this book (the entire series really), but specifically I enjoy this one because it focuses a highlights one of the major focuses of the series, Artemis’ coming of age and his maturation. Although a genius, he truly struggles with his emotions and proper social interactions. He treats everyone as if they are young children and has very little respect for anyone other than he. His growth in this one novel is incredibly impressive and this is seen by the conversations he has with the school counselor at the beginning of the novel and at the end of the novel.

Clearly I’m getting a bit vague, because as usual, I’m not two books out from this book. I have got to get better about forcing myself to write/publish these things as soon as I finish the book. That’s one of the problems with a digital reader, you can just turn the page and the next book comes up!