[For an updated response from when I re-read the book in 2016, click here.]
The Warlock is the fifth book (plus a short story) in The Secrets of the Immortal Nicolas Flamel series, and what a series it is. I thought I reviewed at least two of the books earlier in the series, but I’m now assuming my logic was that I would want to re-read them prior to each new novel’s release (and I should have).
It took a few chapters before I remembered enough details from the previous four novels to figure out what was happening, but I quickly jumped back in to the historical characters alive and still meddling in the affairs of the world.
Although the series is about Nicholas Flamel, it actually centers around Sophie and Josh a set of legendary twins who in the first book are awakened a world of Immortals, like Niccolo Machiavelli, Billy the Kid, Virginia Dare, Shakespeare and Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel, Next Generation and the Gods and Goddesses (I think there is another name but I can’t remember them) of Danu Talis.
So this is the most recent book in the Artemis Fowl series and I have to say it was a bit of a let down. Colfer does once again show off his mastery of random knowledge and creativity with the genius world of Artemis Fowl, but overall the book seemed rushed and somewhat tangential to the other novels. As I haven’t read the graphic novels or the additional material I’m not sure if that covers a lot of what I feel is missing, but it is still a bit of a random book.
So Colfer pumped some volume back into the series with The Lost Colony, but how does he keep it going? By bringing back a psychotic mastermind. This novel begins after the last novel ends (clearly) and picks up with Artemis who hasn’t aged at all, but is supposedly three years older than he was due to the final trip in time during the last novel and bringing Hydras back to the current plane of existence.
What better way to spice up a series than to throw in a new species and add a love interest? I can’t think of any! (This is only said with partial sarcasm and disdain.)
As readers begin the fourth book of the Artemis Fowl series we are in essence starting over again from Artemis’ perspective. After the mind wipe at the end of The Eternity Code I can imagine readers not knowing whether the series would continue. I hope that when Colfer wrote the book he actually questioned whether there would be additional adventures. As we begin this novel in the series, we wouldn’t know who would or would not appear with half the main cast receiving memory wipes and the other half forbidden to approach them.