Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl

I was in my early teens when I first met Artemis. It was in Latvian as I didn't read English then. It was approximetly the same time when I got acquinted with Harry Potter, and during first three books Artemis was my absolute favorite. Later both me and Harry grew older while Artemis stayed the same or even got stale, thus, my overall simpaties slowely switched.

More than 10 years later I returned to the saga as the last books of the series were never translated into Latvian, but I still hold the interest about how the adventures of the boy-schemer ended. Yes, now the physics of the book seems a bit less believable, but the witty language and lively characters are still here. And I still love Captain Short and Artemis for being something like positive role models for me.

For Captain Short it might be more obvious - an heroic, no-bullshit character, who does the right thing, when circumstances call for it, and a female - no pink nails, none of the ridiculous girly stuff the otherwithe reasonable female characters are attributed just because they are females.

For Artemis as the antihero it is less obvious at first, but it is still there - his nerdiness and antisociality is everything you need to make a teenager a miserable outcast, while, in the case of Artemis this is toped with massive amounts of self-confidence, determintion and ability to use his talants to achieve whatever he wants, thus, completely subverting the poor nerd's trope. Usually, if a character is a nerdy teenager, he has to do something to be accepted. Artemis doesn't - having his life under his control is not something he fights hard to achieve, it is something he has for granted. Being nerdy is not something he has to supress or find a workaround for, it is the one thing he is the best at, the one thing he uses to achieve everything. For a nerdy teenager myself it was a pleasant and unexpected change those years ago.