Pentapod reviewed Artemis Fowl by Jean-François Ménard (Artemis Fowl (1))
Review of 'Artemis Fowl' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Ehhh.... this should probably be 2 stars, but I'm being generous because it's intended for kids. Quite young kids too, I'd say. Like, 8-10 seems about the humour level here. A good YA book can be enjoyed just as much by adults, but I don't think this is one of them. It's poorly written, and the humour is just so heavy-handed that it becomes both predictable and eye-rolling pretty quickly. Like, half the book depends on fart and poop jokes. OK, probably the 8 year olds will enjoy that. Personally I'm looking for a little more nuance in humour even from a YA book.
The plot itself is at least somewhat original. Artemis Fowl the Second, 12 year old evil genius, has discovered that fairies really do exist and can be extorted to gain large sums of gold, and so the book pits him against LEPrecon (the Reconaissance branch of …
Ehhh.... this should probably be 2 stars, but I'm being generous because it's intended for kids. Quite young kids too, I'd say. Like, 8-10 seems about the humour level here. A good YA book can be enjoyed just as much by adults, but I don't think this is one of them. It's poorly written, and the humour is just so heavy-handed that it becomes both predictable and eye-rolling pretty quickly. Like, half the book depends on fart and poop jokes. OK, probably the 8 year olds will enjoy that. Personally I'm looking for a little more nuance in humour even from a YA book.
The plot itself is at least somewhat original. Artemis Fowl the Second, 12 year old evil genius, has discovered that fairies really do exist and can be extorted to gain large sums of gold, and so the book pits him against LEPrecon (the Reconaissance branch of the Lower Elements Police), in particular struggling officer Holly Short, and grumpy Commander Root. Elves and dwarves and other mythical animals are given a fairly different reinterpretation, so that's kind of interesting at least.
Still, the humour was poop-level, the violence level was oddly a bit on the high side for a YA book, the rubbing-your-face-in-environmental-moralizing was way over the top, and there were irritating misogynistic elements sprinkled all through it. Probably won't bother with the sequels, and would recommend other books instead of this one to the younger readers in your life.
