Artemis Fowl

For a younger audience, I think this book does quite well. Though, it is interesting that it's geared towards 10-13 year olds, but the vocabulary is a bit cumbersome for many of them. Despite this, it was good for my sixth grade unit on science fiction (and my students enjoyed it a lot).

It's kind of dull, though. It's highly predictable, with the events that could've been interesting being downgraded significantly. Colfer couldn't seem to decide whether or not he wanted to focus on the characters or the events, so he just... half-focused on both and wrote something that had an interesting concept but didn't execute it very well.

There's a lot of telling about the characters, which is an issue I have. This is particularly true of how intelligent Artemis is. Artemis is so smart. He's really smart. Butler just has to believe him because he's super smart. He can do anything. He's highly intelligent. He's a criminal mastermind. That's great, but you haven't explicitly shown me any of this in any of the events. He was really smart, so he figured out a helmet's structure. Good job.

There is also one spot I enjoy (Commander Root explaining to Holly why he's hard on her as having a component of sexism, as she's the first girl on Recon), but then this... is it. It loses a lot afterwards because it's not exactly revisited in any way (when Cudgeon blames her for helping Butler defeat the troll, it could've easily been brought back because -- and I say this as a woman who has experienced a lot of sexism -- that is precisely the moment where someone would've brought up the fact that she's a girl because it would've been her weak-willed nature that messed up the plans and not the plans themselves).

It's frustrating.