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Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl, Book 1)

Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl, Book 1)

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Put a plug in it.
Review: I'm suspicious of any book hyped these days as the next Harry Potter. Harry Potter, the phenomenon, is extraordinary, and by definition the extraordinary isn't going to happen a whole lot. So, while always bearing in mind that anything is possible, I approached Eoin Colfer's "Artemis Fowl" with some trepidation which, as it turns out, was justified.

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to admire here. Those technophile fairies with their in-your-face attitude are a refreshing contrast to the normal Disney fare. The plot is clever and fun, the save-the-earth message creditable. There's a nifty holographic dust jacket design, and additional encoded text to decipher at the footer of every page.

But the title character, in spite of a swell name, remains a bit of an enigma, and there's too much reliance on what my mother would call "potty humor."

Now there's nothing wrong with a good fart joke, and there's nothing wrong with playing to your target audience. Let's face it, kids like that kind of stuff. To a point it's harmless, and I laughed through much of the first third of the book. But Mr. Colfer crosses the admittedly nebulous line between playing to his young audience and pandering to them. As the novel progresses the startling preoccupation with bodily excreta and effluvia becomes apparent. It becomes unseemly and ultimately overbearing. One wishes that Mr. Colfer, as a presumed adult and a schoolteacher to boot, had opted for a slightly higher road.

It is clear from the denouement that this is the first entry in a proposed series, and there is promise here, lots of it. Let's just hope Mr. Colfer can be potty-trained.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This was a fantastic book!!
Review: I loved this book! It was written really well and the plot is fantastic. I really recommend it for everyone. I like the question it brought up about monsters and the humans as pollutants theme is great for green peeps.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fowl is not foul
Review: Harry Potter doesn't have half the brains that this 12-year-old mastermind does. Just because Harry has 4 books and a movie, and Artemis Fowl has 1 book, 1 book in progress, and a movie in progress, doesn't mean he's worse.
I greatly enjoyed this book. It is written well, the plot is definitly one to understand and the storyline is followable. The description also really helps.
Artemis Fowl is a twelve year old boy living in a European or Asian country. He's an incredibly sly boy, living in a mansion with his sick mother, and his father missing in action for the past couple of years. His servant, Butler, a weaponry attached to a muscular body, and a slim teenage sister (of Butler) set out with Artemis on a journey to prove that mythical creatures exist. All three of them get into a lot of trouble, including being caught in a time stop (if you read the book, you'll find out what that is). All of their adventures are twisted yet fun and exciting at the same time.

Overall, this book is a must read for any age. Well, maybe a little higher than 7 years old.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Couldn't get into it
Review: I bought this book because it came highly recommended to Harry Potter fans. From the brief description I read about it, I thought it sounded like some fun, light reading. I figured I'd zip though it. But I just couldn't get interested. How can they expect me to care about the main character when he's an obnoxious 12 year old millionaire? He's nasty to nearly everyone he meets. And he's also supposed to be a child genius, so he talks to everyone like they're stupid. It's far from enchanting, to say the least. The story follows Artemis as he attempts to take over the fairy world or something like that. To be honest, I could barely get through half of this book. Artemis is repellent. The real story in this book, though, isn't really about Artemis, it's about Holly, the fairy that he kidnaps. She's the real hero: smart, funny, and interesting. She almost makes reading about Artemis bearable!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Move over Harry - Come on down Artemis!
Review: Sorry Harry, your time in the limelight is over.
Artemis, a criminal mastermind, cloaked
in darkness and living in shadows captures
a fairy, and feels pretty good about himself...
until the fairies start not following the rules.
A classic adventure, memorable and definitely the
making of a favourite for many people.
Not for the faint-hearted.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Artemis Fowl... The Arctic Incident cometh...
Review: What first attracted me to Artemis Fowl was the cover (CUNNING publishers have a way of doing that), however I didn't even know about Artemis until I ventured into the Dimension Films site (a divsion of Miramax); talk about poor advertising. Before I give a review for this book I must say that I think Talk Miramax did a POOR job in marketing this book. Teribble. Tut. Tut. Tut. ALSO, the fact that they put "this book will become a blockbuster movie" on the back of the book, told me that they were only interested in money, and not the book as a whole. What kind of publisher TELLS everyone that there is goig to be a movie after the book (it turns people off to the book). Gee.

But, now for the review.

Artemis Fowl, the slinky agile 12-year-old with more brains than he could handle, comes from the imagination of a new author who would have surely rocketed to Harry Potter fame if not for Miramax's poor advertising skills. It's a book about a young boy, obsessed and money hungry, who uses tactical cleverness to subdue his tiny enemies the People (Lerprechauns to you). However, his plan seems to go aray when the People strike back with an array of weaponary that even a mother would fear to read to her child at night. BUT--that's not to say that Artemis Fowl isn't an outstanding effort by an author who certainly loves teaching, as well as creating chaos-driven action sequences and goggly funny-bone one-liners (kudos to you, Colfer). The book rating I give for Artemis Fowl is: 5 out of 5 stars; very original, very funny, very wild, warped and witty. Marketing by Miramax, I give: 0 out of 0 stars.

Hopefully, "Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident", will get the marketing it deserves when it hits the bookshelves. The author's effort in creating something spirited and new should be aided in such a way.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Where are the Parent's?
Review: I have read this book as a parent and also
for the kid in me who enjoy's an adventure.
Unfortunately this book is inappropriate for any age. The 12 year old boy may be a genius but he is the bad guy and show's no redeeming qualities. The violance is also at a pg13 level.Are parent's aware of what there children are reading? or are we finding this the acceptable entertainment?
I do not even give this a star but my review would not submit
unless I put something in there.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Fowl Review
Review: One 12 year old mastermind captures a fairy and orders a ransom. The fairies try to get the prisoner back from Artemis Fowl, the 12 year old. Don't let his age fool you, he is very, very smart. This book is great for all readers. It is filled with many different strange and unusual characters. I think you will enjoy reading this very imaginative book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It Ain't Harry Potter But So What!
Review: "Die Hard with fairies" was author Colfer's description, and it sure was accurate. I could tell from reading the dust jacket that this wasn't a tale about wizard boarding school and magical chums. So the analogy to Harry Potter is puzzling for me.
On its own merits this book is a firecracker of a read. My nephew particularly liked the burrowing fellow who had to let down the back flap of his trousers as he burrowed so as to pass through mud. The part about periodic explosive flatulance made him hysterical (hey - he's only 9 years old!). Yes, kids like digestive humor, and even the idea of fairies with guns.
What I and my 75 year old mother liked about the story was its quick pacing, sort of an Ian Fleming-style redux sans girlies, and the particularly sentimental end where you come to realize that even criminal masterminds love their mothers.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Hey...atleast the code was neat
Review: I've been on a faerie binge as of late, and when I saw and advertisement for this book on one of my nephews Scooby Doo videos I decided to check it out. I immediately found the coding along the bottom of each page a great idea and decoded as I read the book. I must say, the faeries in this book... entirely different from anything I've read, and though I know I am not an authority on these fantasy figures, I still found their depiction totally unbelievable and disturbing. Gun toting? And in a children's book? I also found the characterization lacking. Though each character had their littler personality point that made them different from each other they still seemed incomplete. I also saw no real motivation for Artemis's attack on the faeries. Because he was bored? Because he could? Its not like he needed the money. So would someone please help me out here? Something else that kind of bothered me about this book, who was the real main character? Sure the book may be titled Artemis Fowl, but it seemed to me that the faeries were the main attraction. After this whole question of 'Who is Artemis Fowl' started at the beginning of the book, I find that I'm not any closer to answering it by the end. Perhaps that is what sequels are for? I can't say that I wasn't entertained, but I found it lacking.


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