Annie's Book Review

 Artemis Fowl

Author: Eoin Colfer
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Place and year of publication: New York, NY 2001
Number of pages: 280
Where I found the book: My home

Story Review

The book I read was Artemis Fowl. This story takes place in Ireland around 2001. A young boy named Artemis Fowl - the youngest of a long line of evil masterminds - and his trained body guard Butler have a keen interest in fairies and their rare gold. They decide to hunt down a fairy and take one hostage. Beneath the earth, fairies are free and have their own rules and technology but an elf named Holly Short had run out of magic and had to take the full moon ritual to regain it. Holly short was an elf working for the LEPrecon underground. But her job had taken over her life and she was filled with stress. Her over-demanding boss named Julius Root had too high of expectations and looked down on her because she was a girl. Holly had also caused life threatening accidents and was not trusted by her commanding officer. She tried all that she could to regain his trust and her good standing at her job.

When Holly went to regain her magic above ground, Artemis Fowl caught her and took her hostage. Holly Short was the unfortunate fairy who slipped into the hands of the evil boy Artemis Fowl. Artemis drugged the poor elf and she was forced to tell the secrets of the fairies and their underworld. They blackmailed her and tried to confuse her, but Holly's fellow LEPrecon soldiers and retrieval group tried all that they could to save Holly. In a battle of technology and fairy weaponry, the outcome that now every fairy dreaded was to be. The final battle takes place between the two world of the fairies and the humans, each fighting for rare fairy gold.

Christian Perspective

This book wasn’t written in a Christian perspective and there were no indications of a different religion used by the characters in the book. I think that since there was so much conflict, they could have turned to God to help them with their issues instead of using conflict to fix it. My personal thoughts on the religious point of view was that it involved magic and the conflict was the heart of the book. Without the conflict, the book would have been extremely boring.

My Thoughts

I chose this book because I am a huge fan of fantasy books. I thought the book was well written and had a lot of detail that made it better. It was interesting when the author described the workings of each of the two worlds. They existed in the same realm but had no knowledge of each other. It was a harmonious existence. Then, when the two worlds became aware of each other, they fell into conflict over the resources that one of the two held. 

This book reminds me that we are one culture in a world of many cultures. We often don't understand or are conscious of the differences between us and them. The message I came away with from Artemis Fowl is that we are a selfish people who are only concerned with our own well-being. When we focus only on ourselves and what we want and feel we need, we ignore the needs of others and can often cause great harm.

Usually the books I read I choose to fit my interests, so I don’t have any dislikes about the book. I liked the amount of detail that the author gave. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes action and enjoys reading fantasy because it provides a great deal of both of those things.