A fairy tale with attitude

<div class="section0"><div class="Normal"><span style="" font-size:="">When Eoin Colfer''s Artemis Fowl saga burst onto bookshelves in 2002, its principal charm was its amoral antihero— the 12-year-old Artemis, an Irish criminal mastermind plotting to steal gold from the fairy people living underground. His thieving, hitech adventures provided an irreverent antidote to Harry Potter. Not for him the oldfashioned broomsticks of romantic England or the earnest burden of being the chosen one. His capers are more James Bond—full of stealth shuttles and invisible shields, globe-trotting plots, fairies who wield a mean gun and a tunnel dwarf whose mud-munching talents call for a more than willing suspension of disbelief. As Colfer said, "Rowling is like the Beatles, I''m like U2."</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">But all children''s fantasy has a deep moral core, by which the flawed hero must be redeemed. So it is that The Opal Deception (Puffin), the fourth in the cult series, could well have been sub-titled, "In which Artemis grows up and becomes a nicer person".</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">Artemis was already becoming more humane in Book 3, The Eternity Code, and the transition is now near-complete. He is sought out by his one-time nemesis and ace fairy police officer Holly Short, to help stop evil pixie Opal Koboi, who has broken out of prison to revenge herself on those who foiled her plans, and to try again to take over the world. But Artemis''s knowledge of the fairy people has been completely erased from his mind. This tangles the plot further but gives him plenty of opportunity to be his nasty, mercenary self before his memory returns and he discovers the comforts of friendship (fans must brace themselves for the death of a key character).</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">A change of heart is necessarily a sentimental affair. Thankfully, Artemis remains annoyingly vain and Colfin''s penchant for clever action flick one-liners is intact (‘Die Hard with fairies'', he once called the books'' successful marriage of mythology and video game). Most delightful of all are the idiosyncracies of the extras—Opal Koboi''s hysterical megalomania, her unenthusiastic, bumbling twin aides, and Mulch Diggum’s troll-flattening powers of flatulence, described in such detail as to guarantee the rapt, if giggly, attention of every schoolboy. And rack up a few more millions in sales.</span></div> </div>