So. Opal Koboi is back and she’s trying once again to rule/end the world (I’m not sure she knows the difference any more).

The basic idea of Koboi ordering her younger self killed in order to set up a paradox / magical explosion… just to steal that energy and use it to activate some ancient Fairy doomsday spell? That’s pretty cool.

Best thing about the Artemis Fowl series? Artemis Fowl.

Missing through a large chunk of The Atlantis Complex? Artemis Fowl.

So… time travel.

After the events of The Lost Colony, it’s not entirely surprising that we’d get one where they’d outright go back and try to change the past. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t worried about it though.

After the events of the previous four novels, it was getting to the point where something new was going to have to happen in order to prevent the books from all feeling the same. As such, we get yet another child prodigy (a 12 year old French girl by the name of Minerva) and another class of Fairy that we’ve never heard of before: Demons.

The Demons are actually fairly interesting. Rather than move underground with the rest of the People, they instead decided to take their entire island out of the normal stream of time. Unfortunately, the spell they used is wearing out, threatening yet again to expose the Fairy world to humankind. Also, for some reason, most of their culture has been based around a terrible (intentionally) in world romance novel. It’s kind of hilarious to picture a giant horned Demon named Leon Abbot.

Opal Koboi is out of her coma and back for revenge–and no one even realizes it yet. She manages to frame Holly for murder, sending her to the only person left she knows she can trust: Artemis Fowl.

The only problem? After the memory wipe of the previous book, he cannot remember her.

All of that growth that Artemis went through in the Arctic Incident? His father and mother both back and home, each with a fairy-magic-inspired positive outlook on life? Doesn’t mean that he’s above trying to exploit fairy technology for a bit more gold…

Basically, he took the helmets and other gear he stole back in the first book and turned them into a computer. On top of that, he apparently encrypted it with something called an ‘Eternity Code.’ If I understand correctly, that basically means that Artemis wrote it in a completely differently language, which makes it impossible to crack. Except that only works well if it’s completely unrelated to any known language, which runs counter to the first book. So it goes.

Two intermixed plotlines this time around.

In one, Artemis gets news that his father might just be alive and being held by the Russian mafia (for the past two years?).

It’s been a while since I first read the Artemis Fowl series and I figure it’s about time to do a reread. I loved the books each previous time I read them. We’ll see how it goes this time around…

Short version? They’re still great.