Monday, June 8, 2020

Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code

Image credit: Book Depository
And so the high-flying and rollicking supernatural heist adventures continue this week with book three in Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series: The Eternity Code.

Favouring the heist genre even more than its predecessors, The Eternity Code chronicles Artemis’ construction of a fantastical super computer made from stolen fairy tech, which accidentally ends up in the hands of the maniacal megalomaniac Jon Spiro. The bad news for Artemis gets worse when the LEP arrive at his door demanding an explanation as to why their security sensors have ‘pinged’, alerting them of human detection topside. Artemis must now come up with his most ingenious plan yet in order to retrieve the stolen tech and save the Fairy world from human discovery.

This is the most thrilling and dramatic instalment of the Artemis stories yet. Taking the shape of a full-on proper heist novel, this is the book where Colfer further explores the intricacies and emotional makeup of his characters and assaults them with hardcore insta-grow fertiliser.
Image credit: HarperCollins Publishers
There are various segments or chapters within chapters that are excerpts from Artemis’ diary that properly give readers a glimpse into the true character of this lad. As a budding adolescent, now is the time that Artemis is emotionally impressionable -a hard, cold touch of realism coming into the fantastical mix- and it’s very interesting to see how Colfer depicts his main character’s emotional journey.

As I mentioned before, this is a much darker and more dramatic story that its predecessors -as most third instalments tend to be- and it’s fair to say, without spoilers, that the reader might just be put through a cycle in the emotional wringer. We’re not talking Harry Potter dramatic, but getting there.
All in all The Eternity Code is a great continuation of a fresh and fun young adult series, filled with action, suspense, drama, comedy, and some very satisfying emotional payoffs.

Author: Eoin Colfer, 2003

Published: Puffin Books, Australia Ltd, 2003

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