The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is not Artemis Fowl at his best. Either as a character or the novel itself.

Artemis suffering from the Atalantis Complex was superior in every way to the Artemis we are presented with here.

I was so looking forward to his last foray being the ultimate of mind vs mind. Fowl vs his arch enemy. What did we get instead? Fowl spends the whole book acting as though he has an IQ of 50. Butler gets removed from the action all too easily; gone are his days of defeating trolls. Mulch has a starring role but even Holly doesn't really shine in this book. And No 1 is conveniently relocated so as not to cause problems with the plot.

In addition to this Colfer commits a major writing sin by introducing a plot mechanic purely to make his characters end up where he needs them to be. The mechanic comes does it's job and then goes again. Completely unnecessarily when he could have used any number of established characters to do that job at that part in the book. It's just not cricket and grates when you read it.

Artemis's brilliant solution was obvious from the start and if I thought of it so would have his nemesis. Holy is supposed to guess what the plan is and try to usurp Artemis but that would never have worked so the whole scene fails miserably except to get Holly out of Artemis' way.

The final twist is entirely too obvious as well.

The main plot is clever but slightly over complicated given what happens you never really feel like you're on the verge of anarchy.

It's an enjoyable read and if you like the series I would still advocate reading the book but for me it was a big disappointment.



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