The beginning of Artemis Fowl lays out an incredibly rich, intelligent, independent supervillainous child with adult servants, and it is clear exactly how the book will end by the amount of main character worship in the first few pages. I found this book difficult to get into. I honestly thought about not reading the rest of it because I wasn’t sure I could make it through hearing any more about how everything always went the way this character wanted them to go. I wasn’t sure how anyone could make it through that crap.
Then I remembered that as a child, I used to watch Richie Rich cartoons. I honestly can’t tell you anything about any particular episode, but it all focuses around a very rich kid with adult servants, and everything always ends up all right for Richie Rich at the end of the episode. Considering how little I remember about it, I’m thinking it was probably a very predictable show, and maybe as a kid it was really fun to imagine having the kind of wealth and independence to do the kinds of things that Richie Rich did. So I decided to keep reading, knowing that it probably would have had more appeal to me as a kid than as an adult.
Much to my surprise, I started getting into the book. The main character worship toned down as things started going not quite as the main character planned, there was clever wordplay, secret codes to unravel, and running gags involving many of the secondary characters, all of which came together in a nice climax. Overall, I was glad to read the book. Even though the ending wasn’t a surprise, the journey took some turns I didn’t expect and was an entertaining read.
