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Artemis Fowl
Just read Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex - does anyone know this series? I got into them around the third book and rather inordinately love them. They're kids' lit - about the level of the middle Harry Potters - and are lightweight fluff, unabashed urban fantasy action-adventure romps ("Die Hard with fairies," according to the author); but had they existed when I was eleven they might've been my favorite books in the universe, and I can't help but enjoy the hell out of them now. Putting aside that I adore kids' books anyway, Artemis Fowl reads like Eoin Colfer's got a checklist of All of X-parrot's Buttons and is going down it one by one. We've got:
--A villain turned reluctant hero protagonist
--Who's also a twelfth-level-intellect-style ultra-supergenius (at 12 years old, no less)
--With a badass bodyguard/assistant/lackey who redefines loyalty (<333 Butler forever)
But wait, there's more! For no extra charge there's also:
--Male/female platonic friendship (okay, mostly platonic; and it's a credit to the relationships that I'm okay whichever way it turns out in the end)
--A bit of cute sibling dynamics
--A gang of misfits saving the world together on a regular basis
And that's just the set-up; once the plots get going there's plenty of h/c and presumed dead and friends saving one another. Plus there's nifty magic-science amalgamating and really stupid puns (Holly is an elven police officer, a member of the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance - in other words, she's a LEPRecon.) As well as a few gags - see dwarven flatuence and pretty much anything else about dwarf physiology - that could only be appreciated by a ten-year-old boy (and/or a Gintama fan :P).
The Atlantis Complex was as much fun as the rest of the series, and continues the button-smash tradition by screwing with the hero's sanity, which plot I obviously hate so much that I can't stop writing it :P Supposedly the next book will be the last in the series (SIIIGH)...don't want it to end, but can't wait for it!
--A villain turned reluctant hero protagonist
--Who's also a twelfth-level-intellect-style ultra-supergenius (at 12 years old, no less)
--With a badass bodyguard/assistant/lackey who redefines loyalty (<333 Butler forever)
But wait, there's more! For no extra charge there's also:
--Male/female platonic friendship (okay, mostly platonic; and it's a credit to the relationships that I'm okay whichever way it turns out in the end)
--A bit of cute sibling dynamics
--A gang of misfits saving the world together on a regular basis
And that's just the set-up; once the plots get going there's plenty of h/c and presumed dead and friends saving one another. Plus there's nifty magic-science amalgamating and really stupid puns (Holly is an elven police officer, a member of the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance - in other words, she's a LEPRecon.) As well as a few gags - see dwarven flatuence and pretty much anything else about dwarf physiology - that could only be appreciated by a ten-year-old boy (and/or a Gintama fan :P).
The Atlantis Complex was as much fun as the rest of the series, and continues the button-smash tradition by screwing with the hero's sanity, which plot I obviously hate so much that I can't stop writing it :P Supposedly the next book will be the last in the series (SIIIGH)...don't want it to end, but can't wait for it!
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Heh, yeah, I have people whose recs I avoid for just the same reason. But our tastes do tend to be more convergent (I'm really interested in looking up that Benjamin January series you've mentioned!) and yes, I rather love this series. Don't read it expecting great literature, but if you're looking for fun action-adventure fantasy...
The hero being an ass is...misleading? Artemis is a pre-adolescent->teenage supercriminal with a major Spock complex who is slowly growing up into a hero. So he's maybe not a likable guy at the start, but that's the whole point of his char. And "likable" here is relative - I loved him from the beginning, because he's just my sort of ice-cold ultra-rational asshole - and at 12 years old! only he's not a brat kid; "precocious" doesn't begin to cover it - but he's got a hidden heart from the beginning, and watching that grow is one of the major draws of the series.
But putting that aside, the series has two protagonists; despite the name it's as much Holly's story, and I'm very fond of her. And there's a bunch of other chars who I like as well, much of them in spite of themselves...okay, see, they do the nakama thing where they all squabble and don't seem to get along until it comes down to the wire, and then they all immediately dive in to help each other out. Which you know how much I'm a sucker for... ^^
no subject
And, ooh, I do hope you're able to get hold of the Benjamin January books; they punch my buttons really hard in a lot of ways -- odd-couple friendships, estranged family, awesome women (awesome EVERYONE, actually), h/c and daring rescues; they even have a central canon couple that I really love despite being braced to dislike them when the sexual attraction showed up. (They're just so unbearably cute together that I can't help myself ...)