artemis fowl book review

Okay, so recently I took the time to finish a series I had previously begun.  Hold on, because there's a story behind this...err...story.  I was waiting for the first dance of my Freshmen year--the Back in Black Dance--to begin.  Two hours I would wait at the school, bored numb, with nothing to do but hope that 6:00 would get there soon.  So, I figured, why not read a book?  Now, our school library (if it can rightly be called that) is small.  Not just small.  Diminutive.  Minuscule.  Tiny.  It is, no lie, four tiny bookshelves line up back-to-back.  You could measure it with a ruler.
But back to the tale:
Sitting there, like it had been waiting for me, was a stiff old book with a gold cover, font Times New Roman (my favorite, as you can see), paperback, and with that old-book smell that does for me what the smell of warm apple pie or fresh-baked cookies does for others.  I could tell it'd been waiting awhile, too, because of how rough and straight those aging pages were, sort of brownish-yellow, like they hadn't been out quite so much as they ought to.  The cover had two words I could read: Artemis Fowl.  I didn't know back then, but those would become two of my favorites.
I read the first book--it wasn't fantastic.  It wasn't amazing.  It was good, but in a odd, building-up sort of way.  Reading it, I knew that this story on it's own was nothing but an exposition, a beginning.  I was right.
I read the second book--I was amazing.  The story I had hoped for was the story I'd gotten.  To this day, The Arctic Incident outranks even Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters.  I mean, did Percy ever had to face down a horde of laser-shooting goblins, stop the planet from imploding, rescue his abducted father, ally himself with his worst enemies, and stop an underground revolution of fairies right under the nose of the rest of the world within the course of a week?  Why, no.  No, he did not.
I read the next four books and loved it.  Then I stopped reading--I don't even remember why.  And a few weeks ago, I picked up The Atlantis Complex, and followed it up with the final Artemis Fowl novel, The Last Guardian.
I can say without hesitation, this series gets a 10 out of 10.  It was consistently brilliant in both plot, theme, and characters, all of which were wonderful.  The protagonist is fantastic, and perhaps most importantly, undergoes some pretty amazing changes throughout the course of the story, going from a diabolical criminal mastermind to a reluctant hero.  All of the secondary characters, also, are hands-down awesome, with real personality and spunk to them.  Even the villains--heck, ESPECIALLY the villains--are marvelously wicked, cunning, and endearingly dastardly.  Making it all the more AWESOME when the good guys (mostly) come out on top.
Seriously, read these books.  They will probably change your life.

"Trust me.  I'm a genius"  --Artemis Fowl

"Push that button before I have to climb through that tower and push it with your face!" 

--LEP Recon Commander Julius Root

"I'm not threatening you.  I'm just informing you of police procedure.  If you continue to obstruct me, I remove  the obstruction, in this case you, and proceed onto the next command."  --Lower Elements Police Recon Officer Holly Short.

"I don't like lollipops."  --Artemis Fowl