Artemis Fowl The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer (2012-07-10)

This is another great book. I love the Artemis Fowl series, and this is another great installment. The ending is shocking, and yet so fulfilling, and leaves us at a horrible cliffhanger. Altogether a great book, and a great ending to a magnificent series.

This was a good conclusion to a great series - much better, in my opinion, than books 6 and 7, which didn't quite live up to the earlier novels. This is definitely one of the Artemis Fowl books that I can go back and reread in the future.

If you've read any of the other books, I highly recommend completing the series.

I just finished reading the final installment in Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series and though to myself, "Hey, why not add book reviews to my review site?" So here we are! These probably won't be as frequent as my other reviews, but I'll try not to let this section of the site stagnate too much.

I first started reading about the adventures of the teenage criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl, his trusty bodyguard Domovoi Butler, and the spunky LEP Captain Holly Short back in 2004 or so. I first picked up The Eternity Code, the third book in the series, and was hooked from the start. I went back and read through the first two and became a loyal follower of the series over the years. The first three or four books were excellent, and the next few, while not as good, were still quite enjoyable. But The Last Guardian...wow.

Colfer's writing is as top-notch as always; he never fails to make me laugh. His books always feel so smart, from the dialogue to the jokes made when the narrator is simply describing the situation. The pace is set in the first chapter and it doesn't slow down until the very last chapter, when just about everything is resolved in the best ways possible. My only complaint is that it seemed that Colfer was explaining things a lot of the time, particularly in the first half, and a lot of it, such as an ancient game of the People that involved chewing on worms, simply didn't need explaining; I would like to assume that the only people reading this book have read the previous 7 already. This complaint is small, though, because the rest of the book was everything I could have wished for.

I don't want to spoil anything (a spoiler I am not!), but I'll say this: we are given an excellent villain appropriate for the final book of the series, the characters that we all know and love all have their shining moments, and the plot is one of - if not the - best out of all eight books.

I wouldn't hesitate to say that this is my favorite book of the series. If you're a fan of Artemis Fowl, this book is a must-read! If you haven't read any of the young Artemis Fowl's adventures, you're missing out! Start from the beginning and read on...you won't regret it!

Rating: 10 (out of 10)

-Chad
[...]

P.S. - Goodbye, childhood.

I love the Artemis Fowl series in general, and was sad when I finished The Atlantis Complex. When I saw this book, however, I immediately bought it and read all night. I hope Eoin Colfer writes a sort of spin-off series to this, maybe about fairy and human life after (spoiler alert) Artemis was cloned, and maybe about the twins' life as they get older (ex. if they meddled with fairies, became criminal masterminds, etc.)

If you are interested in buying this book you have already read all the others and like me your going to buy it no matter what. Colfer does not fail to disappoint in his final installment of the Fowl Series and I loved it as much as the next. Fowl is genius and so is Colfer and he knows how to prove it to his readers

Opal, out to dominate the world again, manages to escape incarceration and disable both the human and fairy realms. Butler, Holly, and Artemis are left to save both worlds with only their wits and brute force.

Kudos to Eoin Colfer for another page turner with a surprise ending!

An incredibly gripping and worthy end to a wonderful series. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it's the last book in this outstanding story. I would highly recommend this book and its predecessors to anyone. This book series was my childhood, or at least a huge part of it, and I will miss it dearly.

Incredible. Fast pace, a great story line, flabbergasting characters and Colfer's excellent management of the action. The writing is extremely enjoyable too. I have no words left to express My sheer delight and surprise at such a well-thought and co-ordinated clímax. How can there be ONLY five Stars for a book like this? ;)

What happened to the annoyingly devious, parsimonious, and evil genius from the first book?! Well I must admit, Mr. Colfer knows how to write a book. Thanks for all the good times and to all the readers, know you will not be disappointed with this spectacular conclusion.

A funny, intelligent book - no surprise from this author. Superlative heroes and villains. A wonderful ending to a great series, my only reservation being that the characters stopped developing and the action overwhelmed the human interactions that have made the series so unique. I will miss you, genius.

Overall, this book is not my favorite. This series captured me when I read the first book as a kid with its dry humor and exciting originality (fairies with guns? Yes, please!), but it seems that after book three/four, the writing and plot just spiraled increasingly into a whirlpool of magical madness. Definitely fell down the rabbit hole with this one. It just seemed like plot twist after plot twist after plot twist, and then oh! Another plot twist. And maybe some insane characters. Couple of headache-inducing theories that I suppose only centaurs and a boy genius can fully understand/come up with. Then there's a dump of head shake-worthy similes and metaphors from who knows where. Quite a few loose ends regarding characters and plot points from previous books...yeah, you can see where I'm going with this.

I still love the first several books for their brilliance in simplicity. I kept reading because I enjoyed that and because this is one of the last book series from my childhood to finish up. Throughout practically all of this book, I was sort of losing hope that the series would end in any way that would be remotely fulfilling. Then there's a part in the last several dozen or so pages where Colfer ditches the genius theories, insane characters, and lethal magic. For a few pages, it's just the emotions and thoughts and fears of a character who's gotten so far into this mess that the character has no plausible way out of it and knows it. It was, to me, a very beautifully written section--or maybe I'm just a sucker for things like that. But in the end, despite all the insanity this series threw at its readers, I did enjoy the ending to this book and this series. It didn't give as much as it could have. It certainly wasn't perfect. But the last several dozen pages made it all worth it for me. Yes, even with the sort of ending it had, I still enjoyed it.

For new readers to this series, these books are a definite recommendation from me.

I might change the rating depending on what I think after the second read through, but I need to give it a few months. I know that I started to really enjoy the other books once I let them sit for a while, so we'll see how it is with this one!