Painfully bad. The plot is lack luster, the characters have turned into boring cliche's, the dialog is uninteresting. Colfer is either phoning the books in at this point or it was ghost written. To make it even worse, Artemis Fowl begins the book by presenting an insanely stupid idea for preventing global warming that is so stupid I felt dumber for having heard it. I expected some of the characters to point out how bad it was, but everyone in the book agreed and thought it was going to save the world.The reader for the audio book version is still great though, even if the content of what he is reading is a lump of poo, as is the case here. I knew this series was hugely flawed from book 1. However, it had some kind of charm under the flaws which kept me reading, and 99% of that charm resided in the Holly/Artemis dynamic because, believe you me, Mulch Diggums had nothing to with it. I feel like this installment did a lot of baiting with that dynamic via Artemis' messed up head, only for the baiting to go nowhere. After a look at reviews of the next book, The Last Guardian -- I make a habit of spoiling myself on stories that are probably going to disappoint me -- I feel that way times ten. I do not need to read fiction to get strange, pointless, messed up endings. We all have more than enough of that in real life, and if I reeeally wanted more I would get a newspaper. It's a storyteller's job to take some kind of care of their audience and that means not abusing the characters said audience has come to care about; making those characters or their most important personal relationships irrelevant through poor writing is almost as bad as killing them off for no good reason.I guess The Time Paradox got my hopes up that the series would become better than its shaky origins. Instead, it becomes weaker, probably because somebody thought happy endings were cliché. I'm grateful for the fun I had. Time to move on.
What do You think about The Atlantis Complex (2010)?
This 2012 fantasy novel details the more of the exploits of Artemis Fowl. In this novel, Artemis develops a form of fairy OCD, and has to deal with a mysterious villain, (the brother of one of Artemis' old compatriots). Artemis has to work together with fairies, dwarves, and demons in order to help save the world. At the end, Artemis is able to use a form of magic and his own determination to overcome the fairy OCD. Once he did, he was able to formulate a plan to stop the villain, and Artemis escapes with the rest of his friends.
—holamiamigo
★★★½. All in all a very enjoyable read, but it wasn't quite the rip-roaring fun ride I'm accustomed to (and that might be partially attributable to my mood while I was reading). As always, I enjoyed the characters and the plot. There just wasn't anything particularly _new_ here to excite me. I didn't see the growth that I have seen in past novels, nor was I that intrigued by the plot. Don't get me wrong... I'm still on board with Artemis Fowl, but this read was a little bit less than what I'm used to.
—brittthestrange
it was hard to get into the book. 3.5 stars is what I would actually would rate this book.
—annagabriellexo
