The Opal Deception

I still love this book.

When I read the Artemis Fowl series as a kid, The Opal Deception stood out as my favorite. I just LOVE Opal as a villain. She’s cheesy and incompetent and overstuffed and I love it. In many ways, she reminds me of Yzma from The Emperor’s New Groove – filled with evil plots and intentions, but surrounded by unhelpful minions and plans that exceed her abilities. Basically, someone who is too smart for her own good and makes a mess of things.

The Opal Deception excels in other ways for me – for one, we get a partnership between Butler and Mulch, which just seems so unlikely and hilarious to me. These two characters could not be more different. This is something Eoin Colfer really excels at – his characters show more will usually split into teams, and they are always entertaining.

The other pairing, of course, is Artemis and Holly. Colfer manages to keep these two fresh by inserting outside elements in each book that affect their relationship. In The Eternity Code, Artemis and Holly were a well-polished team, but through most of The Opal Deception, Artemis is struggling to recover his memories of the faeries. We have two parallel plots here – Artemis’s struggle to realign himself and decide what path he is going to follow, and of course the whole stopping the villain thing. I like them both, and I think they go hand-in-hand very well, with Opal serving as a mirror to what Artemis may become.

It is also in The Opal Deception that we start to see the story growing up a little. The first three novels in this serious are middle grade, but here, we begin the slow descent into YA. The series takes the reader into Artemis’s late teens, and choices he makes in The Opal Deception and its following The Lost Colony shape the rest of the series.

Personally, I still really liked this one, but I can see why others may remain generally unimpressed. Taking a middle grade series into the YA world isn’t easy, and the transformative years can be particularly difficult to maintain. I appreciate the way Colfer took the plot a step up for this novel, and all the possibility implied to come at the ending. show less

In The Opal Deception, Artemis Fowl returns to the world of fairies and high-tech magic after the dangerous pixie genius Opal Koboi escapes from her coma and plots revenge. With Artemis’s memories of the fairy world wiped clean, Opal sets a trap meant to destroy both him and his former allies. When Commander Root is killed and Holly Short is framed, Artemis must recover his memories and team up once again with Holly, Butler, Foaly, and Mulch to stop Opal’s deadly plan. The book blends action, humor, fantasy, and espionage in a fast-paced race to save both the human and fairy worlds.

"Colfer keeps the Artemis Fowl series fresh in this latest addition by having Artemis start off fresh - literally. He's had all his fairy memories wiped and is back to his old bad self again. There are great parallels here to the adolescent search for identity, and I love the exploration of the extent to which our memories make us who we are. I really appreciate how Colfer infuses environmental values throughout. He also shows how many different talents are necessary to make things work, but his emphasis on the intellectual sends a nice message too. Once again, good for kids and adults, although a death early in the book means it may not be appropriate for the very youngest.[return][return]PLOT SPOILERS Artemis is convinced that his show more Dad's new straight path is misguided. He determines to keep his family in the crime world and is engaged in the theft of a famous painting of fairies when he and Butler are unexpectedly attacked. Opal Koboi has been faking a coma while her pixie accomplies have her clone grown and then switch it with her. With the LEP unaware she has escaped, she frames Holly for Root's death and sends her to rescue Artemis from a Bio-bomb. She arrives too late, but Butler's resourcefulness has saved them, though they are both knocked out. She takes Artemis with her, who awakes and still remembers nothing about fairies. Artemis has them head to Fowl Manor, where he knows Butler will be heading as well. Butler arrives to find that Mulch has escaped LEP custody just prior to being released and is waiting with the disk Artemis had given him prior to the memory wipe in the hopes that it will restore his memory. Butler views it and remembers everything. Fowl and Holly are captured by Opal and put in a death trap with trolls while she helps an earth-loving billionaire send a probe toward the fairy city Haven, which will destroy half of it and bring humanity into contact with fairies. They their deaths delay long enough for Mulch and Butler in a stolen LEP shuttle to arrive and rescue them. Artemis views Mulch's disk and recovers his memories. Holly decides they must take out Opal themselves, as trying to convince the LEP of Opal's escape and plot will take too long. They succeed in locating Opal's stealth shuttle and tricking her into blowing it up herself with the charges she had intended to use to aim the core probe at Haven. Opal's pixies are captured, and Opal, bereft of her fairy magic due to things she had done to make herself human, is caught a week later. Holly and company are cleared of charges by the LEP, but Holly decides she can't work under the new, horrific leadership. She and Mulch start a private investigator partnership. Artemis returns home determined to be a combination of his old and bad selves - he will try to use his schemes and theft to benefit humanity and will accept the embrace of his family again. He and Holly stay in contact." show less

Gebeurde weinig in dit boek. Goedkope amusement over het laten van winden, een onuitputbare bron van 'elfen-gadgets'.

Een redelijk leesbaar boek, maar niet in lijn van Eoin Colfer andere boeken. Airman was vele malen beter. Natuurlijk was dat op een ander soort publiek gericht.

De reden dat ik toch dit soort boeken lees, is dat je deze gedachtenloos kan zitten lezen, ergens in een verloren uur of zo.

Summary: Pixie Opal Koboi has been in a coma since her arrest. Her plans to lead a goblin revolt have failed, but a mere coma is not going to keep this power-mad super-genius down for long. She's plotting revenge against those she feels are responsible for her defeat: Lower Elements Police officers Holly Short and Julius Root, tech wiz centaur Foaly, and especially that pesky human child genius, Artemis Fowl. Only if they all band together once more will they have a hope of surviving Opal's schemes, but there's a problem: Artemis has been mind-wiped after his last encounter with the People. Can he accept the existence of fairies soon enough to stop the one that's trying to kill him?

Review: The Artemis Fowl books are typically a fun, show more entertaining diversion, and I enjoyed The Opal Deception just as much as I was expecting to. It's got the same action and adventure as previous books in the series (including a bank robbery scene that felt very Oceans 11-ish), and there are plenty of funny parts, but at the same time, Artemis is growing up, and the book is correspondingly more grown-up as well. (It's still straddling the border between mid-grade and YA, and Mulch Diggums is still around, so the fart jokes aren't entirely absent.) However, there are some serious consequences to decisions made in this book, and not every character gets out unscathed. It's also interesting to watch Artemis's development as a character, as he becomes less of an obnoxious prodigy and more self-reflective and mature.

There were two aspects of this book that didn't work for me. The first may be entirely my own fault, due to the fact that I listened to the entire book in two large chunks over less than 36 hours, but I felt like parts of the book, particularly the end, happened pretty fast, and that the final battle wasn't climactic enough to distinguish it from the action that had come before it, so I was left feeling a little bit like "...that's it?" Secondly, I had a hard time taking Opal Koboi seriously as a super-villain. I get that her constant self-aggrandizing posturing is supposed to make her a little ridiculous, but on the audiobook, Nathaniel Parker (who is typically really good at voices, particularly the various accents) read her with this weird pseudo-Asian lisp, which seemed incongruent with her status as a mad genius. Otherwise, though, this book did exactly what I expected it to: told a good, exciting story, and kept me amused and entertained. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: The Artemis Fowl series is a fun brain-candy read for anyone who wants their protagonists morally shady and their fairies technologically savvy. show less

Opal Koboi is out of her coma and back for revenge--and no one even realizes it yet. She manages to frame Holly for murder, sending her to the only person left she knows she can trust: Artemis Fowl.

The only problem? After the memory wipe of the previous book, he cannot remember her.

It's interesting to see how Artemis Fowl's character has changed with the experiences with the Fairies of the past few books and then again how his personality shifts when his memories are finally returned. In the end, he's still a villain, but starting to turn a bit Robin Hood, which is an interesting take.

I like Koboi as a villain. She's smart and more than a bit crazy.

Also, talk about raising the stakes... Root is dead?! That's a heck of a thing for a show more series mostly aimed at younger audiences. I applaud Colfer for doing it and making it stick, at least for the time being.

Speaking of moving the world forward, when all is said and done, Holly steps down from the LEP. It makes perfect sense from a character standpoint, but it's still quite a change. I'm curious to see where it can possibly go next. show less

Colfer keeps the Artemis Fowl series fresh in this latest addition by having Artemis start off fresh - literally. He's had all his fairy memories wiped and is back to his old bad self again. There are great parallels here to the adolescent search for identity, and I love the exploration of the extent to which our memories make us who we are. I really appreciate how Colfer infuses environmental values throughout. He also shows how many different talents are necessary to make things work, but his emphasis on the intellectual sends a nice message too. Once again, good for kids and adults, although a death early in the book means it may not be appropriate for the very youngest.

PLOT SPOILERS Artemis is convinced that his Dad's new straight show more path is misguided. He determines to keep his family in the crime world and is engaged in the theft of a famous painting of fairies when he and Butler are unexpectedly attacked. Opal Koboi has been faking a coma while her pixie accomplies have her clone grown and then switch it with her. With the LEP unaware she has escaped, she frames Holly for Root's death and sends her to rescue Artemis from a Bio-bomb. She arrives too late, but Butler's resourcefulness has saved them, though they are both knocked out. She takes Artemis with her, who awakes and still remembers nothing about fairies. Artemis has them head to Fowl Manor, where he knows Butler will be heading as well. Butler arrives to find that Mulch has escaped LEP custody just prior to being released and is waiting with the disk Artemis had given him prior to the memory wipe in the hopes that it will restore his memory. Butler views it and remembers everything. Fowl and Holly are captured by Opal and put in a death trap with trolls while she helps an earth-loving billionaire send a probe toward the fairy city Haven, which will destroy half of it and bring humanity into contact with fairies. They their deaths delay long enough for Mulch and Butler in a stolen LEP shuttle to arrive and rescue them. Artemis views Mulch's disk and recovers his memories. Holly decides they must take out Opal themselves, as trying to convince the LEP of Opal's escape and plot will take too long. They succeed in locating Opal's stealth shuttle and tricking her into blowing it up herself with the charges she had intended to use to aim the core probe at Haven. Opal's pixies are captured, and Opal, bereft of her fairy magic due to things she had done to make herself human, is caught a week later. Holly and company are cleared of charges by the LEP, but Holly decides she can't work under the new, horrific leadership. She and Mulch start a private investigator partnership. Artemis returns home determined to be a combination of his old and bad selves - he will try to use his schemes and theft to benefit humanity and will accept the embrace of his family again. He and Holly stay in contact. show less