Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code by Eoin Colfer

 A Spoiler Free Reread Review

Originally Posted on GoodReads July 8, 2022

 

You ever read a book and just start wanting to throw it at a wall? That’s how I felt halfway through The Eternity Code. I basically didn’t want to make this a DNF so I forced myself to finish. Now, I realize that I’m nowhere near the target demographic for this series, however, that doesn’t mean jack as I read and have read plenty of young adult books and had a grand old time with them. This was obviously not the case with The Eternity Code.

So, right off the bat, The Eternity Code annoyed me. We’ve got Artemis being rude to a server — which I absolutely hate both irl and in my fiction — Butler in an actual instance of real-world body-guarding in which he doesn’t act like an actual bodyguard, and Artemis being colossally stupid in two different aspects with his super new tech. So yeah, not off to a great start. Getting to The Lower Elements was a breath of fresh air. Just wish we’d had more of that and less of the rest of the book.

There are reasons heists are generally written without the blow-by-blow. Like, you find out what happened after the fact rather than going through everything in chronological order. I think The Eternity Code suffered from this blow-by-blow writing style. And it wasn’t even entertaining most of the time.

I’m really not sure exactly what purpose there is in hammering the reader over the head with the stupidity of Spiro’s goons. Just… why? Why do we have to spend any amount of time with them at all? I guess it’s supposed to be amusing, but it’s really not. I doubt I would have liked it even at a younger age. I literally cannot remember my thoughts from my first read, which was about 15 years ago… or so. Can’t exactly remember that either…

Anyway, I also have a beef with how Colfer wrote the body-guarding bits. I’m not really an expert in these things, but I have read other books in which there are bodyguards and their job is explained in detail so… Butler and Juliet are shit bodyguards. It was alright in the first book, cuz it all took place at Fowl Manor so Butler could act like a glorified thug. The second book was also okay cuz at least Butler did take his body-guarding seriously for the most part. However, literally the inciting incident had Butler acting like more of Artemis’ accomplice than his bodyguard. And Juliet… well, obviously she’s so bad at her not-job that her teacher and even Holly are like “you’re bad at this.” And don’t get me started with Spiro’s goons… all three of them.

Overall, some parts of this needed to be more realistic than they were to help with immersion, I think. Instead, my SOD was shattered and I spent most of The Eternity Code rolling my eyes and wishing for the end. Really hoping The Opal Deception is better.