Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code

[sawyl]

Onward to the third of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books with Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code.

Surviving the Russian mafia has changed Artemis Fowl Senior beyond all recognition, with his criminal personality giving way to a desire to put his family on the straight and narrow. And while Artemis Junior fully intends to follow suit, he can't quite bring himself to forego his last scheme: an attempt to extort money from billionaire industrialist Jon Spiro using fairy technology. But the shakedown goes wrong, leaving Butler, Artemis' bodyguard, critically injured and putting the C-Cube, a computer reverse engineered from fairy technology, into Spiro's grasping hands. But when Spiro discovers he can't use the cube without Artemis' unbreakable eternity code, he sends a couple of mob heavies to capture the boy genius.

The fairies, meanwhile, have been thrown into crisis by an unknown scan of their subterranean city. When Captain Holly Short is dispatched to investigate the cause, she finds Artemis Fowl and his now-lost C-Cube behind it. Reluctantly she agrees to team up with Artemis and Butler's sister Juliet for a raid on Spiro's fortress-like Chicago headquarters to recover the computer. Working in concert with Juliet, aided by Foley the centaur's latest inventions, and the almost supernatural bodily functions of Mulch Diggums, the most famously dwarven criminal in the underworld, Holly and Artemis carry out heist with more twists and turns than a mountain road.

The Eternity Code's cat-and-mouse game between Spiro and Artemis works well, with each working several moves ahead in an attempt to out-think the other. With Butler out of the action his impulsive sister Juliet, who may not be as flaky as she is in the first book but who still lacks her brother's focus, comes along to provide protection despite not having completed her training with the legendary Madame Ko. The book also marks a significant shift in Artemis' attitude to others: not only does he feel bad about going against his father's wishes, but he finally starts to realise that Holly, Foley, Mulch, and even Commander Julius Root, have actually become solid friends. Which makes the fairies' final decision to wipe his and Butler's memories of the Lower Elements all the more poignant.