Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox

[sawyl]

On to book six of Eoin Colfer's series with Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox which, surprise surprise, involves both time travel and paradoxes — including one that means we end the book with twice as many super-villains as we started with.

Just when everything seems to be going well, Angelina Fowl is struck down by a fast-acting and incurable illness. Desperate to save his mother, Artemis calls in every favour he can, rapidly discovering that the only cure comes from an animal he personally helped to make extinct. With Holly Short on hand for help, Artemis travels back in time to stop his younger self from selling the rare lemur to a group of crazed madmen who specialise in exterminating entire species.

Arriving in the past, Artemis finds himself up against someone who is every bit as clever as he is but who lacks the conscience he has developed during his years of association with the Holly, Commander Root, and the rest of the fairies. Managing to finagle things to obtain a bit of extra assistance from Mulch Diggums, criminal dwarf extraordinaire, Artemis and Holly find themselves at an Extinctionist conference in Morocco where the death of the lemur is supposed to take centre stage.

At this point everything Artemis thinks he knows about the situation changes and he discovers that he isn't up against Damon Kronski, the crazy head of the Exinctionists whose desire to wipe out endangered species comes from a traumatic early encounter with a koala, but rather his actual nemesis is someone from his past; a fairy capable of coming with a plot clever enough to manipulate a teenage genius into travelling back in time for something.

Although Angelina's illness is a total mcguffin, resolved with the wave of a hand at the end of the book once it is no longer required, the time travel plot is entertaining. Not only does it show just how formidable the 10 year-old Artemis really was but it also abolishes much of the age difference between Holly and Artemis, allowing them to relate to each other as something closer to equals. The plot also serves as the launching point for a story arc that only resolves itself a couple of books later in The Last Guardian.