Artemis Fowl (novel)

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Title Artemis Fowl

Author	Eoin Colfer
Country	Eire
Language	English
Series	Artemis Fowl series
Genre(s)	Children's, Fantasy novel
Publisher	Viking Press
Released	2001
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 067091133X
Followed by	Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident

Artemis Fowl is the first book in the Artemis Fowl series.

[edit] Plot summary

Artemis Fowl II is the twelve year old son of a European crime lord, Artemis Senior. After his father disappears in the aftermath of a disastrous business affair in Russia, Artemis takes it upon himself to rebuild his family fortune.

Along with his friend and bodyguard Butler, Artemis believes he has discovered the existence of fairies. He puts an ad on the Internet, offering "a large sum of U.S. dollars to one who can show a fairy, leprechaun, sprite, etc." After several false trails, a man brings him to sprite posing as a healer in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. Through a series of trickery, he acquires The Book, their Bible. He sets to work decoding it as it is written in the fairy language, Gnommish.

The scene then moves underground, to Haven, the capital city and main metropolis center for the fairies. We are introduced to an elf named Holly Short, the only female in the Recon division of the Lower Elements Police, or LEPrecon . When she arrives at Police Plaza, the main law enforcement station, Commander Julius Root and the LEP's technical wizard, a centaur named Foaly, tell her that a troll managed to get topside, and send her to capture it. By riding a magma flare up a natural vent (or "chute") in the crust, she gets to the surface. Using mechanical wings, she flies to the spot, a pasta restaurant in Italy. Through an incredible degree of luck, she knocks the troll out, knocks the patrons out with some technology, and a LEPretrieval team comes to collect it. However, the last of Holly's magic is used up fighting the troll and she fails to magically shield herself from a toddler, who fortunately isn't afraid of her. Root (present) asks Holly when the last time she completed the magic-restoring Ritual. Holly says that she hasn't done this for four years, and Root, furious, tells her to fly over to Ireland tonight and complete the Ritual.

While this is going on, we go back to Artemis. He is in the process of decrypting The Book, visiting his mother occasionally. Apparently, she went into a sort of madness when Artemis Senior vanished almost two years previously, and hasn't left her room since. Artemis finishes decoding the Book, and learns that a fairy must complete the Ritual "where full moon, ancient oak, and twisted water meet", or getting a seed near an old oak by a river at the full moon, and bury it very far from the spot. He and Butler proceed to one such place, and, coincidentally, run into Holly, who is about to complete the Ritual. While she bends over to get an acorn, they shoot at her but miss. She attempts to employ the mind-controlling mesmer, requiring very little magic, on them, but through the use of mirrored lenses, they avoid the mesmer and tranquilize her. They "relieve" her of her helmet, her laser gun (called a Neutrino 2000), and her wristwatch-like tracker. Artemis already means to hold her for ransom and quickly formulates a plan to notify the fairies of that.

After not hearing from Holly for quite a while, Root goes to the surface to look for her. He locates her tracker offshore of Dublin, and finds a whaler. He can't use his helmet's x-ray feature to look for her, as the whaler is made out of lead, which includes lead-based paint; x-rays cannot penetrate lead. He cautiously heads into the whaler, and finds Holly's tracker inside a box. Through a video/audio communicator, Artemis tells Root that he has Holly for ransom (Root can understand English because fairies can speak all languages, as, apparently, all languages are based on Gnommish if they are traced back far enough). The screen changes to a timer, counting back from ten seconds. Root swears, but in Gnommish ("D'arvit!"), and the author says "there is no point translating that, as it would have to be censored." Root barely escapes the whaler with his life, and leads an attack against the "Mud Men" – what the fairies refer to humans as – in order to take Holly back.

At the manor, Artemis holds Holly in a small room. He explains what's going on to her while wearing mirrored sunglasses to prevent Holly from using the mesmer on him. Artemis states that while she's his prisoner, she needs to do what he says, and he orders her to try not to escape. He leaves Butler's younger sister, Juliet, in charge of her.

The LEP heads to Fowl Manor, and in the dead of night, they send a LEPretreivial team to scout it. They "shield", vibrating at such fast speeds that humans can't see them, only a slight haze, similar to a heat haze. Artemis spots the haze on the security cameras and pauses the video. The fairies instantly appear on the camera. He and Butler experiment with different filter options from the helmet they stole from Holly, and find an anti-shield one. Butler makes short work of the team, letting one go free to tell Root about the "incident." Root decides to lay siege to Fowl Manor.

He calls Foaly up to the surface with technology. He gives Root a tranquilizer dart launcher hidden in a finger that goes onto the user's. Foaly says it's been secret because personnel forget they have it on and shoot themselves accidentally; "One of our best sprites was picking his nose at the time.". The LEP proceed with the siege and stop time, which fairies had been doing for centuries with warlocks, but Foaly had the warlocks put the magic into machines, extending the time Root heads into Fowl Manor after Artemis invites him in (fairies can't go into human dwellings unless humans specifically invite them in). After Artemis names his demand, one metric ton of 24-carat gold in small unmarked ingots, he reveals that he knew about the time stop. After Root leaves, Artemis says that none of them have permission to enter while he's alive. They now can't enter without enduring severe nausea, vomiting, and loss of magic if they stay in there too long, but they need to get in somehow.

To do this, they recruit dwarf Mulch Diggums, a now-imprisoned thief. Mulch broke into humans' houses so much that these symptoms no longer affect him, but he had to give up his magic (he doesn't really care, though). However, dwarves can tunnel with expert skill. They unhinge their jaws, take a huge bite out of the dirt, move forward, and expel the nutrient-less soil out their rear ends. Mulch asks for temporary amnesty in the deal, and Root has no choice but to give it to him. Foaly gives Mulch an earpiece, a microphone, and an iris-cam, a device that tracks the user's vitals and can magnify vision or give it in different spectra. On the way to the foundations, Mulch locates a rabbit warren with his sonar-like beard hair. He notes the location, and proceeds to break into the wine cellar. With help from Foaly, Mulch avoids the manor's numerous security devices and feeds a loop to the cameras. He finds a safe hidden behind a portrait with six cameras aimed at it. Mulch opens it but there's nothing inside except money. When realizing that a genius hiding a safe behind a portrait is "totally against form," he investigates the frame itself. Hidden inside the picture is another safe, and inside it is the fairy Book.

The Council realizes nothing is working and they promote an officer known as Briar Cudgeon to Commander. He sends a troll in, which happens to be the same one Holly cast out of the pasta shop. Meanwhile, Holly discovers that her boot is holding an acorn from when Artemis captured her. She starts attempting to break through to soil by slamming her cot against the floor. Juliet tells her that there's no need to destroy furniture, and leaves to cut up carrots for Holly's meal. Holly finally breaks through to soil and buries her acorn, regaining her magic. She escapes from her room, but as she can't leave the house, she causes as much chaos as possible.

Artemis notices the loop, and gets it out of the system. The first thing he sees is the troll, which will run into Juliet. Juliet returns to Holly's room and Holly mesmerizes her into thinking they put up a plasma TV in the room that plays wrestling 24/7. Juliet runs into the room and starts watching the imaginary TV. Butler arrives, and so does the troll. He attempts to fight it, but fails, and nearly dies. Holly heals him using magic, and Butler easily defeats the troll by wearing a suit of armor and using a mace. Holly gets to the security room, gets back her stuff, and seals Artemis in using magic. She runs into Mulch just as he gets the second safe open. They share disbelief with Foaly. Cudgeon, angry that his troll plan didn't work, vents his rage by hurling insults at Foaly. Root starts wagging a finger at Cudgeon, saying "Naughty, naughty; no one beats Foaly but me," which is the same one he has the dart launcher on. He accidentally shoots Cudgeon in the forehead, and Cudgeon is demoted while unconscious.

Mulch starts to return to the surface, but he gets an idea. He passes the rabbit warren, and grabs a rabbit when it passes by. He starts making sounds like a cave-in, and puts the iris-cam on the rabbit. Although he hates to do it, he breaks the rabbit's back to make the LEP think that he died.

The LEP decide to give Artemis the ransom, and when Butler breaks him out of the security room, he asks Holly how much it would cost to buy a wish. Later, Holly walks out of the house with about half the gold in possession. The LEP decide to kill Artemis to get back the rest of the gold. To do this without destroying the house on top of them, they "blue-rinse" the house with a bio-bomb, a small version of a neutron bomb that only destroys living things. Artemis knows they'll do this, and has himself, Butler, and Juliet take drugged champagne without letting them know it's drugged. After the bio-bomb has been fired by the LEP, they walk in, but start puking as soon as they step over the threshold, meaning Artemis is still alive. While this is happening, Mulch surfaces by the gold and takes a bit, as he's escaping. It is noticed that not all the gold is there, but nobody realizes that it was Mulch.

When Butler wakes up, he shakes Artemis awake, and demands an explanation. Artemis says that whatever state of wakefulness you're in while in a time stop, you stay that way until the stop dissolves. He had tried an experiment on his mother by giving her a sleeping pill, and when he checked on her with the security cameras, she had disappeared, meaning that she wasn't affected by the stop. When they drank the drugged champagne, they emerged from the stop, so the bio-bomb didn't affect them. He tells Butler of a similar situation in the fairy Book that occurred with Santa Claus, or his fairy name, San'D Klaus (San the Deluded). He thought he could appeal to his human subjects (long ago, fairies and humans shared the surface) with gifts. He had his warlocks time stop an area while the humans were sleeping and gave out gifts. When he's finished explaining this to Butler, his mother comes down, completely cured of her insanity. The wish Artemis asked of Holly was to heal his mother. She throws open the curtains of a window, and apologizes that she doesn't have a gift for him, as she thinks it's Christmas. Artemis certainly appears happy to see her cured, although the narrator insists that his motives were still completely selfish, and that he would continue for years after to be an enemy of the People. This account is assumed, in turn, to be biased, as Artemis does in fact become the friend and ally of Holly Short in later novels.

[edit] The Code

At the bottom of each page in the book, a string of symbols appear. These symbols are supposedly Gnommish, but are really part of a substitution cipher which, when decoded, reveals a message. The message runs throughout the book's pages, and repeats a couple of times.

The code can be easily deciphered by using a section of the book's text itself, which gives a relatively long passage in Gnomish from the Book of the People, and then its English translation.

The translated code on the front cover reads:

Carry me always, carry me well. I am thy teacher of herb and spell.

The translated code at the bottom of the pages reads:

The prophecies of Ohm, phlegm pot cleaner to Frond, elfen king. I am Ohm, phlegm pot cleaner to the king. But I am much more than that, for I see the future written in the phlegm. For centuries we pixies have read the phlegm but I am the best there has ever been. My visions are generally of little importance. I foretell outbreaks of troll pox or gas spasms among elderly dwarfs. But sometimes even a poor pot cleaner can see wondrous things. A vision came to me two moons ago when I was gazing deep into his majesty’s own phlegm pot. I was heating the pot over a flame when the sign appeared. This vision was more vivid and detailed than any I had previously seen. Because of its importance I decided to write it down for posterity and so I can say I told you so. I saw an age when the People have been driven underground by the Mud Men. This is what the phlegm told me. In this time one shall come among us. Fowl by name and foul by nature. A mud man unlike any other. He shall learn our secrets and use them against us. I see him now as plain as day. His face is pale he has dark eyes and raven hair. Yet it must be a mistake for he seems a mere youth. Surely no mud boy could outwit the People. But now I see that the boy is not alone. He is aided by a formidable warrior scarred from a thousand battles. This Fowl shall hold the People to ransom for their most precious possession gold. And in spite of all our magic there is still a chance that he will prevail. For he has discovered how to escape the time field. Unfortunately how the story ends I cannot say. But there was more to see. There is another story to come. Someone will bring the People and the Mud Men together. The worst of both races. This fairy’s goal is to grind all the creatures of the earth beneath his boot. And who is this traitor? it is not clear. But he shall start a war unlike anything the People have ever seen. Those who were enemies shall be united against him. And for the first time there will be mud men below ground. I have one clue to his identity: a riddle.

Goblins shall rise and Haven shall fall.

A villainous elf is behind it all.

To find the one who so disappoints,

Look ye to where the finger points.

Instead of one face this elf has two.

Both speak false and none speak true.

While publicly he lends a helping hand,

His true aim is to seize command.

I know. Its not very plain is it? I don’t understand either. But perhaps in the future all will become clear. Look for a power-hungry elf who has a finger pointed at him during our tale. And so this is Ohm’s legacy. A warning that may save the world from total destruction. There’s not much to work with I know. The details are a bit sketchy. My advice to you is to consult the phlegm. It may be that you are sensitive. I have buried this prophecy with my phlegm pot. If you are not fortunate enough to work as a pot cleaner then there is usually a supply of phlegm every time you have a cold. Here ends the first prophecy of Ohm. Because of the importance of my visions I shall repeat the prophecies once more. If you have just begun to understand the text then read on. If you have worked out the entire message then congratulations. Now go and save the world.

  This passage speaks of the story in this book and its sequel. 

The traitor who had a finger pointed at him is Briar Cudgeon, who was shot with a poison dart that came out of a false finger. Cudgeon ended up with a bad reaction to the tranquilizer and led a goblin rebellion to take over the Earth.

[edit] See also

• Artemis Fowl II for the character himself.
• Artemis Fowl (series) for the rest of the series.
• Artemis Fowl Book Covers From Around The World.

v • d • e Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl
Books:	Main Series: Artemis Fowl | The Arctic Incident | The Eternity Code | The Opal Deception | The Lost Colony | Book 6 (title unknown) Related Books: The Seventh Dwarf | The Artemis Fowl Files
Film:	Artemis Fowl
Characters
Characters:	Artemis Fowl | Butler | Juliet Butler | Foaly | Holly Short | Julius Root | Mulch Diggums | Minerva Paradizo | N°1 | Arno Blunt | Billy Kong | Briar Cudgeon | The Brill Brothers | Doodah Day | Jon Spiro | Leon Abbot | Opal Koboi | Scalene | Angeline Fowl | Ark Sool | Artemis Fowl, Sr. | Caballine | Chix Verbil | Grub Kelp | Jerbal Argon | Qwan | Qweffor | Trouble Kelp | Vinyáya
Groups
Organisations:	Lower Elements Police | LEPrecon | LEPretrieval | LEPtraffic | Section Eight | Fission Chips | B'wa Kell | Phonetix | Russian Mafiya
Types of Fairies:	Elves | Dwarves | Trolls | Goblins | Centaurs | Sprites | Pixies | Demons | Warlocks
Locations:	Fowl Manor | Police Plaza | Haven | Tara | Fowl Star | Spiro Needle | Hybras