Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 First edition cover |
|
| Author | Eoin Colfer |
|---|---|
| Country | Eire |
| Language | English |
| Series | Artemis Fowl series |
| Genre(s) | Children's Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Puffin Books |
| Released | 30 April 2005 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 352 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0141381647 (first edition, hardback) |
| Preceded by | Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code |
| Followed by | Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony |
Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception is the fourth book in the Artemis Fowl series; it was released in April 2005. This book involves the surviving villain from Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident, Opal Koboi, an evil genius whose intellect rivals super-genius Foaly, the centaur, along with the return of the familiar cast involving Artemis, Holly, Root, and Mulch.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The story begins with the pixie genius Opal Koboi in an asylum, appearing to be in a coma after the collapse of her revolution. .In reality, she actually was in a self-induced cleansing coma, a form of "deeper sleep" she learnt at the age of fourteen from Gola Schweem, which is young even by human standards, much less fairy. Though Opal was convinced that her rebellion would succeed, she still prepared a contingency plan which involved setting two of her most trusted employees, Mervall and Descant (Merv and Scant) Brill to work in a clinic and created a medical emergency fund to be opened in the case that the revolution failed and she did go into a coma. After spending a record amount of time in the coma, she had her two accomplices in the J. Argon Clinic replace her with a brain-dead clone, exactly like Opal in a coma.
After this, she progressed to trick Captain Holly Short and Commander Julius Root into a cave, where she straps a bomb onto Root's chest. Root then orders Holly to leave him and go save Artemis, Opal's next target. Holly refuses and attempts to save Root, but fails. Root tells her to " be well" before the bomb goes off and he is killed, and Holly Short is framed with the murder of her Commander. Opal has sent a bio-bomb to Artemis Fowl II, who was incidentally at the time stealing a painting called "The Fairy Thief" (containing a tracker to locate him), and another to the now outlawed Holly. As Holly fled to try to save Artemis, determined to follow her commander's last order, she almost got killed by a bomb that had been following her, too late to save Artemis. Luckily for Artemis, his faithful bodyguard Butler saved him from another contained bio-bomb. Holly met up with Artemis after the bombing, relieved to find him alive. She took him to one of the fairies' many safe-houses. She tries to bring back Artemis' memories of the People (which are later revived by the plan Artemis developed in book three of the series), but then the safe house is blown apart by Opal and her henchmen, who had been following them all along in a stealth-shuttle. Two things went in Artemis' favor which were: a) he left his cell phone on in his pocket, leaving the whole conversation on a phone at the Fowl home; b) Holly did not bring Butler, who was too big to be removed without suspicion.
Mulch Diggums, meanwhile, is being transported under the Atlantic to a hearing to clear his name, as Artemis changed the dates of a search warrenty obtained by Root to be too early, making all later arrests null and void in the previous book. However, halfway there, the crew of the sub-shuttle recieves word that Root is dead, so the hearing is postponed indefinitely, and Holly is suspected of killing him. Mulch doesn't believe that Holly killed him, so he gets really determined to break out, using his dwarf talents. He quickly comes up with an idea: he starts licking his hands and running them through his hair (dwarf spit is luminous, and hardens when layered) and sucking in huge amounts of air (dwarfs can feed off of air in their digestive tract, and the lack of air is depressurizing the shuttle). Soon, the shuttle is literally caving in, and when the crew makes it to the cockpit, Mulch lets loose with some of the air in his intestines, shooting through the weakened hull (and not getting hurt because of his spittle helmet) and rocketing to the surface (he doesn't get the bends because a by-product of dwarf flatulence is a bacterium that prevents it). He makes his ways to Fowl Manor, and Butler arrives soon afterwards. Mulch restores Butler's memories with the disk Artemis gave him, and, knowing of Opal's plan (from Artemis's cell phone), they decide to get Artemis and Holly free. Mulch goes to a shuttleport, and meets up with a sprite named Chix Verbil. Mulch convinces Chix that Opal's back, and Holly might still be alive. Because Holly saved his life in the second book, Mulch convinces Chix to resolve his debt by "lending" a shuttle. He and Butler immediately take off for the Lower Elements.
Opal once again tries to kill both Artemis and Holly by leaving them in an abandoned theme park called the Eleven Wonders (the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, plus the Abu Simbel temple in Egypt, the Moai Statues in Rapa Nui, the Borobudur Temple in Indonesia, and the Throne Hall of Persepolis in Iran). The park is full of trolls, and the Brills spray them with troll pheromones that make them smell like female trolls ready to mate. Holly and Artemis are locked in a scale model of the Temple of Artemis. Despite their best attempts, the trolls eventually pin them on the roof. Just before their certain demise, they are rescued by Butler and Mulch. Artemis restores his own memories, and they hunt down Opal, locating her in a tunnel chute, her plan to create an interspecies war almost at fruition. At the same time, Foaly discovers Opal's clever plan (courtesy Chix) and convinces the council to send a supersonic attack ship to check on Holly.
Opal, pretending to be a human, has pretended to be Belinda Zito, mesmerizing evironmentalist Giovanni Zito to believe she's his adopted daughter. She helps him with his plan to send a probe, encased within 100,000,000 tons of molten iron, down to the core. He sends the probe down, close to a major chute that runs close to Haven. However, Opal is going to detonate a charge when the iron runs parallel to the chute. The iron would flow into the chute, fall down a large vertical drop, and slice through a huge amount of Haven, with the remnant broadcasting for the world to hear. Foaly didn't realize the danger because he didn't know Opal was alive, and thought Zito's plan had just come ten years early. Artemis convinces Mulch to infiltrate the shuttle, steal a "certain something" of great importance, and return to the shuttle, leaving a communicator in its place. Mulch does so during a diversion, and later Opal notices that the charge, and its backup, are missing, with the communicator in its place. There, during the dialouge between Opal and Artemis, we learn that Mulch didn't take the charges, but instead a bag of chocolate truffles! While one of the Brill brothers is constantly sending the detonation signal, Opal heads for her "booty box", a secret compartment that is completely undetectable by any method except accidentally stepping in it (refrigeration being one of those methods, so she had to store the truffles in there, as the fridge was full). She opens it, and finds the charges... with the Brill brother still sending the detonation signal!
Unfortunately, just before her ship explodes (the charges didn't go off immediately because of a 20-second fuse), she jettisons the Brills in escape pods, shoots off in her own, and fires two heat-seeking plasma rockets at their ship, which then turn upon the supersonic attack shuttle (after they turn off all the engines to change the shuttle's heat signature). This shuttle is piloted by Trouble Kelp, one of the most experienced LEPRetrieval officers alive. He blows up the missiles and is ordered to fire at Holly by Sool. He obeys, but the missile he fires is a communication spike that allows him to talk to Holly, whose own ship's communication equipment has been torn loose. Holly manages to give him enough information to keep them alive, and the LEP tracks down Opal, who lost her magic because of an artificial human pituitary gland she had inserted in her skull so no one would suspect she was a fairy. Artemis, Butler, Holly, and Mulch are brought in for questioning. Though after a while, Holly is cleared of all charges, but she is frustrated by her new commander, Ark Sool, and resigns, becoming a private detective along with the dwarf Mulch, who was acquitted on all charges. She maintains a secret correspondence with Artemis, who has finally appeared to redevelop some morals, anonymously giving to the public the priceless artwork he stole.
Artemis seems to have a newfound conscience, the desire to lead a crime-free life gone, but the wish to exploit is gone as well. He is stuck somewhere in the middle, between leading a normal life and choosing his many criminal ventures. In the end the choice is also somewhere in the middle, and the added eyes of Captain Holly Short watching his moves might help to bring him more in line in the future.
[edit] The Code
There is a secret code at the bottom of the book, containing a message from Foaly. This is translatable if one has the Gnommish alphabet, available in the book titled The Artemis Fowl Files by Eoin Colfer, or the Artemis Fowl website.
Here is the message:
A recruitment letter from Foaly, technical consultant to the Lower Elements Police. Trusted ally, if you have decoded this Gnommish message, then you are a deputy officer in the Lower Elements Police. You will not be aware of this fact because it is the practice of the LEP to mindwipe our human allies. We do this so they cannot remember being recruited. If you cannot remember the fairy people or our underground city then you cannot betray our existence to the greedy humans. Of course, not all humans are greedy. You, deputy, are a noble member of your species. And clever too. We only recruit the best. Our Intelligence Department studied your file and concluded that you were suitable for LEP membership. At the moment you are only a deputy officer. To become a fully fledged officer, you must complete four tasks.
Number One: Decode this message. Something you are well on your way to decoding. Number Two: Save the life of a member of another species. You can complete this task in any number of ways. Open a window to release a trapped fly. Build a bird table in your garden. Release a mouse from a trap. Number Three: Achieve a perfect score in a school test or homework assignment. In this job you need to be smart as well as fit. Number Four: Wash yourself everyday for a week. This is a difficult assignment, especially for human boys who do not like contact with water. If you are going to work underground, often in cramped tunnels, you will appreciate a partner who does not smell like a hermit dwarf.
Once you have completed these tasks, you must summon your recruiting officer in the ancient fashion. Go to your back garden or nearest green area. Make sure you are not being watched. Find a soft spot of ground and burrow a sixteen centimetre hole with a broom handle or short stick. When your hole is ready, tap out the letters ‘L-E-P’ in horse code. The code for ‘L-E-P’ is as follows: ‘L-TAP-TAP-WIGGLE-TAP-E-WIGGLE-WIGGLE-TAP-P-TAP-WIGGLE-DRILL’. Do this at least a hundred times and our underground sensors will pick up the vibration and send an LEP officer with your uniform and orders. Good luck, deputy. Foaly.
This message is then repeated. The message on the cover of the US publication - barely decipherable - is "Opal wants revenge" repeated several times (look on the sides of the tube - they're faint but recognizable).
The Gnommish symbols around the molecules on the front cover read "DNA never lies".
[edit] Continuity Errors
On page 232-233 it states that Artemis made the video disk before they went to Chicago, but on the video disk it states that Artemis fixed Mulch's warrant- something that happened after the time of the video disk's manufacturing. It could be understood that it was not a mistake, Artemis had known the fairies would mind wipe him (as part of a deal they had made), and decided that he would clear Mulch Diggums' record so he could help Fowl recover his memories. Or, it could be that when it mentioned that fact, it was just his memories, as it never mentioned that those lines were on the disk. Those were Artemis' thoughts.
In Foaly's lab it also states that Holly only shot 6 times in the tunnel. But she fired several others as the blast doors were closing.
