 Time for me to judge another children's series through the eyes of an adult. That seems fair. Artemis Fowle was a very popular series when I was a kid and it helped to get members of my generation into reading. It was a unique take on old myths of elves and fairies and a new spin on the child discovers a hidden magical world genre. The last time I analyzed a book series like this was when I looked at Maximum Ride last year. In that case, the books started good and became hilariously awful after James Patterson tried to pour gas into the tank of a broken-down car. Most fans stopped reading out of annoyance. Artemis Fowle is a little different because plenty of the fans stopped reading before the end, but they stopped out of disinterest. Nothing about it stood out as bad to them. They just couldn't summon the energy to care anymore. Out of my circle of friends, I was the only one who read all the way to the end and honestly, it wasn't worth the effort. While it was nowhere near as bad as something like Maximum Ride, it didn't have the same magic as before. Each entry just felt like it was going through the motions until the finale came up with some semblance of an ending. With the movie adaptation finally coming out soon, or maybe not, it's been pushed back like eight times and stuck in development hell for 20 years, I thought now would be a good time to look back and see why we not only loved the early books, but why we lost interest as they went on and no, it's not just that we got older. Spoilers for the whole series ahead. But before that, a word from this video's sponsor, Campfire. Organizing stories can be hard, but it doesn't have to be. Campfire Pro is a writing software with tons of tools to keep you organized. Its character pages will help you keep track of all your characters with details and backstories. Timelines can help you hammer out all those plot points. You can even track character arcs and use the map view to create all the locations you need. You'll also definitely want to check out the brand new Worldbuilding Pack. It's an expansion to Campfire Pro with even more tools to help build your story's world. Construct new species, magic systems and develop your cultures with religions, philosophies and languages with this massive bundle of features. Campfire Pro is a one-time purchase of $49.99 and the Worldbuilding Pack is available for an additional $24.99. Do away with all those Word documents and spreadsheets. Keep everything easily accessible with Campfire Pro. Click the link in the description to learn more. The story of Artemis Fowl sounds like a standard kid's tale at first. The main character is 12 years old and becomes involved with the world of magic and fairies, along with some of his friends. Then he goes on adventures and saves the world. That's about where the similarities end though. Most of these types of stories follow the Harry Potter formula. The main character is a normal kid who stumbles across the hidden magical world or is inducted into the magical world by a mentor because they're some sort of important figure. Sometimes both are combined. Artemis Fowl, which is the protagonist's name if you didn't know, is an Irish boy genius who has the highest tested IQ in Europe. His dad used to be a criminal boss who engaged in things like drug dealing and smuggling. His father went missing and is presumed dead around a year before the story begins, causing his mother to go insane and never leave her bedroom. Artemis follows in his father's footsteps as a criminal boss, and he also decides that he can make way more money by exploiting fairies. After his father dies, Artemis Fowl tracks down an alcoholic sprite who makes a living as a faith healer in Vietnam. From her he gets a copy of The Book of the People, which is basically just a fairy bible which contains valuable information about them, their magic, and their history. I should clarify that fairy is the term used to describe every magical species in this setting. Elves, dwarves, gnomes, trolls, centaurs, demons, and others all fall under this umbrella. Artemis has some trouble translating the book, but he manages to figure it out eventually. Then he finds out that, in order to replenish their magic, fairies have to come out of their underground hiding holes, so he and his bodyguard, who is just called Butler, begin a stakeout, and soon enough they manage to capture an elf named Holly. Holly is a member of the Fairy Police, known as the Leprechaun, or Lower Elements Police Recon. Get it, because it sounds like Leprechaun. Yeah, it wasn't funny when I was 10, either. She's the first woman to join the Lep, which causes some friction between her and her compatriots, including the commander, Julius Root, who is a woman played by Judy Dench in the movie, for some reason. Holly isn't a particularly complex character, especially in the first book, but she's likable and has multiple facets to her personality. She's tough and determined and wants to prove herself, but she's also intelligent, and most of her actions come from a place of kindness, not spite or anger. Except for her general dislike of humans and hatred of Artemis in particular, since he kidnapped her, and humans have forced her people to live underground, far away from the nature that they love. At no point is she relegated to being a pawn in someone else's plans. She utilizes her own unique talents to save the day throughout the whole series. She's also in her 80s and looks young because she's an elf, but she's definitely not 14. Holly goes on a mission to the surface to save some humans from a rampaging troll, but she only barely succeeds since she's almost out of magic. Commander Root yells at her for putting herself in danger, since even though he acts like a stereotypical angry police commissioner, he's still a caring person underneath it all. He's hard on Holly because she's the first female LEP officer, and as such, she's a lightning rod for all forms of criticism, as well as a test case. If she screws up, that'll ruin the chances for other women that come after. And as the series continues, we see more of how he genuinely does care for his men, and he does his job with a real desire to protect fairy society, warts and all. Holly is forced to go off and replenish her magic, which results in her being kidnapped and Artemis demanding a ransom from her superiors in the LEP. They show up, freeze the foul manner in time, and thus a siege begins with both sides using Gael to gain an advantage over the other. See, the fairies aren't just small people hiding in holes. They have massive cities miles underground, or underwater in the case of Atlantis. Their technology is far beyond what humans have. They possess lasers, cloning, airships, memory wiping devices, and cloaking technology, among other things. But they also have magic. Magic can do a variety of interesting things, like heal, make fairies invisible, and mesmerize humans into doing their bidding, which all tie into old stories about fairies. Owen Culfer managed to take Irish myths about fairies and add a new spin to them, which most hidden world settings don't do. They either make their own mythology or copy old myths without changing much. This one not only does something original, but also makes a hidden world that has reason to stay hidden, and reasonably could stay hidden, which is rare. Back to the storyline. Artemis takes Holly back to foul manner and holds her hostage in exchange for a large ransom. The LEP sets up a siege around the manner, even freezing it in time, but they only have a few hours until the time stop ends and they're exposed to the humans, so they have to act fast. Fairies can't enter homes without being invited. It causes them to lose their magic, meaning the LEP can't just break into foul manner to rescue their friend. Enter Mulch diggums the dwarf. Mulch is a burglar, so he's already lost his magic and he's in prison. The LEP offers to free him if he helps them out, to which he agrees. Even without magic, as a dwarf, Mulch has some, uh, other talents. You might think I'm making this next part up, but no. Dwarves are natural miners, which means they have gigantic mouths with jaws that come unhinged. They can tunnel by eating dirt, quickly passing it through their digestive tract, then shitting it out to plug the tunnel behind them. They even have gas powerful enough to propel themselves forward. Mulch breaks into the mansion, but mostly winds up stealing some stuff and running off, faking his own death in the process. Eventually, Holly manages to complete the magic ritual and escape herself. The LEP send in a troll to kill the humans, or at least force them to ask for help. Holly and Butler defeat it, though I want to take a sec to mention how violent this scene is. Bones get crushed, flesh gets torn apart, and the book goes into explicit detail about all of it. Very little is left to the imagination. The rest of the series has scenes of broken ribs breaking out of someone's skin, limbs getting cut off. It's pretty hardcore for kids books. It's not overused, though, so you don't become desensitized to it. Plus, this is a great example of how badass Butler is. Since first he gets severely wounded, then he gets healed by Holly, then he beats the troll almost to death armed with only some antique steel gauntlets. After the troll is beaten, the fairies are forced to admit defeat. They give Artemis his ransom gold, and he makes a deal with Holly. She heals his mother's madness in exchange for half the gold. The LEP try one last time to kill Fowlin Company, but they fail and the humans emerge victorious. It's pretty much the perfect way to start off a series. The story is complete, but there's room for sequels. However, this method of storytelling is a double-edged sword, since an episodic format makes it harder to build to a satisfying climax. I'll get more into that later. There are a hundred little things about this series that I could talk about for hours that set it apart from other kids books coming out at the time. For now, let's focus on Artemis himself. Think about a normal protagonist of this type of story. A normal kid who does normal kid things like go to school, have a strained relationship with their parents, and not fit in. Then they somehow stumble across a hidden magical world, go on adventures, and then save the magical world, possibly the mundane one as well. Artemis Fowl is nothing like that. He's a literal genius, and he's the bad guy, at least at first. He has this arrogance about him. Like he doesn't just think he's above everyone else, he knows he's above everyone else. There's a scene where he asks a waitress for spring water and specifies that she shouldn't put ice in it like she was planning to since the ice would be tap water and that would defeat the purpose of drinking spring water. What a little shit. There are other scenes where he outsmarts and or humiliates older characters, and he really takes time to rub in how much smarter he is than them, and how annoyed he is at having to do things like attend school. He doesn't rub in his ludicrous wealth nearly as much, but on a few occasions he shows off his private jet and other gadgets. This is how a lot of kids see themselves, as being above others and held back by society, and if they just got a chance they could show the world how amazing they are. This meant that kids around Artemis' age could project themselves onto him at first, then see their own flaws staring back and grow up along with him. However, despite all his intelligence, he's still young enough to believe in things like magic, so he spends time tracking down a way to contact the fairy world. This could wind up making him too smart and a bit of a Superman character, but he gets dragged back down to earth in a couple of ways. Notably, the scene in the first book when he hears that his father has returned home. Right after he kidnaps Holly and brings her to the manor, one of his employees says that his missing father has returned. Immediately, Artemis forgets his plan and runs to his parents' bedroom where his mother is wearing a wedding dress, and has his father's tuxedo stuffed with pillows. She thinks it's her wedding day, that her husband is still there, and she doesn't recognize Artemis at all. He plays along with her delusion to keep her happy, then goes back to his scheme. Despite his intelligence and the persona he projects about himself, he's still just a kid who lost his family. Damn. Make sense why he'd give up half the gold in exchange for healing his mom now. He's still not a good person, though. He's a hardened criminal when the series starts. Then he kidnaps an elf and holds her for ransom. The entire first book is about him outsmarting and outmaneuvering the fairies who are just trying to save their comrade. Artemis isn't any sort of chosen one, or hidden magical prodigy that needs to save the world. He's just a smart kid who was able to cut through the layers of secrecy that the fairy world put around itself and then injected himself into it. When things go wrong and he decides to help later on, he does it in his own way, using his intellect and not any God-given magic powers. And he does it because he feels he should, not because it's his destiny. He never does anything egregiously awful, though. He never kills anyone or seriously harms them. He never exposes the existence of the fairy world either. They're free to let things go back to normal afterwards. So Artemis, despite being a criminal mastermind, is more chaotic neutral than chaotic evil. Nonetheless, he does some bad things and spends the rest of the series trying to make up for it, which leads me to the second book. The Arctic Incident starts off with two separate storylines. One about the lep discovering a smuggling operation between the humans and fairies, and one about Artemis discovering his father is still alive and being held prisoner in Russia. The fairies are technologically more advanced than humans and live miles underground, but their population is tiny. Throughout the series, they constantly talk about how if humans discover them, then war is inevitable and that'll wipe out the fairies. And even if there somehow isn't war, the humans would bring their polluting technology and greed down into the lower elements, which would wreck everything just as thoroughly. Oh yeah, this series has a strong environmental message. The fairies, particularly Holly, despise what humans have done to the natural world since they have a strong connection to it. For his part, Artemis also tries to preserve nature. The message isn't exactly subtle, but it's not the focus of the story, and it does tie into some of the overarching themes, so it's not a big deal. So obviously the smuggling is a threat to the fairy way of life, and they have to bring it to an end. Holly and her boss believe that Artemis is behind it because, well, who else would it be? And they arrest slash kidnap him so they can read his memories. But they learn that he's innocent and come to an agreement. He'll help them stop the smuggling if they help him rescue his father from the Russian mobsters who kidnapped him. Things seem to go well at first, with the heroes managing to neutralize the human half of the smuggling ring, but things go south quick. A conspiracy between a LEP officer named Briar Cudgin and a technology magnate named Opal Koboy is seeking to take over the lower elements government. They were behind the smuggling, and they try to kill the heroes with little success. They do, however, disable all their weapons since they were made by Koboy's company, and she can do that. Then they release their soldiers to take the government by force. Artemis and company break into Koboy laboratories with the help of Mulch, who they discover is still alive, restore everyone's weapons, and the revolt is put down. Cudgin is killed while Koboy is made comatose. The day is saved, and they manage to rescue Artemis' father without much trouble. All in all, it was another self-contained adventure without any loose threads at the end. The main thing that carries through is the development of characters and their relationships. At the beginning, Artemis is asked to name someone he respects, and he can't think of any. He's a genius who's outsmarted just about everyone who's ever opposed him at such a young age that it's caused him to look down on others. Over the course of working with allies, seeing their ability to do things he can never dream of, he realizes that even if he's a genius, others have something to offer him. And as he works with the fairies, he realizes that he was wrong to kidnap a thinking, feeling person just to take their gold. Likewise, Holly learns that Artemis was doing what he did to salvage his family's name and that he can use his talents for good. By the end of the book, they're solidly friends, and while they have disputes after this, they're never adversaries. Then we move into Artemis' foul and the eternity code, in which Artemis almost exposes the fairies to the human world. After the events of the first book, he was able to use some left-behind technology to build a computer far more advanced than anything humans can make, which he calls a C-Cube. He arranges a meeting with an American businessman named John Spiro, where he shows off the power of the cube. Spiro asks how much he wants for it, and Artemis, being the little shit that he is, says that it's not for sale. He just wants money to keep it off the market, since if he put it out there, it would put other tech companies, including Spiros, out of business overnight. Spiro steals it and runs off to crack the code protecting it. Unfortunately, the fairy world, while it is protected from human technology, is not shielded from what's in the cube. Artemis has to get the cube back for revenge, and the fairies need to get it back to protect themselves. That said, they're tired of Artemis causing trouble, and they tell him that when the cube is returned, he needs to get his memories erased. He reluctantly agrees. I should take some time here to talk about Artemis' bodyguard, Butler. When Spiro takes the C cube, one of his goons shoots Butler, and Butler, thinking he's about to die, tells Artemis his full name, Domavoy Butler. Yep, that's actually his name. He lives, barely, and continues to act as muscle for the heroes throughout the series. This is the culmination of their relationship. See, at first, Butler is just an employee, albeit an extremely loyal one with an unbreakable code of honor. He only goes along with Artemis' pursuit of fairies reluctantly and doesn't believe in them until he's presented with irrefutable proof. But there's this distinct feeling that he dislikes Artemis and thinks he's an obnoxious little asshole who sees him as little more than a driver. There's little respect in either direction. As Artemis begins to change and become a better person, Butler slowly becomes more of a father figure to the boy, leading him onto a better path and giving him advice. When he jumped in front of a bullet to save Artemis, he didn't do it out of obligation. He did it to save the life of a boy he was attached to. This is more subtle and less focused on than Artemis and Holly's friendship, but it's just as notable. The rest of the book is a big heist story where Artemis, Holly, and some other allies steal the sea cube from Spyro's evil villain lair. There's some planning, twists and turns, all the fun stuff you would expect from a heist. Artemis is forced to live up to his part of the bargain and get his memory wiped. More than that, the fairies comb his mansion for all traces of advanced technology or magic and interrogate him about anything he might have hidden. To prevent him from lying, they use magic to mesmerize him and get him to admit that he had set up contingency plans to restore his memories at a later date. Then those are destroyed. All except for a medallion that he gifts to mulch, which, for some reason, raises no suspicions. In the end, the procedure goes through as planned, with Artemis and his friends having their memories of the fairy world wiped. However, the epilogue shows that Artemis was wearing reflective contacts that prevented him from being mesmerized, meaning that this was all according to some grand plan, not for the last time you just have to shake your head at how much smarter Artemis is than the rest of us. Yet the author never falls into the trap of giving him magic deductive powers to figure things out before it's possible to do so, nor is he made to seem smart by withholding information from the audience, a la BBC's Sherlock. He comes to conclusions based on logic and reason. Then things go back to normal with both worlds separate. For a while. Part of the problem with looking back on this series is that there isn't one single jumping the shark moment. Unlike Maximum Ride, which had a clear divide between the original trilogy and the rest, Artemis Fowl is a series of one-off adventures that feature familiar characters and settings. There's very little overarching story here. Everyone has their own point where they feel the books peaked, and for me, that's the opal deception. After the events of the Eternity Code, Artemis and his friends have no memory of the fairy world. In fact, that would have worked reasonably well as a finale to the series, now that I think about it. But without their memories, they go back to their old criminal ways. Artemis stages a complex heist where he steals a valuable painting, but his conscience pains him for some reason he can't understand. Before the memory wipe, Artemis hacked the LEPPS database and changed the date on some of Mulch's arrest records, resulting in him being released from prison on a technicality. Meanwhile, Opal Koboy is still comatose and under guard after the events of the Arctic Incident. It turns out that she was in a deep, meditative state the whole time, and so she's able to orchestrate her escape by replacing herself with a brain-dead clone. Then she sets out to get revenge on those who wronged her and conquer the world. Her scheme is… weird, to say the least, but I'll try to explain it here. First, she'll lure Holly and Commander Root into a trap where they'll be killed. Then she'll kill Artemis and Butler. After that, she'll get a human pituitary gland implanted that'll slowly turn her into a human. Then she'll trick an environmentalist into releasing a probe into one of the fairy tunnels so that they'll be exposed to humanity, in the, quote, inevitable, end quote, war that comes after, she'll give weapons to humans in exchange for being made queen of their most powerful country. Finally, Opal will conquer the world. I feel like she skipped a couple of steps in there, somewhere. But as dumb as this plan is when you think about it, it makes sense as something Opal would come up with. She's an egomaniac who's convinced of her own superiority to everyone else. Of course she would think that humans would bow down once they learn of her genius, but even if she won't be able to take over the world, she can still cause all sorts of mayhem, so the heroes have to stop her. The plan gets off to a great start. Commander Root and Holly are lured into a trap and Root is killed by an explosion. This scene made my child jaw hit the floor. Think about how rare permanent death is in kids' media, especially for major good guy characters who have been around since the beginning of the series. And the scene where Root dies is brutal. The bomb has metal tentacles attached to it that wrap around Root's body and squeeze so tightly his ribs break and he starts to spit up blood before the explosion. Holly escapes, barely, but through some technical shenanigans, the lep think Holly killed the commander and so she can't go to them for help. Artemis and Butler narrowly avoid being killed by a biobomb by jumping out a window with a mattress to cushion their fall. Holly shows up in time to heal Artemis and whisk him away to safety. She tries to tell him about their past together and he doesn't believe her. They're recaptured by Opal before being thrown into an abandoned theme park infested with trolls. Meanwhile, Butler goes looking for Artemis and runs into Mulch back at the foul manor. He holds him up at gunpoint while he tries to explain everything, which Butler doesn't believe at first, but then Mulch gives Butler the medallion, which is actually a disguised hard drive. It has a recording of Artemis explaining the situation which triggers Butler's old memories. They head underground to rescue Artemis and Holly, then show Artemis the recording of himself to jog his memories. After his experiences, he becomes a good guy again and realizes that Opal must be stopped for the good of the world, not just because she wants him dead. Then comes the climax. To prevent the probe from entering the wrong tunnel, Mulch sneaks onto Opal's ship and takes some bombs that were needed to redirect the path. Opal notices the bombs missing and the heroes take time to send a video message rubbing in how much smarter they are than her. Angered, Opal sends the signal that will set the bombs off. Turns out they were hidden on her own ship the whole time and she jettisons them to avoid dying. She lives, but her plan is ruined and she's forced to flee in her ship. It's a simple plan that utilizes Artemis' intelligence, the skills of his friends, and Opal's complete inability to self-reflect. Opal crashes in an Italian vineyard and mesmerizes the owner into believing she's her daughter. When the woman tries to make her work, Opal tries to backtrack, only to discover her magic is gone. The human pituitary gland rendered it inert. Opal's arrogance was her downfall in more ways than one. Now she's stuck working a farm for a week until the Lep show up and arrest her. The day is saved, yet things can never be the same again. With Root Dead, Holly retires from Leprechaun to become a private investigator with mulch. Artemis returns the painting he stole and gives up crime. The status quo, such as it is, remains in place, but the heroes all come away different. So, what comes next? After the Opal deception, the series didn't have anywhere else to go. The books introduced, built up, and then defeated an ultimate villain. The heroes saved the world more than once, and for that matter, they saved it from basically the same thing every time. The fairy world cannot be exposed under any circumstances. Great. Even though the series up to this point has been episodic, there was a sense of escalation. The first one was a small conflict between two groups, and no matter which side won, life on Earth would go on as usual. The second one had the heroes facing a threat to the stability of the lower elements. The third one had a threat to the very existence of fairies, and the fourth was the same as the third with the added threat of the heroes meeting a grisly end. After that, we go to Book 5, The Lost Colony, all about a city of demons, who are a type of fairy, that are in another dimension. They're slowly being brought back into our own dimension, and if the heroes can't get things under control, then the fairies will be exposed. Also, Holly rejoins the police less than 20% into the book. This is just a rehash of what we've seen before. The only real addition is a new character named Minerva, who is also a genius around Artemis's age. She's figured out that the demons exist and wants to put them in a zoo, but she ceases to be a villain early on, so the idea of a dark Artemis is never utilized. This book also introduces the character with the most unpronounceable name I've ever had the displeasure of coming across. Seriously, how do you say that? Things go bad, but in the end, they manage to save the day again. Then things go back to normal again. Great. Then there's the time paradox, which is all about Artemis's mother getting a magical disease and him going back in time to find a cure. Turns out, Opal Koboy was in the past and trying to gain power with a lemur's brain fluid. Through time travel shenanigans, she pretended to be Artemis's mother and caused him to bring her to the present day. The past Opal's plans are foiled, but she escapes. Cool. Time travel never makes sense, really, which is why I don't like it much as a plot device. So Artemis got magic at the end of the Lost Colony, which was a huge game changer and an opportunity to do some neat stuff with both his character and the plot. Then he lost it at the very beginning of the next book when he attempts to heal his mother. Minerva is never seen again either, even though she was introduced and built up as Artemis's ultimate rival. Cool. This is what I mean when I say that the episodic nature of the series is a double-edged sword. Neat ideas that could lead into something bigger are dropped without ceremony in favor of returning to the status quo. Other ideas that are never properly expanded on include Artemis and Holly's romantic relationship. They kiss once, then never bring it back up. Commander Root's evil brother and their difficult relationship. Holly becoming a private investigator, magical diseases that wiped out huge portions of the fairy population spreading to humans, and revealing that the souls of dead fairies are still trapped on Earth. Two final books come after the time paradox. One called Artemis Fallon the Atlantis Complex, where Artemis gets a magical disease. Cool, it's not like they didn't use that plot device already. And the last one is called Artemis Fowl in The Last Guardian, and it's... not as bad as it could have been, I guess. It starts with the past version of Opal Cowboy, who, remember, is running around in the present, being killed by the present Opal's underlings. This creates a time paradox, which causes everything Opal created in the last few years to explode. And since her company created most of the technology and the lower elements, they're thrown into chaos. The explosions even caused disruptions in the human world because Opal's technology had been sold to humans on the black market. To prevent the paradox from destroying Atlantis, Opal is put into the containment chamber of a nuclear reactor. The cascading destruction causes the reactor to break down and release a bunch of radiation, which Opal then absorbs using black magic, all according to her plan. Then she frees a bunch of dead fairy spirits that are trapped on the estate of Fowl Manor. Okay. I'm getting a lot of mileage out of that clip. From there, Opal tries to keep the spirits on Earth permanently in order to gain absolute power. Fowl and the others stop her through guile and friendship. You know the drill by now. The only difference is that Artemis is killed and his spirit trapped with the rest of the dead fairies. In the epilogue, Artemis is cloned, which would normally only make a comatose copy, but they manage to place his soul into the body, effectively bringing him back to life. One positive thing I'll say is that the final few pages are great. Artemis is brought back with amnesia, so Holly starts to tell him who she is and what sort of adventures they've had. The final paragraph of the last book is the same as the first paragraph of the first one. It brings everything together in a nice way. It also ties into this story's major theme of memory and how perception of the past affects who we are more than the reality. Artemis remembered his father as a criminal mastermind and emulated that in his own unique way. He didn't remember him as a loving father, and that was part of why he had such a sociopathic outlook in the first few books. Opal Koboy remembers every one of her own failures as a slight against her, and she remembers every slight against her as an attack on her very being, leading to her becoming a megalomaniacal narcissist. Humans as a whole have forgotten the fairies, how to use magic, and their connection to nature, which makes them self-absorbed and unconcerned with everything around them, and so on. This was also Artemis' final transformation into a hero, sacrificing himself to save the world and his friends. Other than that, this was a stupid book and a crappy end to a series that had run out of fuel long ago. The final conflict is with a villain that the heroes have beaten more than once and her army of dead souls, which sounds kind of cool until you learn that they mostly just possess squirrels. Similar to Maximum Ride, this went on far longer than it should have, and that's why so many never finished it. Unlike Maximum Ride, though, this one never went truly crazy in a way that wrecked its characters and themes. It declined in quality through repetition and a lack of anything to build towards, not through a loss of identity. There's no crazy plot twists like the heroes getting new powers or the world being destroyed by evil environmentalists or the heroes rising from the bottom of the ocean using snot bubbles, all of which happened in Maximum Ride, by the way. I still fondly remember the early adventures of Artemis Fowle and I can go back to them from time to time. I can't do that with Maximum Ride because I know how everything they do in the original trilogy winds up being pointless. At the same time, I remember all the bad things in Maximum Ride a lot better since it goes so off the rails. Even though I've read all of Artemis Fowle twice, I had to do a lot of rereading to remind myself what happened in the last few books. The events and developments aren't awful, they're just dull, forgettable, generic kids fantasy schlock, not unlike what the film adaptation is shaping up to be. In a roundabout way, it really is an accurate adaptation. Maybe the lesson to be gleaned from this, in addition to making sure you quit while you're ahead, is that even if you crash and burn, at least you still go out with a bang. God, that sounded pretentious. I should come up with a better line to end on. Wait, I used that joke before. So, why did the chicken crust that... Nah, the moment's gone. Don't forget to check out Campfire. Thanks to my patrons, especially the following $10 note patrons, Appo Savilainen, Brother Santotis, Christopher Hawkins, Christopher Quinten, Joel, Joseph Pendergraft, Taylor Briggs, Tobacco Crowe, and Vei Victis. All of you are great and I'm happy for the support. It means the world to me. That goes for everyone who watched this far as well. If you haven't liked the video and subscribed to my channel, then go ahead and do that. I like doing these long, in-depth videos, and if they continue to do well, I can continue to make them. Until next time, bye.