Out with a Whimper
It's always sad when something you've been following for a long time comes to a close, but there's always the hope that it will finish on a high. 2012 has seen a lot of endings for me, but unfortunately they've all been disappointing (to varying degrees). In this post, I'll tackle "The Last Guardian", the eighth - and presumably final - Artemis Fowl novel, a series I've been reading for eleven years (spoilers throughout).
When I first started the Artemis Fowl books I was twelve, the same age as the protagonist. Its was a fascinating world, with high-tech fairies, amoral child masterminds, and exciting set-pieces. Unfortunately, the writing seemed to grow less sophisticated as time went on, with the low quality of the previous entry leaving me unenthusiastic about this adventure. While I do like being proven right, I'd have been far happier had I been wrong on this occasion.
So, why does it disappoint? Essentially, it's because the premise of the novel has Artemis trying to stop humanity from being wiped out. The stakes are so ludicrously high that you know from the very beginning that he will succeed. Furthermore, there's a scene very early on that has a catastrophic effect on modern technology, with everything from vehicles to the internet to satellites being destroyed. This would result in the loss of life on a massive scale, and completely robs the rest of the book of impact. The ending tries to gloss things over the repercussions with a silly epilogue, but the idealistic picture he tries to paint completely fails to make me suspend my disbelief, especially when it's at odds with the message of "Humanity is destructive" that he's been crafting throughout the series.
Another fault with the novel is the second plot thread, the Berserkers. They are ancient warriors who fought against humanity back when the People still lived on the surface, choosing to be sealed in the Earth for ten thousand years to protect the first Gate. They yearn for the day they are released to fight the hated humans, and one of them imagines how fearsome he'd be in the body of a troll with his elivsh mind. Unfortunately, due to the location of the seal, when they are summoned by Opal Koboi (yes, her again) the vast majority of them end up inhabiting long dead bodies and animals such as hunting dogs, rabbits and even a robin.
A robin.
They then proceed to mill around and be completely unthreatening for the remainder of the book, several of them getting eaten by fan-favourite Mulch Diggums (their souls go to heaven, the dogs just die). Juliet and both of Artemis's brothers are taken over, but nothing at all comes of this. One of his brothers hits Opal and the other sporadically regains control of his body to crack wise, but they do nothing else. The spirit possessing Juliet is the greatest disappointment - she is the only one not restricted by her host body, but Colfer makes no effort to craft an interesting setpiece between, say, her and Butler. In fact, Butler does almost nothing at all this book; Holly at one point remarks that if a spirit possessed Butler it'd all be over, but having read the book they would have done just fine.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to disappointing use of characters. An ancient troll who, if controlled, could have made for a scene to match the one where Butler defeats another using medieval armour back in the first book, is instead beaten by Mulch offscreen (somehow). The warlock traitor who attempted to betray the People and was the reason for the the "wipe out humanity" fail-safe gets a single mention, so apparently he did it because reasons (and how does it make sense to have an eradicate humanity button when it was a fairy who sold you out?). The younger Opal Koboi, who escaped from her timestream back in the sixth book, somehow goes from criminal mastermind to incompetent wretch, and is unceremoniously disposed of in the opening scenes.
(Speaking of previous books, whatever happened to Minerva from the fifth adventure? While I appreciate that her inclusion was the second most ridiculous fanfiction-esque bit of writing Eoin Colfer has ever done - the most ridiculous being de-aging Holly and having her kiss Artemis in book six - having her as an ally would have made for a far more robust story. Ignoring her seems ill-advised, especially as she was present in the book where Miles and Beckett are introduced. But I digress.)
Artemis himself is completely and utterly worthless until the very last 30 pages or so. This is not an exaggeration. He achieves nothing at all. The book's narrative tries to justify this by saying "he was so used to his plans succeeding, he never made a backup", but that's just patently false for anyone who's read the previous seven in the series. Just about the only character that manages to live up to expectations is Opal's clone, who is so blatantly telegraphed as the solution to the problem that even a twelve year old could figure it out. To be fair though, I thought the same about a line where Holly recalls a family nickname her father called her by - I presumed that she would encounter the original as the eponymous Last Guardian, but it was apparently a red herring.
That might be giving the author too much credit though. The book is filled with a great many pointless little exchanges and scenes that do absolutely nothing to advance the plot. There's a bit where Foaly sets off to rescue his wife, Caballine, a character of no consequence whatsoever. She's no Julius Root, whose death was a major motivating factor in Book 4. She's not even on the level of Vinyaya, Holly's role model who was unceremoniously disposed of for no particular reason at the start of (the also disappointing) Book 7. The entire little interlude with her just reminds you of better times and better books, when goblins were threatening and time stops were cool.
Nothing cool happens in The Last Guardian. This isn't an exaggeration; literally every time there's a chance to have a cool scene, it's brought to an abrupt end. Butler vs a Juliet inhabited by an extremely experienced combatant? Nah. Giant solar powered laser? Nah. Savvy Troll? Nah. Butler vs Juliet 2: Electric Boogaloo? Nah. The only danger our heroes face, and I must stress that I am not joking here, is when they are accosted by large, magical crickets, and have to jump into a lake to escape them.
Crickets.
The writing also seems particularly weak. Artemis was a far more interesting character when he was technically the villain of the series - it made him an evil genius rather than an insufferable child. Characters who have proven themselves to be more than one-note end up falling back on the tried and tested, and most of the jokes fall flat. To cap it off, there' s a lot of showing and telling; it's bad writing at best and insulting of the reader's intelligence at worst.
It's sad really, Artemis's last outing could have been so much more. For what it's worth though, the last scene is quite poignant and a nice callback, if marred somewhat by overtelling and pointless amnesia.
