A Few Fowl Puns (Artemis Fowl: The Seventh Dwarf - Eoin Colfer)

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Product:	Artemis Fowl: The Seventh Dwarf - Eoin Colfer
Date:	30/11/01 (105 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great narration, Amusing, easy to listen to

Disadvantages: Some bits are a little confusing due to editing

Have you seen the Artemis Fowl books? They're the ones in nice shiny eye-catching dustcovers, usually sitting next to the Harry Potter books and toys. "If you liked Harry Potter, you'll love Artemis Fowl!" squeal little cardboard speech bubbles sticking out from the horrendously overpriced stuffed Hagrids in WH Smith.

Well, I did like Harry Potter, so I decided to get myself a copy of Artemis Fowl, by Eoin (that's Ewan to ewan me) Colfer. Being a bit of a bargain hunter, I went straight to Ebay, and bagged myself a hardback, paperback and audio book for...well, a bargain, anyway.

Now I'm not usually one to skip reading a book and go straight to the film or audio book. However it just so happens that I am currently caught up in reading a series of Ballet Books written for ten year olds. I also drive nearly seventy miles a day, and Sara Cox's Birthday Pig was becoming just a little repetitive. So I decided to go backwards, and stick the tape in before reading the book.

The basic plot is that a young lad named Artemis Fowl, who also happens to be a master criminal, discovers the secrets of the "little folk", and carries out a plot to use his knowledge to his finiancial advantage.

Pretty much nothing like Harry Potter at all. Well, okay, there are a few similarities. There is a Hagrid-sized butler, lots of magic, and a name for non magic people - Mud People, this time.

Despite these similarities, this is really a different type of story, and as such, will probably not appeal to as wide an audience. Much of the book centres around the Fairy police and army units, which is bound to put some young readers off. However, Fowl's name provides plentiful opportunity for appalling puns, and there is quite a lot of clever detail regarding the different types of magic folk, even in the abridged audio tape.

In fact, they managed to pack a book at least twice the size of "Philosoph
er's Stone", which took up 6 tapes, into just two cassettes. That's quite a bit of chopping and binning.

So, could I tell that the tape was abridged? Well, yes, actually. There were only a couple of moments when I had to rewind to see if I'd missed something (and almost swerved into a tractor in the process on one occasion). But I hadn't missed anything recorded on tape - explanations had been left out, probably in the hope that people wouldn't bother rewinding to find out what had happened, for fear of swerving into tractors.

Ahem.

So, what was good about the tape. Well, Adrian Dunbar was a first class narrator. He jumped from Irish to Vietnamese to American to Geordie accents, in order to represent the rather excessive number of characters. Some of these accents are described in the book. Others Dunbar has apparently adopted just for fun, but all suit their characters implicitly, even if they are a little stereotyped on occasion.

Even when characters had the same accents, he managed to greatly differentiate moods, characters and undertones. I have not heard of Adrian Dunbar before, but the man is clearly very talented, and highly entertaining to listen to. With the Harry Potter tapes, I frequently found myself drifting off, and had to rewind to catch up with the story (putting the fear of death into a few more fellow drivers), but Artmis Fowl kept me listening carefully throughout.

In fact, I'm almost glad I did listen to the audio book first now - I feel like I can read the book and find out all the little details and sub plots that were missed out of the abridged version.

If you do have a long car journey, then this is an ideal set to pass the time, particularly for families. Although this is a children's book, apparently written for young teens, there is plenty in the narration to amuse younger children, and lots of humour and plot intricacies to draw in adult listeners. r>
I look forward to the promised future film with bated breath.

Artmis Fowl the book is available from
most book stores, and the tapes are available from Amazon UK from just over £7.