Harry Potter vs Artemis Fowl

Princess Ivy

Princess Ivy

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An extremely annoying person, with belief of being very intellectual, recently not only told me how wonderful the Artemis Fowl books are, but also rubbished Harry Potter. HP of course being to low brow for such an intellectual as herself (of course the reading of young adult fiction is not low brow). this sort of snobbery irritates me incredibly. I read to enjoy and escape. if a work is well written, i don;t care that it's sold millions of copies and is enjoyed by the great masses, I'll read it. If it's not I won't. simple.
But of course i don't trust the judgement of silly people and am now seriously thinking of not bothering with Artemis Fowl simply on the basis of her liking it (childish, but what the hey). So what i'm asking is, from the viewpoint of people who have read both, considering that i enjoy hp and well writen books, what are the differences/similarities, and is AF worth a read?
Please note, this is not a thread for rubishing either work. I seriously want to know if i should make room on my reading list (and yess, i'm aware that the AF books are a series not just one book)
 
Ivy... I have read a few of Artemis Fowl books, the writing is okay and that I didn't mind. It was the Artemis Fowl himself that I didn't care for. He is nothing like Harry Potter. I'm bias and love Harry. Rowling made me laugh, were in the Fowl books did nothing for me but open the possibilities that fairies could be alive nowadays. I didn't care for Fowl one bit and stopped reading in the middle of the second book and have yet to finish it. It's been years now.
I say... don't waste your time on Fowl, there are so many other good YA stories out there to read... :)
But hey that's my two cents.
 
Alia said:
Ivy... I have read a few of Artemis Fowl books, the writing is okay and that I didn't mind. It was the Artemis Fowl himself that I didn't care for. He is nothing like Harry Potter. I'm bias and love Harry. Rowling made me laugh, were in the Fowl books did nothing for me but open the possibilities that fairies could be alive nowadays. I didn't care for Fowl one bit and stopped reading in the middle of the second book and have yet to finish it. It's been years now.
I say... don't waste your time on Fowl, there are so many other good YA stories out there to read... :)
But hey that's my two cents.
Click to expand...

But that's the whole point, Alia! You're not supposed to like Artemis - he's one of the first true anti-heroes of children's fiction in years. I thoroughly enjoyed Artemis Fowl. I wasn't quite so keen on the second, but thought the third was very clever. Artemis had actually got too likeable by the end of book 3, so Eoin Colfer very cleverly re-invented him as a heartless villain.

I would not go as far as to say that Artemis is better than HP, but he's very different. I enjoyed both sets of books for different reasons, but enjoy them, I did.

Edit: I forgot to say that I've not yet read the latest volume - The Opal Deception. Is it any good?
 
Admire evil???
Okay... that just doesn't seem right to me.

Let me put it this way... from a parents point of view.
Harry Potter... a good kid that has bad circumstances in his life. Instead of trying to fight evil with evil he does the honorable thing.
Artemis Fowl... an evil seed that has bad circumstances in his life. Who tries hard to use his cleverness and deceit to get what he wants. He kidnapped a fairy, Mark, how can that be admired. It's a line I draw when one hurts a fairy. ;)
 
Alia said:
It's a line I draw when one hurts a fairy. ;)
Click to expand...

Sorry, but I did laugh out loud at this! I take your point, though. I was reading it with an adult's perspective, but not a parent's. Having a daughter who is growing up (too) fast, I can appreciate that justifying Artemis Fowl as a hero to her would be very difficult without losing all credibility as a decent parent! As it won't be long before she'll be ready to start reading this sort of thing, I suppose I'd better change my perspective ... and fast.

I guess I'll just humbly bow out at this point ... but I still enjoyed the story. :)
 
He's actually worse than Covenant. Thomas Covenant didn't have the compassion or empathy of most heroes but he was never overtly evil. The foul Fowl steps on whomever is in his way to get what he wants for himself, he's not really evil either, just greedy, selfish and unsympathetic.
 
I read the first two or three Artemis Fowl books, and loved them. Fowl, I thought, was an excellent anti-hero, but he is, of course, not the main character of the books, thats Holly.

I wouldn't say that AF is as well written as HP, but just as enjoyable, in its own way. The two characters are chalk and cheese, while Harry is sickeningly nice, Fowl is just plain nasty. Both contribute to their stories in their own ways, and both work well in the context of the stories they are in:)

I don't personally see whats wrong with having nasty characters in these books...
 
i've no problem with anti hero's, but i'll reserve judgement till i've read them. as for justifying to your daughter mark, why? kids will make their own sense of things very well, without our help. if she wants to read it, let her, and she'll make up her own mind. be graeatful that she's not demanding jacqueline wilson!
 
Personally I prefer the HP series than the Artemis Fowl series. I could get into HP better, could get engrossed in the books and characters :D

I found I couldnt get past one book of Artemis Fowl, didnt engage me the same. Writing style is OK, but there's something missing!
 
Princess Ivy said:
i've no problem with anti hero's, but i'll reserve judgement till i've read them. as for justifying to your daughter mark, why? kids will make their own sense of things very well, without our help. if she wants to read it, let her, and she'll make up her own mind. be graeatful that she's not demanding jacqueline wilson!
Click to expand...

It's only a matter of time, Princess. It's only a matter of time.
 
Why the hell does everyone think Artemis is so nasty?

By the second book he was sickeningly sweet, and that's why I stopped enjoying them. Anti heroes can be very fun to read about, and I enjoy a good dose of sceptiscism in a child character, but I don't like books which make out their protagonist to be cold and heartless, and then have him care about the environment and his mother.

Harry Potter is toothrottingly sweet, but I did enjoy the first ones.
 
I'm pretty much with you amber.

i don't mind books being "toothrottingly sweet" though.. just so long as thats how they are all the way through.
there's no need to completely change a character, if they started off as heartless, you can't make them sweet to the extreme. it loses anything you might enjoy about either characteristic.
 
I actually love artemis fowl, and I don't like harry potter... harry is to sweet, artemis is just such a criminal, he's an anti-hero and thats what makes him so cool... that's my oppinion
 
I like Harry, and I like Artemis. When I read the first Artemis book, I found him a refreshing change: he does bad things, but at heart, he's not really a bad person. He's struggling, like so many kids, to define his values and to live up to parental expectations or deal with parental neglect. I've read the second and third, and have the fourth in my stack of To Be Read Books.

Holly's voice will help guide younger readers to do the right thing--just as her opinions affect Artemis.
 
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