Reading Level: Ages 9-12

The Eternity Code is the third book in this series about a teenage criminal mastermind and his involvement with the fairy world, which lives deep under the earth's crust.

I couldn't put the first book, Artemis Fowl, on either of our lists. There seemed to be just too much wrong with the book from the lack of characterization to the make-it-up-as-you-go plotting devoid of foreshadowing and subtlety.

But I found myself buying the second book, The Arctic Caper. I couldn't put this book on our lists either, for the same reasons as the first.

But, again, I found myself buying The Eternity Code when it was released. Like my beloved Clive Cussler books, the Artemis Fowl books had become a guilty peasure.

The writing in the The Eternity Code is no better (or worse) than in the first two volumes, so why am I now putting the Artemis Fowl series on our Good Read list? With the publication of the third volume, interesting relationships are maturing and the underlying story arc is slowly developing. At the core of these developments are Artemis' relationships with Holy Short, a LEP Recon officer who Artemis had once kidnapped, Butler, the Fowl family bodyguard, and his father, who had been missing for two years. But most interesting is Artemis' internal struggle between his criminal intellect and a hero heart.

For certain, these relationships are secondary to Colfer's action-driven stories, but they are there all the same. And the James Bond/Star Wars/Indiana Jones action make this series a good choice for the elusive pre-teen male reader.

— KB SHAW, Publisher, Spectrum - Member SCBWI