This was a really good book! The writing was smart, funny, and unpretentious. 
 The protagonist here is the titular Artemis Fowl, a 12 year old criminal mastermind that's trying to rebuild his family fortune by stealing gold from the fairy kingdom. There are supporting characters, but none got close to being as interesting as Artemis himself. 
 I won't go into the plot any further, as spoilers are anathema to me! 
 I'm not saying the entire book was a home run, there were some things that I just didn't care about, but the tone of everything was spot on. It had the occasional moments where it spoke to the reader directly, which I enjoy when done well, as it was here. 
 I listened to this as an audiobook, and the narrator was Gerry O'Brien, and he turned out to be a brilliant choice! Great voice, really well done. (To be fair, coming out of the audiobook for Rick Riordan's Sword of Summer, it would have been hard to do worse than the narrator for that book!) 
 The highest praise? I'm moving straight onto book 2!