Artemis Fowl: How to Be a LEPrecon: Your Guide to the Gear, Gadgets, and Goings-on of the World's Most Elite Fairy Force (Unabridged‪)‬

Disrespectful “omage”

Parker used different voices for the characters in this book than he used in the original series, and I can only guess that he did it because the characters in this story bare little resemblance to them. This book is such a miss! I can’t even fit half of my objections within this review, and I worry that even if I listed them all, the author would either ignore them or fix only these mistakes and continue bastardizing the franchise in other aspects.
Number one: Commander Julius Root is a male mentor to Captain Holly Short, the “first female ever in Recon,” in a highly sexist police force. Making Commander Root female, whether an oversight by this author or simply a deliberate choice to stray from the original, causes the significance of both Root’s and Holly’s characters to be diminished. It’s harmful to Colfer’s carefully crafted story which actually gives children the tools to identify and correct sexism in the workplace, including for boys, aspiring to become mentors for promising women when they themselves reach leadership, helping to break the glass ceiling. In contrast, this portrayal of the LEP being gender-blind just feels like white-washing.
My revulsion for this book mainly stems from this misinterpretation or fudging of the circumstances in the original books, plus a thousand other, smaller errors about fairy culture, the characters, and their relationships with one another, but I shall pivot now and explain why this book gets two stars instead of one.
First, if you never read Artemis Fowl, this book stands alone as being pretty intersting, and pretty funny. I particularly liked the first cautionary tale, and its comedic ending. I also thought the allusion to Holly’s father in the book was clever, and careful to leave room for exploration later. I can sort of respect that the author didn’t go too far into this history for fear of continuity mistakes with the rest of the series, and given how many errors there were, I think this concern, if it exists, was well-founded. Let’s get into the nitpicks.
-Root tells a story allegedly from five centuries back, yet human dynamite and fairy weaponry of the same models used in present day are mentioned.
-Spud’s is a vegentarian fast food chain, as most fairies are vegetarian. The restaurant does not have a good reputation, and Holly would never sacrifice her muscle tone and fitness by eating there.
-Foley’s hover trolley does not have an automatic clearance compensator. That was a fib Foley fed to Root near the end of the first book, and it was immediately exposed when the trolley crashed into the first stair it encountered, which Root called out.
-Holly’s promotion to captain was not fresh when she was kidnapped, and even at the time of her appointment, the tech in LEP officers’ arsenal was less sophisticated — take the Neutrino 500 referenced in LEPRecon, the short story inside the Artemis Fowl files which Manning almost certainly never read.
-Chix Verbal (don’t know how the name is actually spelled because I exclusively listen to this series via audiobook) is a male, though Manning correctly identifies his interest in Holly — which would be hard to miss.
-Neutrino weapons are energy blasters, not multi-element weapons. The exception is the hydrosion shell, which carries a reasonable amount of compressed water — not a swimming pool full, and Holly is much too precise and careful with firearms to have caused a flood with such items. The book does point out the seeming contradiction that shell-based projectiles are supposedly fired from fairy blasters, but the liberties it took claiming that these weapons fire all elements was a stretch too far. Also, the Neutrino 2000 has a nuclear battery that effectively does not deplete. Cautionary Tale #3 is fatally flawed.
-Foley is not an officer. He is a civilian consultant. He does not hold the title of officer, and Root brings this up whenever he oversteps his role.
-The concept of the Root Canal is a hilarious oxymoron for which I applaud Manning for making it, but again, Holly doesn’t have a “cheat day.” She’s a workaholic. On that note, while Manning effectively captures the bravado of the LEP, it manages to portray the majority of its members as idiots, which is not the case. Also, the character of Grub is mishandled. Instead of claiming not to take his job too seriously, he should be bragging about his encounter with Butler, spinning ever more elaborate yarns with himself as the heroic conquerer. Trouble also does not appreciate Grub’s cowardice but the dislike is not strong enough to make him ring out his brother in an interview about Trouble himself. This also is an overstep.
Finally of the points I wish to make in this review, Briar’s character is close to the mark, but more generally, the lack of commitment to this book being written at a specific point in time within the series, such as right after the first book for example, means it is unclear if he is hiding ambition from his best friend Commander Root, or being ridiculed after a ploy for power that went disastrously wrong, or in fact dead following his second misadventure. There is no point at which he would be showing hostility to Root before his demotion, and no one would care to interview him afterward, as his continued presence in the LEP was an embarrassment to the officers he betrayed, such as Root. There are plenty more of these errors, but you get the idea.