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A review by greenskydragon
Deny All Charges by Eoin Colfer
3.0
I have no idea why Colfer decided to force that phrase (deny all charges) throughout the book. Perhaps it has some significance, besides being the book's title, that I'm ignorant of, but as it stands, it just got shoved in randomly and stuck out awkwardly.
The ending was okay. Nothing to write home about, although it did set up one character to be a wild card Colfer can drag in at a later date whenever. Another character from the first book is set up as a Moriarty of a sorts, which might turn out okay for the series as a whole (re: not setting opal koboi as the power ceiling in the first series then crashing and burning because of it). So hopefully he's learned his lesson in that arena.
That book could've shed at least 40% of its published content and been fine, that's how much filler there was. He also had this annoying habit of summarizing right before a thing happened, then resummarizing shortly thereafter if not right after. He was going for funny and it just got annoying. The omniscient narrator jumping in everyone's head also felt like "I need to fill a word count" more than "I'm doing this for character development/story reasons" due to the extent of thoughts shown, and restated, and resaid again. Did I mention he repeats things a lot?
All in all, solid 3 out of 5. Maybe a 3.5 on a generous day, but nowhere near a mercy round up to 4. The serial cast wasn't really meaningfully expanded, unless the parents are going to be larger players and stick around. (Heaven help Colfer's characterization of them, though. They're supposed to be ex-criminal masterminds who've birthed tgree criminal masterminds of their own? And yet they're that pathetically incompetent? Please.) The boys have mostly established themselves, but while I understand the literary limitations for mixing Artemis with the twins I really hope he brings them together. The "Artemis is in space" excuse feels lazy at this point, and if we're three books down the road and Artemis is still up there, I'm gonna yeet something
The ending was okay. Nothing to write home about, although it did set up one character to be a wild card Colfer can drag in at a later date whenever. Another character from the first book is set up as a Moriarty of a sorts, which might turn out okay for the series as a whole (re: not setting opal koboi as the power ceiling in the first series then crashing and burning because of it). So hopefully he's learned his lesson in that arena.
That book could've shed at least 40% of its published content and been fine, that's how much filler there was. He also had this annoying habit of summarizing right before a thing happened, then resummarizing shortly thereafter if not right after. He was going for funny and it just got annoying. The omniscient narrator jumping in everyone's head also felt like "I need to fill a word count" more than "I'm doing this for character development/story reasons" due to the extent of thoughts shown, and restated, and resaid again. Did I mention he repeats things a lot?
All in all, solid 3 out of 5. Maybe a 3.5 on a generous day, but nowhere near a mercy round up to 4. The serial cast wasn't really meaningfully expanded, unless the parents are going to be larger players and stick around. (Heaven help Colfer's characterization of them, though. They're supposed to be ex-criminal masterminds who've birthed tgree criminal masterminds of their own? And yet they're that pathetically incompetent? Please.) The boys have mostly established themselves, but while I understand the literary limitations for mixing Artemis with the twins I really hope he brings them together. The "Artemis is in space" excuse feels lazy at this point, and if we're three books down the road and Artemis is still up there, I'm gonna yeet something