Title: High Wizardry | Author: Diane Duane | Publisher: Magic Carpet Books (2003)

Title: High Wizardry | Author: Diane Duane | Publisher: Magic Carpet Books (2003)

-- Tamora Pierce, Wild Magic

We absolutely stan any book that brings the banhammer down on dickhead guys flirting instead of respecting the chain of command. As a woman who taught for a lot of years, you really do learn how to walk into a classroom and how to shut this shit down. Thank goodness that there are books out there that tell girls that they are not ever expected to put up with that kind of unprofessional nonsense.

Artemis Fowl and That One Time Opal Koboi Went Full Disney Villain

Ah yes, the book that explores the aftermath of trying to mind-wipe Artemis Fowl and the consequences of assuming that just because your archnemesis is in a coma, they're not plotting their revenge. It's no secret that we stan Opal Koboi in this house, but uhhh...not gonna lie, she makes that REALLY DIFFICULT in the early chapters of this book. Let's talk Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception.

*As per usual with sequels and books that aren't the first in the series, spoilers abound below the break.*

Opal Koboi being hated by her entire engineering class in college--Foaly included--is most easily and canonically chalked up to systemic fairy sexism. I'm not here to dispute that charge, because there was absolutely airy sexism involved, but I submit to you, dear reader, that the fact that Opal had matered cleansing comas by age 14 and could literally study in her sleep might have also had something to do with it. Although if it had, Foaly might not have been so lackadaisical about letting Opal rot in the J. Argon clinic.

Let's just take a minute to appreciate that cloning herself and plotting a breakout from a stupid secure mental health facility with ADDED LEP SECURITY is the BACKUP plan. Because hot damn honey, replacing yourself with a clone requires a level of planning that is like, fourth-level chess master with a flair for the dramatic--and we'll get back to that flair for the dramatic in a second, because it is fully on display for every single one of Opal's three main plots in this book.

Her first main plan is to get revenge on Holly and Root for disrupting her plan to become Empress of Haven by framing Holly for Root's murder by tricking Holly into taking a practically impossible shot to disarm an explosive device that was strapped to the Commander's chest and broadcasting video but not audio of the whole event to the LEP. Like, Opal. My girl. That is simultaneously brutal and dramatic of you.

And the thing about the entire scene is that it's really, really damn well written. I got this book on release day, and bawled all the way through this and I think the next couple of chapters. The extra cruel thing that Opal did here was choose a murder weapon that there was precisely ZERO hope of coming back from. Holly may have managed a four-minute healing for Butler in the last book, but as (I'm pretty sure) Foaly says, "magic doesn't work on melted slop." The bomb Opal strapped to Root's chest doesn't just kill him, it collapses the chute tunnel behind Holly as she makes a desperate bid to escape in time to rescue Artemis from another bomb. There was no way to bring Root back from this, and because Opal is a high-drama nemesis, Root is of course suffering the whole way down. The bomb is strapped to his chest using octo-bonds, and Opal spends the entire scene remotely tightening them, slowly crushing Root's chest while Holly stands six feet away to stop the proximity sensor from blowing them both to kingdom come. Root's death is brutal, painful, and Holly spends the entire rest of the book mourning him. It is HEARTBREAKING for a middle grade death scene, and really hella extra for a middle grade villain.

Opal's plan for revenge on Artemis is a bit less moustache-twirling, but not by much. She has clocked that Artemis is really into art theft since his mind wipe, so she gets to The Fairy Thief before he does and plants a bio-bomb tracker in the painting tube that will activate once the tube is opened. So her plan was for Artemis to die in a moment of ironic triumph while Holly looked on. Because oh yeah, Holly bails on the explosion in the Haven chute just barely in time on the hope and prayer of saving Artemis. Unfortunately, Holly gets to the hotel just in time to see the bomb go off. Artemis is fine because Butler is just that damn good, but Holly is having arguably the worst day if her life.

As she collapses to the roof of the hotel trying to process the fact that three of the most important people in her life have just been murdered in front of her--and the niggling worry that the sweet spot might not have been real and she might have just flat-out killed Root herself--who shows up to gloat? Opal goddamn Koboi. In tow Opal has a second bio-bomb for Holly that she barely escapes by containing it with her helmet. As a bonus side effect, Ark Sool and everyone in the lower elements thinks Holly is dead now, because all her vitals flattened simultaneously as the bomb fried her helmet. So now Foaly is also having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

And in a brief sidebar: Opal might be a dramatical cats villain, but we love her. We DO NOT love Ark Sool, because his ass made Foaly go over the footage of Root's death with a fine tooth comb to try to prove Holly's guilt, and even Foaly almost breaks because he literally has to slow-mo through the footage of Root being blown to hell multiple times. Like, Foaly just has PTSD now. That's just a thing that Ark Sool casually did to the centaur who is almost single-hoofedly standing between humans and the People. NICE GOING, ASSHOLE. We hate Ark Sool.

Now, Opal's track record for successful plans in this book seems to have begun and ended with cloning herself and having the Brill twins break her out of the Argon Clinic, because her revenge plan is 1 for 3, and her backup revenge plan just gets WILD. On discovering that Holly and Artemis suvived, Opal captures them and drops them in a defunct theme park that was human wonders of the world themed and is currently overrun by trolls. And the really wild thing is that Opal had to have either done this before or else has the best freaking team in the world, because the exits are newly blocked and there are little screens with gloats on them scattered throughout the whole park. Holly and Artemis do escape, but it would have definitely easier if the LEP hadn't mind-wiped Artemis, because he was definitely not working with a full deck and kept trying to just *wait out the delusion* instead of actively running from trolls with a taste for human flesh. None of that is ideal, but thanks once again to Butler and Mulch, Artemis and Holly live to foil Opal's big main plan.

The TLDR on this plan is to throw humans and fairies into a massive war by exposing the fairies when they try to sneakily scupper a human attempt to mine the mantle for power. This involves a lot of warheads and phsyics and attempts to direct a metric ton of molten metal eating through the earth's crust. For being the objectively highest stakes plot, the book doesn't spend a whole lot of time on this, and I can't blame them. Opal going full vengeful dramatic villain is WAY more interesting. Unfortunately, Holly and Artemis do manage to thwart Opal, who has the meltdown of all meltdowns right before she spends a week as a human child on a farm--for complicated reason that I cannot be bothered to explain here, because Opal Koboi is objectively too fantastic and dramatic to deserve that...except for how she kind does deserve that for what she did to Commander Root.

Ark Sool probably also deserves it, because he doesn't let Holly attend Root's funeral, and proceeds to bury her in internal affairs investigations. We really, REALLY hate Ark Sool.

So overall, this book really marks a turning point/new beginning for Artemis and Pals, and this book is where Opal Koboi arguably shines brightest because our girl is UNHINGED and we love to watch it happen. Even if we do start watching it through tears.

BOOK HYPE: Scarlett Gale, red, the wolf, and the woods

Scarlett gale is the author of 2 books that I absolutely adore (His secret Illuminations and its sequel) which is so far up my alley it's embarrassing

I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am for this new work by her..it comes out September 1,2023

A hardworking farmer who moonlights as a dog trainer, Red longs for her brothers to step it up on the family farm so she can get a whole five minutes of uninterrupted time to herself. When her grandma calls down with a delivery request, Red jumps at the chance to go visit the house in the woods she loves so much. No farm chores and a good hike? It’s basically the perfect day!

…right until a wolf walks out of the woods and asks if he can join her.

Sound familiar? Red, the Wolf, and the Woods is a playful, modern take on the classic fairy tale, with a steamy romance at its core. Take some time away from your daily grind to join Red on a flirty, feral adventure!

THE MURDERBOT DIARIES: A Fan Animation

Subtitles in English, Spanish, French, and German.

In early 2021, as talk of a Murderbot Diaries adaptation was underway, fans of the series started asking each other questions like, "What would we want to see from an adaptation of our favorite book series?" and "Wouldn't it be cool if this or that scene was animated?" and "Hey, don't YOU know some things about animation?" and "What if a bunch of fans got together to make a Murderbot fan animation?"

Two years of teamwork later, the Murderbot Diaries Fanimation Project presents our labor of love: a fully realized animation adapting scenes from the first four novellas into a trailer, dedicated to showcasing everything we love about the story of our favorite rogue SecUnit.

Make sure to leave a like and share the video if you enjoyed our animation! And tell us what you liked about the video on our social media:

Ask the team on Tumblr | Instagram | YouTube

CREDITS

TheSteelChimera @thesteelchimera - Voice of Murderbot, Production Coordination, Script

Alex from Mars @imaginariumgeographica - Voice of ART Kebi/SpiralofDragon @spiralofdragon - Voice of Mensah, Character Design

Verso - Voice of Ratthi, Social Media

Kes @kesbeacon - Voice of Gurathin

brokenRAmodule @broken-risk-assessment-module @contakaidigon - Production Coordination, Backgrounds, Animation, Script, Storyboard, Character Design, Editing, 3D, Sounds & Music

theash0 @theash0 - Production Coordination, Animation, Editing, 3D, Graphics & Effects

Cephei - Backgrounds

ChimaeraKitten @chimaerakitten - Backgrounds, Graphics & Effects

Jude - Backgrounds

Livyatan @groovyleviathan - Backgrounds, Character Design Lue - Backgrounds, Animation

Nirelaz @nirelaz - Backgrounds, Animation, Lighting, Sounds & Music

sometimesihaveideas @sometimesihaveideas - Backgrounds, 3D, Sounds & Music

TechnicalToad - Backgrounds

Vanessa - Backgrounds, 3D

Alex van Gore @alex-van-gore - Animation, Storyboard, Lighting, Sounds & Music

audzilla - Animation, Lighting, Graphics & Effects

Mar @souldagger - Character Design

Sound & Music References

EXCUSE ME, That Is My Emotional Support Bodyguard

If Artemis Fowl was originally planned as a trilogy (and I have no idea, I was literally too emotionally distraught from rereading this book to Google that), then this book is a really lovely ending. It's also just a massive emotional roller coaster, especially for a middle-grade series! Let's talk Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code.

*Spoilers Below the Break. Be Warned*

This book could honestly also be titled Artemis Fowl: American Businessmen are Scum and I Will Personally Make them Pay, because one of the very, very few flat-out mistakes we see Artemis make occurs in the opening chapters of this book. Our boy attempts to extort American businessman Jon Spiro into paying him an exorbitant fee to keep his C-Cube (a peice of tech that integrates fairy technology to make literally everything else on the planet obsolete, with the added bonus that if anyone looks too hard at it, the fairy world could be exposed) off the market.

Butler--bless his bodyguard heart--spends this entire meeting with his instincts screaming "Something is seriously wrong," but Artemis is so damn sure that he has the high ground that he ignores a couple of fairly blatant red flags to bait the already pissed-off businessman. And then, of course, the angry American does the most predictably fucking American thing in the world and pulls a gun.

And Butler does his job. This man who we have grown to love through two books literally stands in front of the bullet and makes sure that Artemis is safe before literally using his dying breath to tell Artemis his name before dying in his principle's arms.

Guys, gals, and nonbinary pals: This scene is DEVASTATING.

We are intimately tangled up in the moment, with Artemis and Butler's reactions. As someone who has had life-threatening medical emergencies, Butler's calm in the moment is totally understandable, but when I read this book for the first time, that calm was scarier than him panicking would have been. Artemis is a normal human boy with normal human boy emotions in this scene, and because he is so rarely that in these books, that is perhaps more devastating than if he had also been calm in the scene. Basically, if this death scene hadn't been reversed in later chapters, it would be #1 on my list of book death scenes that scarred me for life.

But Artemis being Artemis, he finds his criminal mastermind instincts and stuffs Butler's body in a fish freezer, gets help from a professional cryogenicist, and then gets Holly on the line to pull off a hail-Mary four-minute healing. And the best part is that there are actual consequences. The healing takes about a decade off of Butler's life, and because some kevlar fibers got caught up in the wound, his breathing is less free than it was before. But the important thing is that Butler. Is. Alive.

Then, of course, Artemis has to come clean to the fairies that he came within a hair's breadth of exposing their entire civilization to humans and that he has left the door unlocked and cracked open for Jon Spiro to expose them. This is, of course, wholly beyond the pale, so the Council authorizes them fairy help to retrieve the cube, but for a price: All the humans involved get mind-wiped after the cube is successfully retrieved. Artemis agrees, because this kid has eaten enough humble pie today to kill a large horse.

Butler, despite being alive, is not in any shape to go heisting, so Juliet and Mulch Diggums round out the heist team. Jon Spiro is rich, paranoid, and quite frankly evil, so this heist is a CHALLENGE, but ultimately they do end up succeeding, and Artemis, Butler, and Juliet submit to mind wipes. That scene is weirdly touching, but it is not without the caveat that allowed the series to continue beyond book three: They're wearing mirrored contact lenses to beat the mesmer, and Artemis slips Mulch a computer disc full of files that will spark enough memories to reverse the mind wipe.

This isn't my favorite Artemis Fowl book by any stretch of the imagination, but it's arguably the best heist in the series and the scenework and the development of Artemis's character is strong as hell. Plus, watching Jon Spiro spiral into a hell that is largely of his own making after he had Butler shot was deeply satisfying.