Deny All Charges (The Fowl Twins, Book 2 paperback)

By Author / Illustrator

Eoin Colfer

Genre

Adventure

Age range(s)

Publisher

HarperCollins Publishers

ISBN

9780008324902

Format

Paperback / softback

Published

27-05-2021

Synopsis

The second Fowl Twins adventure starts with a bang - literally.

Artemis's little brothers Myles and Beckett borrow the Fowl jet without permission, and it ends up as a fireball over Florida. The twins plus their fairy minder, the pixie-elf hybrid Lazuli Heitz, are lucky to escape with their lives.

The Fowl parents and fairy police force decide that enough is enough and the twins are placed under house arrest. But Myles has questions, like: who was tracking the Fowl jet? Why would someone want to blow them out of the sky? These questions must infuriate someone, because Myles is abducted and spirited away from his twin.

Now Beckett and Lazuli must collaborate to find Myles and rescue him - not easy when it was Myles who was the brains of the operation. Their chase will take them across continents, deep underground, and into subaquatic super villain lairs. They will be shot at, covered in spit, and at the receiving end of some quite nasty dwarf sarcasm. But will Beckett be able to come up with a genius plan without a genius on hand...?

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Reviews

Myles and Beckett are the younger twin brothers of the more famous Artemis Fowl. In The Fowl Twins - Deny All Charges, the second of their adventures, having stolen a jet plane and then destroyed it (obviously not intentionally), the brothers are put under house arrest by their family. As they are both geniuses of different sorts, taking a plane without permission is not that surprising. When Myles is abducted and imprisoned, Beckett, with his pixie/elf sidekick (pixel) Lazuli, set out to find him. Will Beckett be able to come up with a rescue plan without Myles by his side? Or will Myles be able to escape his captors?

This is the only book in the Fowl series I have read, and it is able to stand alone as a novel. The first thing that hits you about this book is the cleverness of the writing. The names and the acronyms and the whole premise of the story is entertaining and witty. There is also enough lower level humour to keep most children royally entertained. I loved the wittiness in things like SPAM (Spontaneous Appearance of Magic) and the children's childminder NANNI (Nano Artificial Neural Network Intelligence) and it seems that Eoin Colfer has an almost limitless imagination where these sort of things are concerned!

In many ways Colfer does not talk down to his readers, he uses high level vocabulary, and yet it still makes an easy read because it is so entertaining. He has created an entirely fictional world alongside the real world and peopled it with larger than life children and fairy creatures in an irresistible combination. Many children will love this series and I suspect they will not be in the least disappointed by the latest offering.

400 pages / Reviewed by Jacqueline Harris, teacher