The Fowl Twins, Book Two: Deny All Charges

By: Eoin Colfer

Narrated by: Nathaniel Parker

The second Fowl Twins adventure, a spinoff of the blockbuster Artemis Fowl series, 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? What is the bigger picture? These questions must infuriate someone, because Myles is abducted and spirited away from his twin. Beckett and Lazuli must collaborate to find Myles and rescue him. Their chase will take them across continents, deep underground, and into subacquatic super villain lairs. They will be shot at, covered in spit, and be at the receiving end of some quite nasty dwarf sarcasm. Will Beckett be able to come up with a genius plan without a genius on hand?

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LOVE this series & author

Another great addition to the Colfer canon! The Fowl twins are back & better than ever. I just can't wait 'til Artemis gets back from Mars!!

Loved it!!!!!!!!!!!!😀😂😍

Very funny very clever many many plot twists recommended for anyone and everyone

loved it!!!!!

Does not disappoint!

After having read the entire Artemis Fowl series, I was really excited to continue the adventures of the Fowl family. The new characters stand on their own and are developed in a way that makes you love them just as much as the original characters. The story was fun and playful with just enough drama, adventure, danger, friendship, and humor.

Classic Colfer Adventure

Non-spoiler review:
This sequel does not disappoint! If you’re a fan of the Artemis Fowl/Fowl Twins series, this is definitely a hugely entertaining new entry, with a lot of callbacks and references to earlier books. Maybe too many if you’re not into that kind of sentimentality, but personally I enjoyed them. Of course, I have the nostalgia goggles of having read the first AF book in 6th and following the series since. There are a few action bits that get a little gruesome for young listeners or if you’re just not into that kind of thing, but it’s not anything really worse than what’s been previously described in this series, and it’s brief. The performance was excellent as always, though I noticed 3 instances of the wrong names being used. Not sure if that was an error in recording or typos not caught in the book. But overall, I binged this overnight and loved it.

There are only two sour notes for me in this story which keep it from being 5 stars across the board. Both are story points, and both a little spoiler-y, so proceed with caution if you care about that.

Spoilers!

I did think it was kind of nice to have the Fowl parents get a tiny bit more involved, since they were never more than background characters before, but I’m not sure I like what they contributed. The scene where Myles and Beckett are getting scolded by their dad was deeeeply uncomfortable for me and seemed extreme—though to be fair that was kind of the point. But for personal reasons I found it highly upsetting and did not win the parents any points with me. Again, though, it just happened to hit a chord with me personally that you might not share.

The other, much more egregious plot bit, was a really disappointing instance of Bury Your Gays.

NOW, a lot of people are going to go “What gays?? No one was gay in this book!” To which I say, yes, no one was explicitly said to be gay and in fact the potential gay was pretty well shut down by qualifiers like “love you like a sister,” but just because the subtext wasn’t intended doesn’t mean it isn’t there. And it’s pretty blatant if you ask me. So it was incredibly disappointing to me that one of the totally-not-a-lesbian-at-all characters died right after what was, in everything but name, a highly-charged confession of love. Again, you can argue that it wasn’t a Buried Gay because they were not explicitly gay BUT for me, it’s close enough. These two were “not gay” in the same way that a grizzly bear wearing a sign that says “I’m a very big dog lol don’t worry about it” is “not a bear.”

I have no idea if this was an issue with publisher censorship or conscious choice by the author, but it does sadden me that it couldn’t be a clear, onscreen (so to speak) lesbian relationship. You could have done it by not changing anything aside from deleting “like a sister” from the narrative. Literally erase two instances of it, just 6 words, and it would have been a really sweet, melodramatic romance. If one of the parties involved had been male, it DEFINITELY would have been read as a romance.

My respect for everyone involved would have gone way up if they’d done it but as it stands it’s gone down a bit. Maybe the fact that it’s so blatant means that the author intended it to be gay but made surface-level concessions for censorship reasons. Or maybe not, again, I don’t know. Definitely not enough to negate over a decade of goodwill I’ve built up for Mr. Colfer but my point still stands.