The Time Paradox

The sixth installment in the Artemis Fowl series is set in a world where an advanced civilization of fairies, including elves, centaurs, dwarfs, and demons, lives hidden beneath the earth's surface, policed by the Lower Elements Police (LEP). Fourteen-year-old Artemis Fowl, an Irish criminal prodigy who has forged unlikely friendships with several fairies, faces the most personal crisis of his life when his mother, Angeline Fowl, falls gravely ill.

Dr. Hans Schalke, a specialist in rare diseases, reports that all of Angeline's organs are failing simultaneously, giving her only days to live. Artemis attempts to heal her using fairy magic he stole during a previous journey through a dimensional space called Limbo, but the sickness violently repels his efforts and leaves his magic completely spent. A thick, clear gel oozes from his mother's pores, accompanied by the smell of lilies.

Artemis sends an urgent message to Captain Holly Short, an elf officer in LEPrecon, the fairy police's reconnaissance division. Holly arrives at Fowl Manor alone, while Foaly, a centaur who serves as the LEP's technical adviser, syncs remotely with the manor's systems to run a scan. Foaly identifies the disease as Spelltropy, a fairy plague that spreads through tainted magic. The only known cure was derived from the brain fluid of the silky sifaka lemur of Madagascar, but the species is now extinct.

Artemis confesses his role in the extinction. Almost eight years earlier, as a desperate 10-year-old trying to fund an Arctic expedition to find his missing father, he stole the last silky sifaka from a private nature reserve and sold it to the Extinctionists, a fanatical organization devoted to wiping out animal species deemed useless to humanity.

Artemis proposes traveling back in time to save the lemur. Holly and Foaly resist, citing the dangers of temporal paradoxes, but Artemis tells Holly that she infected Angeline with Spelltropy years earlier when she used healing magic on Angeline. Devastated by guilt, Holly agrees to accompany him. In truth, Artemis knows he himself caused the infection when he used stolen magic to adjust his parents' memories, but he believes the deception is necessary to save his mother.

N°1, a young demon warlock, arrives to facilitate the journey. He fills Holly's depleted magic, warns them they have three days before the temporal link breaks, and blasts them into the time stream, the magical current used for traveling through time. N°1 must remain in the present as a beacon to pull them back.

Artemis and Holly arrive in the past, physically altered: Artemis has aged considerably, while Holly has rejuvenated. Their plan to intercept the lemur in the study collapses when Butler, Artemis's formidable bodyguard, detects them during a security sweep and tranquilizes them both. Young Artemis notes Holly's pointed ears and locks them in the Bentley's reinforced trunk while proceeding with the lemur theft.

The dwarf Mulch Diggums, a career criminal, rescues them from the trunk. Artemis had arranged this by sending a note back in time offering Mulch a reward. The three pursue the lemur to Rathdown Park, the private reserve, but Mulch's tunnel emerges in the wrong cage, and a gorilla severely injures Artemis before Holly heals him with fairy magic.

Young Artemis outmaneuvers them at every turn. When the lemur escapes to the top of an electricity pylon, the elder Artemis dons a protective suit and crawls along the high-voltage cables to coax the animal onto his shoulder. Young Artemis coldly orders Butler to shoot the lemur rather than lose it. Appalled by his younger self's ruthlessness, the elder Artemis surrenders the animal.

Artemis confesses to Holly that he lied about infecting his mother. Holly is deeply wounded but channels her anger into resolve. The group commandeers a shuttle from the fairy terminal at Tara and flies to Fez, Morocco, where young Artemis is delivering the lemur to Dr. Damon Kronski, the Extinctionists' president. During the flight, Artemis uses a hologram projector to let Holly speak one last time with Commander Julius Root, her beloved mentor who, in their present, has been murdered.

At the leather souk where the exchange takes place, Holly creates a distraction while Mulch snatches the lemur from below. But young Artemis anticipated this and stationed Butler on the souk floor in disguise. Butler captures Holly, and young Artemis sells her to Kronski as a far more valuable prize: an undiscovered sentient species to put on trial at the Extinctionists' banquet.

Artemis infiltrates the banquet disguised as a fictional member called "Malachy Pasteur." He defends Holly at her trial by using sleight-of-hand to make her pointed ears appear to be surgical prosthetics, presenting fabricated evidence that she is a surgically altered human. The Extinctionists turn on Kronski for deceiving them. Artemis frees Holly, but Kronski tackles him into the execution pit.

Instead of dying, Artemis passes through holographic flames into a hidden laboratory run by Opal Koboi, a megalomaniacal pixie genius who has been harvesting biological materials from endangered animals to augment her magical powers. Artemis fights through sedation, frees himself, and opens every animal cage in the facility. The stampede overwhelms Opal, and Holly rescues Artemis with the shuttle as he rides a quagga, an extinct relative of the zebra, through the chaos.

Opal reads Mulch's memories and learns the time travelers must return to Fowl Manor. Holly pilots the battered shuttle back to Ireland. At the manor, young Artemis and Butler are waiting in the study, the precise spot needed to reenter the time stream. Artemis activates a prearranged contingency plan: Having deduced that Opal orchestrated the entire crisis, he has already convinced his younger self to accompany them forward through the time stream.

In the present, Opal reveals she followed them through the time stream, arrived days early, and infiltrated the household. She has been possessing Angeline's body using an extreme form of the mesmer, a fairy mind-control technique, simulating Spelltropy symptoms while her real body poses as Dr. Schalke's assistant. She mesmerizes Butler and forces him to trap Holly and N°1 in a barrel of rendered animal fat, which suppresses fairy magic. Butler's resistance causes him to have a heart attack.

While 10-year-old Artemis distracts Opal by revealing his identity, 14-year-old Artemis locates Opal's real body in the security booth and shoots her with a tranquilizer dart, severing her control over Angeline. He revives Butler with a defibrillator.

Opal escapes and returns for the lemur, but the LEP has already taken the animal underground. Artemis creates a decoy using his brother's toy monkey and a heat-generating gel pack, then flies a solar-powered Cessna to draw Opal away from the manor. She destroys the plane, and Artemis crash-lands on the Hook Head peninsula. He lures Opal onto a sea stack called Little Sister, which is actually the shell of a kraken, a massive sea creature. When Opal discovers she holds only a toy, Artemis fires a laser into the kraken's methane reserves, triggering an explosion that buries her in rubble.

Holly rescues Artemis, heals his injuries, and flies him home. N°1 mind-wipes young Artemis and sends him back to his own time, closing the temporal loop. N°1 synthesizes the lemur's brain fluid to cure Angeline, ensuring the animal will never be harmed. Holly kisses Artemis on the cheek and departs.

Artemis finds his mother recovering. Angeline reveals that Opal's possession left her with all of the pixie's memories: She knows everything about the fairy world, the time travel, and her son's secret life. She demands complete honesty, and Artemis realizes his era of secrets is over.

In the epilogue, an LEP team digs through the kraken rubble but finds only an empty helmet. Opal has escaped. Meanwhile, almost eight years in the past, 10-year-old Artemis wakes with red sparks fading before his eyes, remnants of the mind-wipe. The memories dissolve, but one idea lingers: "Fairies. Something about fairies" (385).