“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian

Friday, November 9, 2007

Hurrah For Graphic Non-Violence


Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl has all requirements for a classic Hollywood anti-hero – he’s smart, sassy, and capable of a moral ambiguity that’d curl Harry Potter’s wand without ever resorting to tiresomely graphic violence, which is nice when it comes to the all-important age ratings. Now Artemis is available in graphic novel format, ingeniously titled ARTEMIS FOWL: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL – or, as we like to think of it, a movie storyboard. Quoth Publisher’s Weekly:
Written by Colfer and Andrew Donkin, with art by Giovanni Rigano, the graphic novel is based on the first book in the five-book Artemis Fowl prose series and is being published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback editions, with an initial print run totalling 100,000 copies … Colfer teamed with the experienced comic artist Andrew Donkin, whose works include BATMAN: LEGENDS OF THE DARK NIGHT (DC), to ensure the pacing was right … Together, the far-flung team has created a dark, lush, eerie world which … brings Fowl, a ne’er-do-well boy genius, his allies and his enemies to life. Information sheets, mimicking government agency surveillance files, help introduce characters and allow novices to the Fowl world to keep up. While there is always concern that fans will criticize the visual representation of characters they themselves have been imagining for years, so far … the main response from devoted readers has been “excitement.”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This should be a sneaky way of getting new readers. Hopefully book haters will discover this and then move on to the real thing.

I thought it was clever to use different colours for the speech/thoughts for the different "species". Even my children who don't like comics thought this one was good.

But Butler is much more handsome in my thoughts...

Homesick At Space Camp said...

Excellent! I've just read the books and wondered what this was like. Nice review.

C