FANTASY FULFILLED
If you didn’t have the good fortune to grow up with Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer’s series of eight fantastical adventures of the young criminal mastermind, you might well have relished reading them to family members, or sneaking a peek when the kids finally put them down. And if you did, you almost certainly wished you could have the same rip-roaring reading experience as an adult.
And now you can, because the bestselling Irish author has written his first fantasy novel for adult readers. Highfire has all the Colfer trademarks, being a smart genre-bending fantasy novel starring Vern, a foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, vodka-swilling dragon who wears a Flashdance T-shirt, The last of his kind, he hides out in the Louisiana Bayou. Violent, funny and populated by a cast of misfit adventurers, the ensuing story rollicks along at a cracking pace.
It was, says Eoin, originally intended as a book for children.
‘Highfire almost happened by accident,’ he says. ‘That book started as a children’s book – the first couple of chapters were old grumpy character meets child and heart melts. I had a grumpy dragon. And it didn’t feel right and I felt I was holding back. As soon as I let the dragon be foul mouthed and drunken it felt like a better character. But the writing is not that different. I don’t have to think about suitability or what’s appropriate for children and that’s the only difference.’
In common with Eoin’s children’s literature, though, the world it creates is one of unbridled imagination.
‘Most kids’ books are demented but we’re not really allowed to bring that through to adult books,’ he