Artemis Fowl and the Last Guardian

Artemis Fowl has just completed his therapy when a summons arrives. Butler, his bodyguard, and Holly Short of the LEP are called in alongside him to learn of a new plan from Opal Koboi. She is trying to alter the past, and the attempt sets off explosions across the globe that cripple fairy and human technology alike.

The human world falls into chaos. Opal then opens a portal on the Fowl estate, and the spirits of an ancient fairy army pour out. They take hold of people, animals and the dead.

With his family in danger, Artemis has to team up with fairy allies, some familiar and some new. They include the centaur Foaly and the dwarf thief Mulch Diggums. Their task is to stop Opal before her scheme is finished.

This is the eighth and last novel in the Artemis Fowl series. The heist-caper mood of the early books gives way to a race to head off an apocalypse, though the dry humour, the gadgets and the bonds between characters remain. In 2012 the Irish Book Awards gave it the senior Children's Book of the Year prize.

The question driving the book is whether a former schemer and his unlikely allies can shut a portal that is turning the dead against the living.