In Chapter 1, twelve-year-old criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl and his

assistant Julius Butler are looking for a fairy in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
They meet with their contact, Nguyen, who leads them to her hiding spot,
where she has been posing as a healer. She is an alcoholic and refuses to
do business with Artemis until he hands her a bottle of Irish whiskey.
Artemis knows she has lost her magical powers due to centuries of alcohol
dependence. However, the whiskey has been laced with holy water, which
is fatal to fairies. Artemis tells her that he will give her an antidote to the
poison and a serum that will return her magical powers if they let her
photograph her Book, which contains the secrets of the fairy world. She
agrees, and Butler and Artemis photograph the Book before returning
home.

In Chapter 2, Artemis and Butler arrive back at the Fowl Manor. Artemis
visits his mother, who has been resting for nearly a year. She recognizes
him initially but quickly becomes frantic as she explains that she can hear
voices, and Artemis can listen to her terrified sobs as he walks from her
room. In his study, Artemis spends several hours translating the book. He
does not get lucky for a long time until he realizes that the characters in the
book are very similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics. After this success, he
discovers that the book cannot be read from left to right and is written in a
spiral. Artemis is forced to do all of these translations by hand because no
computer program will recognize the language. Eventually, he succeeds,
and we discover what he wants from the Book: fairy gold, hoping it will
restore his family name.
In Chapter 3, we meet a new character, Officer Holly Root of the Lower
Elements Police. She is an elf who lives underground with the rest of the
fairy population, who refer to themselves as the People. When she gets to
work, her boss, Commander Root, gives her a hard time for being a few
minutes late and threatens to demote her from Recon to Traffic duty.
However, she convinces him to give her a second chance, presented as a
loose troll that has made its way aboveground, on its way to terrorize the
human world. Root tells Holly that she is not meant to retrieve the troll by
herself; she is meant to do recon before the Retrieval team can come and
fix the mess. However, once Holly tracks down the troll, she sees that he
has broken into an Italian restaurant, and she has to think on her feet. She
disobeys Root's orders and tries to fight the troll herself. Chaos ensues, but
she can eventually subdue the troll and put the humans in the restaurant to
sleep. Holly is so exhausted following her struggle with the troll that she
falls asleep alongside them. Her magical powers are entirely depleted—it
has been four years since she has performed a ritual that all fairies need to
complete to rejuvenate their magical powers. She wakes to find that the
Retrieval squad has already arrived, and though the restaurant is in
disarray, Root tells her that she did a good job considering the situation. He
then commands her to complete the night ritual as soon as possible. Holly
sets off to do so.

In Chapter 4, Holly travels to Ireland to complete the Ritual. She finds a

secluded spot that is hard to access on foot. Before her magical abilities
can be returned, she is ambushed by Artemis and Butler, who have been
staking out for over four months. Butler shoots her with a tranquilizer dart
when she is bending toward the ground to pick up an acorn. Holly and
Artemis exchange a few words, and Holly tries the mesmer spell on them.
However, she is unsuccessful, probably because Artemis and Butler wear
reflective sunglasses. Ultimately, Butler successfully hits her with a dart,
and Holly falls unconscious. Butler stuffs her unconscious body into a
duffel bag, and Artemis picks up her fallen helmet.

In Chapter 5, Foaly tells Commander Root that Holly has lost contact and
was likely abducted by a pair of humans. Commander Root jumps into
action and puts himself back in the field. This is a dangerous and delicate
mission—the fate of the People is at risk, and Holly's life is in danger.
Meanwhile, Artemis and Butler go to the Dublin docks and ask Butler to
create a diversion. He picks a fight with six burly dockhands and quickly
incapacitates them. Butler makes it back to the car and finds Artemis. Holly
wakes up in Fowl manor, where Juliet is watching her with a large pair of
reflective glasses on her face. Holly tries to convince Juliet to remove the
glasses so that the mesmer will work on her, but Artemis has advised Juliet
not to take off the glasses under any circumstances. Root tracks Holly's
locator to an abandoned whaling ship and finds that Holly is not there.
Instead, Artemis communicates with him through a pinhole camera and
speaker, warning Root that he is not to be trifled with. He then sets off
some explosives, and Root barely escapes.

In Chapter 6, Artemis and the LEP officers butt heads. Twelve officers from
LEPrecon One approach Fowl Manor with their shields on in their first
attempt to extract Holly. Artemis gives Butler a modified version of Holly's
helmet, which includes a setting that counteracts shields. The Retrieval
Squad does not expect Butler to be able to see them, and he quickly
disarms them. He leaves only one squad member conscious and gives him
a warning—next time, he will simply take them all out with a sniper gun. He
then allows the fairies to retrieve their injured officers and tells them to
send in a negotiator to talk to Artemis.

Meanwhile, Holly discovers the acorn she picked up during the Ritual in her
boot in her cell. She comes up with a plan and begins throwing her bed
against the concrete floor of her cell to reach some fresh ground. If she can
plant the acorn while the moon is still in the sky, her powers will be returned
to her. Commander Root eventually approaches Fowl Manor. He and
Artemis negotiate with each other, and Artemis tells Root that he wants one
ton of gold in repayment for releasing Holly. Root tells him he will need
time to consider Artemis's demands. Artemis also tells Root that he knows
about the Time Stop and the blue rinse—he is not worried, however,
because he knows how to escape it. At Ops, two behavioral analysts
analyze Artemis's movements during the negotiation and determine that
Artemis is not lying. Backed against a wall, Root decides that it is time to
break protocol.

In Chapter 7, Root finally gains the upper hand on Artemis. He sends Mulch
Diggums, a kleptomaniac dwarf, into the manor. Root convinces Mulch to
complete this job by offering him a shortened sentence in jail, and mulch
can get in by digging a tunnel underground. While Mulch is inside the
manor, he finds a safe where Artemis has stashed a copy of the Book. He
can escape by hitting Butler with excrement on his way out.
Meanwhile, Holly can finally break out of the concrete floor of her cell and
complete the Ritual. When her powers are returned, she mesmers Juliet,
locking the girl in her cell. Safely shielded, she is now free to roam the
manor. Artemis watches all of this unfold from a surveillance room
upstairs. On his way out of the manor, Mulch deceives Foaly and Root by
pretending there is a cave-in and putting his iris-cam on a rabbit. He
escapes toward freedom.

In Chapter 8, the behavioral analysts tell Root they believe Artemis has
made a mistake. They pull up the recording of the negotiation between
Artemis and Root and point out that Artemis says that no fairy is welcome
in his home as long as he is alive. This is a loophole: as the analysts point
out, the fairies are allowed in his home after he has died. Root comes up
with a new plan: give Artemis the ransom, have him release Holly, apply the
blue rinse and kill the humans, and take back the gold. Before they can
implement it, Cudgeon appears to tell Root that he has spoken with the
Council, and they placed him in charge, thus demoting Root. Root feels his
friend of 600 years has stabbed him in the back. Cudgeon plans to release
the troll that Holly tracked down in Chapter 3 into the manor, thus forcing
all of the humans outdoors. Root warns Cudgeon that this is an evil plan,
but he follows it anyway. After Cudgeon's LEP squad releases the troll in
Fowl Manor, it zooms in on Butler and the mesmered Juliet. Butler is
gravely injured. Before the troll can harm Juliet, however, Holly arrives and
fights the troll. He hurts her, and she heals Butler as her magic works to
heal her. Soon, Butler jumps to his feet and is given a second chance to
fight the troll and save his sister. He straps on a Medieval suit of armor and
fights the troll. Eventually, the troll is subdued. Right before Butler kills the
troll, Holly tells him to stop. Butler only agrees because he owes Holly one
after she saves his life. Finally, he rolls the unconscious troll out the front
door.

In Chapter 9, Cudgeon is taken off the case due to his disastrous failure.
The Council finally agrees to send the ransom to Commander Root, who
informs Artemis that it will arrive. Foaly warns Artemis one last time about
the blue rinse, but he maintains that he can escape it. The LEP team sends
the gold into the manor on a self-driving trolley. Artemis has Butler and
Juliet unload it into the manor. Before they release Holly, however, Artemis
asks her for one last wish. In return, he releases her with half of the gold.
Holly tries to convince commander Root not to deploy the blue rinse, but he
tells her they have no other choice. Ultimately, Foaly detonates the bio-
bomb, and the Retrieval Squad prepares to enter the manor and recover the
second half of the gold. However, they find themselves unable to enter, still
magically bound by the fact that Artemis said that no fairy was allowed in
his home as long as he was alive. They realize that Artemis, Butler, and
Juliet somehow survived the blue rinse. They are forced to leave the gold
with Artemis—according to the Book, if a human can attain fairy gold and
survive, it is his to keep. When Artemis awakes, Butler questions him about
the sleeping pills. Artemis tells him they survived the bio-bomb: they
escaped the Time Field by changing their consciousness. Artemis asks
Butler if he forgives him, and Butler says he does but makes Artemis
promise that they will never deal with fairies again. Artemis's mother
comes downstairs and seems to be acting normal again. Artemis's final
request to Holly was that she would heal his mother; evidently, it worked.
Artemis's mother tells him it is Christmas, and Artemis feels he has been
given the best gift he could ever get.