In which Artemis has an incredibly annoying alter ego.
He's come down with the titular Atlantis Complex, which is a mental disorder criminals with magic get. In his case, it manifests as an irrational fear of the number four, an irrational love of the number five, severe paranoia, and (eventually) the aforementioned incredibly annoying alter ego. That last is named Orion and he's pretty much the opposite of normal Artemis in every way.
This one jumped fewer sharks than The Time Paradox, possibly because there aren't tons of sharks left to jump. It's better than that one, but it's still probably my second least favorite volume. This is Orion's fault.
Artemis's extremely fancy phone has a bunch of mini-programs, or "mi-p's", on it. Tech-savvy readers may recognize these as what we now call "apps". This isn't a Renamed Concept Rule, though, because the book was written in 2006, and mobile apps started being a thing sometime around 2008. So rather than cumbersomely renaming apps, this book actually predicted their existence.
Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for fantasy violence and Orion being weird.
3 stars.
Favorite lines:
"No," said the centaur with absolute certainty. "And I say that with absolute certainty."
Page 137.
[for context, there's a giant squid trying to crack open Artemis's sea helmet]
The noise was exactly what Artemis had always imagined it would sound like if a giant squid tried to crack his sea helmet.
Page 293.
Any first-day chemistry student could have told Ragby never to put sparks near a mystery gas.
Unfortunately, Ragby had never met any first-day chemistry students...
Page 326.
(Endnote: The author's name is actually pronounced "Owen," not "Ay-oine" or "Ee-owen" or anything like that.)
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