Artemis Fowl

by Megan Whalen Turner

Turner pulls off the same trick Colfer does—a protagonist who's several steps ahead of everyone else, including the reader—but she plays it even more cunningly, with a twist that recontextualizes everything you thought you understood. The con-artist energy and the pleasure of watching a brilliant kid outmaneuver adults is identical, just with higher stakes and a more intricate plot.

by Jorge Teillier

Townsend captures that same fizzy energy of discovering a hidden magical world with its own rules and hierarchies, but she leans harder into the wonder and the found-family angle. Where Artemis is all cunning calculation, Morrigan is scrappy determination—yet both books have that infectious sense of fun and the feeling that you're being let in on something special.

by George MacDonald

This is the surprise pick—it's quieter and more introspective than Artemis Fowl, but it shares the same delight in exploring a fully-realized fantasy bureaucracy and watching a young person navigate complex social hierarchies they didn't expect to enter. Instead of a criminal mastermind, you get a genuinely kind protagonist, but the pleasure of watching him learn the unwritten rules of power is just as satisfying.

by Diana Wynne Jones

Jones writes with the same irreverent humor and fast-paced plotting as Colfer, and her magic system feels lived-in rather than explained—it's something people do, not something that needs a rulebook. The banter between characters has that same sharp wit, and there's a similar pleasure in watching clever people scheme and counter-scheme their way through increasingly absurd situations.

by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Here's a book from the 2000s that feels like it belongs in a different era entirely—it's a mystery wrapped in a love letter to books themselves, set in post-war Barcelona. While it's more atmospheric and literary than Artemis Fowl, it shares that same sense of a young protagonist uncovering secrets and navigating a world with hidden depths, plus the same page-turning momentum that keeps you reading past midnight.