The characterization is good, the story is consistently engaging, and the plotting is clever.

Unfortunately the prose leaves a bit to be desired, especially in its silly dialogue attributions (e.g. “he quipped” / “he retorted” / “he parried”). The content of any dialogue should explain the speaker’s intentions, and if it doesn’t then the dialogue is at fault and not the attribution. It’s sloppy writing to shore it up as Colfer does throughout this book.

Still the book is entertaining and it’s quiet easy to see why younger teens would be attracted to it.