This month, July 2008, the sixth and fina book in the Artemis Fowl series will be released. Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox is now available for pre-order on Amazon. The Amazon page for the book lists the release as July 15.

Well that sure snuck up on me. I had no idea until I decided, randomly, to visit author Eoin Colfer’s website today.

There is also a post up on EoinColfer.com with a short promotional video for the upcoming book. It overviews the key part of the story, complete with imagery of similar ilk to those seen in the Artemis Fowl graphic novel.

The Magic of Ink has a huge list of books that are being made into movies.

Here are a few that I’ll want to see:

• Airborn by Ken Oppel
• The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud
• Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein
• The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron
• The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
• The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Hopefully they’ll turn out better than some book-movies. I didn’t even bother watching “The Dark is Rising” movie. They totally ruined it. I like book-movies when they turn out good (Harry Potter, for example). The Golden Compass could have been better, but it wasn’t too bad.

Ken Oppel is currently at work on Starclimber, a sequel to the amazing book Skybreaker. The third book is the Airborn series, leads us to believe (through the title) that the characters will be heading into space possibly.

For those of you who don’t know, Airborn (and Skybreaker, the [in my opinion] better sequel]) are set in an alternate history. In France, or what would have been France if certain events had turned out a bit different, the mainstream methods of flight are airships (think Zeppelins) and Ornithopters. Skybreaker was totally amazing, with some really…different ideas.

Airborn, the first book in the series, is currently in production as a movie (to be released in 2008), the same year that Starclimber will (probably) be released.

EDIT: From KennethOppel.ca, the book will be released in September 2008 in Canada. Sadly, it won’t be released in the United States until January 2009, and the following May in the UK.