Opal Koboi - Subsequent Appearances

Subsequent Appearances

Colfer brought back the Opal Koboi character in Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception, which was published in April 2005 as the fourth book of the fictional series. In this installment, Colfer describes Opal Koboi's coma situation from the perspective of Doctor Jerbal Argon, a fictional fairy gnome psychiatrist taking care of his incarcerated, "celebrity" patient:

"If only every fairy in the facility was as docile as Opal Koboi. All she needed was a few intravenous tubes and a monitor, which had been more than paid for by her first six months' medical fees. Doctor Argon fervently hoped that little Opal never woke up. Because once she did, the LEP would haul her off to court. And when she had been convicted of treason her assets would be frozen, including the Clinic's fund. No, the longer Opal's nap lasted, the better for everyone, especially her. Because of their thin skulls and large brain volume, Pixies were susceptible to various maladies such as catatonia, amnesia and narcolepsy."

Rather than being in an actual coma, Colfer has Koboi in a coma-like state of meditation known as a cleansing coma to elude punishment for her own criminal activities. Koboi awakens herself from the faked coma, leaves a clone of herself under guard in a coma and disguises herself as a human child, and breaks out of prison to take revenge and dominate the world both of fairies and humans. Koboi's plan is to bring the Fairy People in contact with humans, "who until now have been completely ignorant of their existence below the surface of the earth, but by their nature manage to ruin everything they touch." Koboi, who plans to install herself as supreme world ruler, is opposed by both Captain Holly Short, a talkative elf in the LEP, and Artemis Fowl, a 14-year-old criminal mastermind from a super-criminal family dynasty and the main character of the series. Colfer makes their opposition to Opal Koboi more difficult by erasing Fowl's memory of the wicked Opal Koboi and the other fairy people through a Foaly mindwipe and by having Koboi frame Captain Holly Short's for a murder that in fact was committed by Koboi. Even though Opal has laid out death traps for Artemis and Holly in a troll-infested amusement park, Holly eventually is able to restore Artemis' memory and the two of them stop Opal. At the end of Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception, Colfer has the reader assuming that Koboi is safely locked up in an LEP prison.

She also appears in Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox, as the main antagonist again. Artemis and Holly tangle with a past version of Koboi. She had realized that absorbing parts of different (usually rare) animals, she can modify her magic. By now she can levitate, shoot lightning and has a more advanced mesmer. She plans to use the Silky Sifaka Lemur to channel her magic into Time Travel which she will use to become leader. At the climax of the book, she has been revealed to have travelled to the current time, and was defeated but unapprehended. The consequences of her leaving the past has yet to be resolved.

Colfer used the fourth novel to describe Opal Koboi's hysterical megalomania in significant detail. Coming across as embittered, slightly loony, deranged and dangerous, ultra-evil, and world domination-obsessed, Colfer has the criminal mastermind Koboi go "mind-to-mind" against a similarly intelligent and criminal mastermind Fowl. Strangely, in The Time Paradox, she seemed insane on a level which was not evident in The Arctic Incident (It is suggested in Last Guardian that this is because the timeline that created this Opal has diverged from the timeline that created the 'present' Opal), even deciding to think about choosing to shoot down the moon after using the term in a thought.

In book 7, Artemis suspects Opal of the attack on Atlantis until he discovers that the enemy is Turnball Root, disgraced brother of the late Commander Julius Root. There is also reference to her present, human self being relocated during an attack on a prison- although she is contained in a metal box to prevent her escaping-, as well as reference to the rumour that her past self is active in the present and may be trying to free her.

In Last Guardian, Opal deliberately arranges for the execution of her own past self- although she speculates that the younger her is merely an alternate Opal due to her own lack of memory of these events-, with the resulting energy explosion as everything that Opal Koboi has created and done over the five years between her past and present self is erased causing a social collapse as multiple Koboi technologies are destroyed or cease to exist. However, Opal manages to survive after tricking the LEP into moving her present self into a radiation-proof tube, channelling the energy release as her body becomes a paradox to regrow her entire body. She subsequently releases a group of long-imprisoned warrior spirits to serve as her army while she works to activate a doomsday spell that will wipe all human life from Earth's surface, but Artemis is able to defeat her by using her clone- now 'trained' to perform simple movements- to instead activate a command that will disperse the energy and the spirits while leaving Earth unharmed, the resulting energy release also destroying Opal's powers, allowing her to be killed.