Disappointing. Sad to reduce a 60,000 word book to a one-word review, but ‘disappointing’ sums it up. Not that The Gauntlet is bad. Eoin Colfer is too practised a writer for it to be bad. He maintains, the pace, the wisecracks and the plot twists as only someone who’s managed to wring eight novels and a movie adaptation out of the premise of the bad boy genius could. But that’s about it: in the end, it feels like a thoroughbred writer, going through his paces and showing off his tricks, and nothing much more. Yes, I know Tony Stark is the grown-up version of Artemis Fowl but with an added iron suit, but the villains – the Mandarin and assorted henchmen – are by the numbers bad guys and Tony Stark is the Marvel-rote version of the good guy, all wisecracks, pseudo character growth and, er, more wisecracks. Still, on the positive side, Colfer is a good enough writer for me to whizz through the book in a couple of days.

Iron Man: The Gauntlet by Eoin Colfer.