The story starts
with a brief description of Alex Rider, the 14-year-old hero’s situation at the
start of the book. When I started reading the book, it started as a peaceful
story and the character of Alex Rider in his house was built up so well that I thought
I had an image of who he was in my mind; another neighbourhood teenager.
As the book
progressed, things were not as they appeared at first. This was one charismatic
guy! The best part about him was his attitude towards life; he never gives up
and can also find his way out of any situation. In this book, his enemies find
gruesome ways to kill him but he always comes out victorious. I feel that if I
were in shoes, I would have died in the first instance but his ingenuity always
gets the better of the bad guys.
Alex is an orphan
who lived with his secretive uncle Ian Rider and a loving caretaker named Jack.
But Alex’s life gets disrupted when he finds out that his uncle has been killed;
Jack and Royal & General Bank must take over his Guardianship.
The whole story begins
to unwrap with Alex meeting MI6 and they giving him a chance to avenge his
uncle’s death. But MI6 had been planning this all along and are manipulating
him against his will. As the story progresses Alex is introduced to more of his
past than he imagined existed. He tracks down a company with an influential
head who wants to annihilate most of Europe’s population.
The entire story
revolves around Alex gaining experience and him finding out that he was
something special. Even though this story is set in the bustling city of Chelsea,
the happenings of the story are set in an underground laboratory and a computer
manufacturing facility.
Alex finds himself
brushing with death in which we feel that his first assignment may well be his
last. I find Alex’s genius and mental
strength very appealing. Once he is put
in a bullet proof tank with a box jellyfish with really long tentacles and
potent venom which is fatal to humans. He dissolves the metal frame which
releases the glass and the water pressure pops the glass out. The jellyfish
then kills the villain’s sidekick standing next to the aquarium.
At this point, the
story might start sounding implausible. How did a fourteen-year-old melt the
metal? Now Alex has been trained as a spy by his uncle because Alex’s father
and grandfather were spies too. So he has many gadgets, knows martial arts, is
good at adventure sports like surfing in the ocean, snowboarding, skiing,
driving an ATV, wing suit flying, ledge jumping...the list is long. He can also speak many languages including
French, Spanish, German, Italian and Japanese.
Alex’s enemies in
the book, cook up plans which are so horrid that it feels like they are the perfect
psychopaths.
The book is
written by Anthony Horowitz, an English writer, who was fat and had an unhappy
childhood. He spent a lot of time reading books. He was in a boarding school
and has had practice in story telling since then; he regaled his school mates
with the gory stories he had read from his dad’s library.
He has had help in
building up his gory style of storytelling from his mom who surprised him with
a human skull and a copy of Frankenstein and Drakula on his thirteenth
birthday.
His writing depicts
the situation so well that he does not need pictures to illustrate what he has
in mind. You can smell the room that his characters are in, feel the
temperature and it feels like you are seeing the characters that have been
described so well.
For example he
describes a sidekick Mr. Grinn who he portrays as a person who has been broken
apart and stitched together with the pieces not fitting quite together. While
reading description I found it gruesome but funny. Like I could twist his jaws
and it would creek, with one jaw going one way and the other the other
way. I was laughing through the book.
In some cases, he
takes the description of the antagonists too far. It is not for the faint of
heart. But I enjoyed it because each time I thought it can’t get worse, it did.
Horowitz is also a
master storyteller. At a place, you feel you know what is going to happen and
then he takes you in another direction. Sometimes you can feel betrayed. I can
never put his books down once I start. But sometimes I stray too far and have
to come back to the land of the living because I feel insecure when I’m very
deep into his books.
The author also
has a lot of vicarious experience in politics because his father was associated
with some of the politicians in the “circle” of Prime Minister Harold Willson. Facing
bankruptcy, his father moved his assets into a Swiss numbered bank. The author now
lives in Central London with his wife who is a TV producer but has travelled
around. His wife and two sons help him
with his stories.
Horowitz is a
prolific writer and has written many books and series. The Alex Rider series is
one the most famous young adult thriller series and there are 13 in the series.
I’m into the ninth one now. One of the reasons I get through these books is
also the beauty of the Type set – Officina Sans, my favourite font.
Snakehead – the seventh book in the series is the
best because it has the most twists and reveals the most about Alex Rider’s
past. I was in tears when the book ended. You have to read the book to
understand why I felt so betrayed and why it was so painful.
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