Stormbreaker

langston_p - Stormbreaker is a book about a 14 year old british boy named Alex Rider. His uncle, Ian Rider died at "a car crash" but Alex doesn't believe it. So Alex goes to investigate and finds out that there were bullet holes on the car. Eventually, he gets brought to the MI6 headquarters which was supposedly his uncle's bank. Alan Blunt, the leader of MI6 convinces him to go on a mission to investigate Herod Sayle. Alex says no then he threatens to ship his friend, Jack Starbright out of town. His life then get's plunged into a life of spy stuff and adventure. What I loved about this book was how it was so unpredictable and the way the author wrote it. It was like James Bond turned into a 14 year old and the story was just so realistic. Anthony Horowitz, the author was also able to add lot's of details and amazing great reasoning and a great storyline. I liked how he was able to make the criminal mastermind plan seem so possible.

May 21, 2001
Readers will cheer for Alex Rider, the 14-year-old hero of British author Horowitz's spy thriller (the first in a projected series). When his guardian and uncle, Ian, is mysteriously killed, Alex discovers that his uncle was not the bank vice-president he purported to be, but rather a spy for the British government. Now the government wants Alex to take over his uncle's mission: investigating Sayle Enterprises, the makers of a revolutionary computer called Stormbreaker. The company's head plans to donate one to every secondary school in England, but his dealings with unfriendly countries and Ian Rider's murder have brought him under suspicion. Posing as a teenage computer whiz who's won a Stormbreaker promotional contest, Alex enters the factory and immediately finds clues from his uncle. Satirical names abound (e.g., Mr. Grin, Mr. Sayle's brutish butler, is so named for the scars he received from a circus knife-throwing act gone wrong) and the hard-boiled language is equally outrageous ("It was a soft gray night with a half-moon forming a perfect D
in the sky. D
for what, Alex wondered. Danger? Discovery? Or disaster?"). These exaggerations only add to the fun, as do the creative gadgets that Alex uses, including a metal-munching cream described as "Zit-Clean. For Healthier Skin." The ultimate mystery may be a bit of a letdown, but that won't stop readers from racing through Alex's adventures, from a high-speed bike chase to a death-defying dance with a Portuguese man-of-war. The audience will stay tuned for his next assignment, Point Blanc,
due out spring 2002. Ages 10-up.