Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz
Jul. 11th, 2006 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
They told him his uncle Ian died in a car accident. But fourteen-year-old Alex Rider knows that's a lie, and the bullet holes in his uncle's windshield confirm his suspicions. But nothing prepares him for the news that the uncle he always thought he knew was really a spy for MI6 - Britain's top-secret intelligence agency. Recruited to find his uncle's killers and complete Ian's final mission, Alex suddenly finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, with no way out.
Having heard good things about the Alex Rider series (and read the rave reviews for the last book released, Ark Angel), I have to say that I thought Stormbreaker to be a massive disappointment. Essentially, Alex Rider is James Bond, Jnr and just as the James Bond series doesn't trouble itself with deft characterisation, neither does the Alex Rider series.
Part of the trouble is the excessive use of "tell don't show". For example, in the chapter where Alex goes to a salvage yard to find his uncle's car and verify whether it was in an accident, he finds himself confronted by one of the workers. Expecting a scene whereby Alex only just manages to escape (perhaps by outrunning him or dodging him), I was disappointed when we are suddenly told that Alex has been trained in karate since the age of 6, has just got his first Dan black belt and performs a sort of roundhouse kick on the worker, knocking him out cold. It's not the skill I object to so much (given that I can buy the later exposition of his uncle having trained him to be a spy) as the way it's revealed - and it's a pattern that's played out with all of the skills - diving, languages etc etc. Obviously, it can be difficult to get across everything that you need to when you're building a super junior spy character, but it would have been nice to have seen Alex using just one of these in the course of his 'normal life'.
As I said, I found the characterisation more than a little shallow, even (and I'm surprised to say it), Alex himself. Again, it's not unusual to find that the central protagonist in a YA book is a little too reactive, contrived and at times bland (cough - Harry Potter - cough) but I never once believed in Alex's motivation during this book. In particular, I just don't see any closeness between his uncle and him and whilst this can be partly read as being due to Ian Rider's secret double life (and the fact that he told his nephew he was a banker), given the amount of time they obviously spent together I'd have expected some kind of mini-angst on Alex's part that he's been left an orphan (his parents having died in an air crash soon after he was born). There isn't any. This is particularly problematic given that Alex is given a revenge motivation in order to set up Yassen Gregorovich (who I have to say, is the only character who is remotely interesting) as a recurring villain because I just don't believe he gives a shit one way or another.
What is also a little disturbing is Alex's lack of reaction when he sees people being killed. There's no instinct to scream or look away (even when they're killed right in front of him) and whilst I could believe in his natural reactions being deadened later on in the books, it's a little freaky to see it so early on. The final thing that I disliked about Alex's character was the propensity to make bad puns when he's dispatched of an enemy. They're really bad. I mean, really, really bad. And again, it's a little freaky on top of being a rip-off of James Bond. The thing is, I can buy Bond, a grown man who's been trained as an assassin, making a sick joke at the end of a battle - I can't believe it of a 14 year old kid who's never seen someone die before.
Like I said, Yassen Gregorovich is about the only interesting character in there because there's just enough of an enigmatic quality to him for him to remain interesting (basically he's working for some dodgy people as a kind of Jack-of-all-trades spy/assassin/transporter and he's wound up assisting the main villain, Herod Sayle). Mr Grin, Sayle's henchman is a standard barking mad, kill-at-all-costs killer type and Herod himself ... Oh dear. Another loan from the James Bond Closet of Standard Spec Villains - short, mad, not actually English and driven by a motive of half-arse revenge against the Prime Minister who bullied him as a child. Bitch, please.
The MI6 characters fare little better. Alex Blunt, the big boss man, is probably the most interesting as he blatantly doesn't give a crap about Alex as a person provided the job gets done. Mrs Jones is similarly committed to the best interests of MI6 but is allowed motherly feelings of doubt and Crawley is basically the gofer for the pair of them. In fact, the only likeable character is the vastly overweight Smithers, who comes up with the gadgets for Alex to use. He might be a cypher, but he's one with a sense of humour.
The only other character I want to talk about is Jack, the American housesitter. She had nothing to do in the book at all - she shares a house with Alex and her deportation is the leverage that MI6 uses to get Alex to do their bidding. Why am I mentioning her? Because in the upcoming movie she's played by Alicia Silverstone and appears to be a kick-arse Bond babe. I find this interesting because there are no kick-arse female characters in the book - all the women are relegated to side roles providing emotional support. Perhaps this is why the series is so popular with boys - there is no risk of any icky emotions coming into play - but I do confess to finding it a touch misogynistic.
The plot can be summarised thus: Alex gets recruited by MI6 to be a teenage spy - he has a couple of week's training with the SAS - he gets sent to Herod Sayle's lab, posing as the winner of a competition, to test out the Stormbreaker computer that Sayle is putting in every school in the country - he finds out that the Stormbreaker computer will release smallpox at the push of a button that will kill every said school child using it - he foils the plan - the bad guys die - the end.
The books have been credited with making it cool for boys to read. If this is true, then I think it's a damning indictment of what boys want to read. There is a lot of set-piece action here, which is deftly put together and is fast enough to keep the pace going but whether it's particularly exciting is something you would have to ask a teenage boy. For me, it seemed too much deja vu given that I've seen similar scenes in movies (yes, including James Bond). For all the slating that Harry Potter gets, there is a core imaginative streak in it that makes it enjoyable to read - Alex Rider feels more like cynical manipulation that draws on too many obvious influences for it to have any magical pull of its own.
The Verdict:
Disappointing, hackneyed and shallow. If you'd told me at the time of this book's release that it would be one of the most popular series of children's books, I'd have called an ambulance to have you locked up. For a book that's essentially all brain and muscle, it's missing a heart. For the book to work, you need to like Alex Rider and I don't - I think he's the teen spy equivalent of beige. Very disappointing and I hope the rest of the series is better.
They told him his uncle Ian died in a car accident. But fourteen-year-old Alex Rider knows that's a lie, and the bullet holes in his uncle's windshield confirm his suspicions. But nothing prepares him for the news that the uncle he always thought he knew was really a spy for MI6 - Britain's top-secret intelligence agency. Recruited to find his uncle's killers and complete Ian's final mission, Alex suddenly finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, with no way out.
Having heard good things about the Alex Rider series (and read the rave reviews for the last book released, Ark Angel), I have to say that I thought Stormbreaker to be a massive disappointment. Essentially, Alex Rider is James Bond, Jnr and just as the James Bond series doesn't trouble itself with deft characterisation, neither does the Alex Rider series.
Part of the trouble is the excessive use of "tell don't show". For example, in the chapter where Alex goes to a salvage yard to find his uncle's car and verify whether it was in an accident, he finds himself confronted by one of the workers. Expecting a scene whereby Alex only just manages to escape (perhaps by outrunning him or dodging him), I was disappointed when we are suddenly told that Alex has been trained in karate since the age of 6, has just got his first Dan black belt and performs a sort of roundhouse kick on the worker, knocking him out cold. It's not the skill I object to so much (given that I can buy the later exposition of his uncle having trained him to be a spy) as the way it's revealed - and it's a pattern that's played out with all of the skills - diving, languages etc etc. Obviously, it can be difficult to get across everything that you need to when you're building a super junior spy character, but it would have been nice to have seen Alex using just one of these in the course of his 'normal life'.
As I said, I found the characterisation more than a little shallow, even (and I'm surprised to say it), Alex himself. Again, it's not unusual to find that the central protagonist in a YA book is a little too reactive, contrived and at times bland (cough - Harry Potter - cough) but I never once believed in Alex's motivation during this book. In particular, I just don't see any closeness between his uncle and him and whilst this can be partly read as being due to Ian Rider's secret double life (and the fact that he told his nephew he was a banker), given the amount of time they obviously spent together I'd have expected some kind of mini-angst on Alex's part that he's been left an orphan (his parents having died in an air crash soon after he was born). There isn't any. This is particularly problematic given that Alex is given a revenge motivation in order to set up Yassen Gregorovich (who I have to say, is the only character who is remotely interesting) as a recurring villain because I just don't believe he gives a shit one way or another.
What is also a little disturbing is Alex's lack of reaction when he sees people being killed. There's no instinct to scream or look away (even when they're killed right in front of him) and whilst I could believe in his natural reactions being deadened later on in the books, it's a little freaky to see it so early on. The final thing that I disliked about Alex's character was the propensity to make bad puns when he's dispatched of an enemy. They're really bad. I mean, really, really bad. And again, it's a little freaky on top of being a rip-off of James Bond. The thing is, I can buy Bond, a grown man who's been trained as an assassin, making a sick joke at the end of a battle - I can't believe it of a 14 year old kid who's never seen someone die before.
Like I said, Yassen Gregorovich is about the only interesting character in there because there's just enough of an enigmatic quality to him for him to remain interesting (basically he's working for some dodgy people as a kind of Jack-of-all-trades spy/assassin/transporter and he's wound up assisting the main villain, Herod Sayle). Mr Grin, Sayle's henchman is a standard barking mad, kill-at-all-costs killer type and Herod himself ... Oh dear. Another loan from the James Bond Closet of Standard Spec Villains - short, mad, not actually English and driven by a motive of half-arse revenge against the Prime Minister who bullied him as a child. Bitch, please.
The MI6 characters fare little better. Alex Blunt, the big boss man, is probably the most interesting as he blatantly doesn't give a crap about Alex as a person provided the job gets done. Mrs Jones is similarly committed to the best interests of MI6 but is allowed motherly feelings of doubt and Crawley is basically the gofer for the pair of them. In fact, the only likeable character is the vastly overweight Smithers, who comes up with the gadgets for Alex to use. He might be a cypher, but he's one with a sense of humour.
The only other character I want to talk about is Jack, the American housesitter. She had nothing to do in the book at all - she shares a house with Alex and her deportation is the leverage that MI6 uses to get Alex to do their bidding. Why am I mentioning her? Because in the upcoming movie she's played by Alicia Silverstone and appears to be a kick-arse Bond babe. I find this interesting because there are no kick-arse female characters in the book - all the women are relegated to side roles providing emotional support. Perhaps this is why the series is so popular with boys - there is no risk of any icky emotions coming into play - but I do confess to finding it a touch misogynistic.
The plot can be summarised thus: Alex gets recruited by MI6 to be a teenage spy - he has a couple of week's training with the SAS - he gets sent to Herod Sayle's lab, posing as the winner of a competition, to test out the Stormbreaker computer that Sayle is putting in every school in the country - he finds out that the Stormbreaker computer will release smallpox at the push of a button that will kill every said school child using it - he foils the plan - the bad guys die - the end.
The books have been credited with making it cool for boys to read. If this is true, then I think it's a damning indictment of what boys want to read. There is a lot of set-piece action here, which is deftly put together and is fast enough to keep the pace going but whether it's particularly exciting is something you would have to ask a teenage boy. For me, it seemed too much deja vu given that I've seen similar scenes in movies (yes, including James Bond). For all the slating that Harry Potter gets, there is a core imaginative streak in it that makes it enjoyable to read - Alex Rider feels more like cynical manipulation that draws on too many obvious influences for it to have any magical pull of its own.
The Verdict:
Disappointing, hackneyed and shallow. If you'd told me at the time of this book's release that it would be one of the most popular series of children's books, I'd have called an ambulance to have you locked up. For a book that's essentially all brain and muscle, it's missing a heart. For the book to work, you need to like Alex Rider and I don't - I think he's the teen spy equivalent of beige. Very disappointing and I hope the rest of the series is better.
