Point Blank by Anthony Horowitz
Jul. 11th, 2006 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
When an investigation into a series of mysterious deaths leads agents to an elite prep school for rebellious kids, MI6 assigns Alex Rider, fourteen year-old reluctant spy, to the case. Before he knows it, Alex is stuck in a remote boarding school high atop the Swiss Alps with the sons of the rich and the powerful, and something feels wrong. Very wrong. These former juvenile delinquents have turned well-behaved, studious - and identical - overnight. It's up to Alex to find out who is mastermining this evil plot, before they find him. The clock is ticking - is Alex's luck about to run out?
Much of what I said in my review of Stormbreaker can be repeated here. Again, the villains are two-dimensional (Dr Grief and his henchwoman, Miss Stellenbosch) and rejects from the James Bond franchise and the characters we met in Stormbreaker don't really develop much further (with the exception, I must say, of Alan Blunt who is shaping up to be a real stone-cold, ruthless mo-fo).
We do meet some new characters - in order to go undercover at Dr Grief's Point Blanc Academy, Alex must spend time with a supermarket mogul called Sir David Friend, his wife (Lady Caroline) and daughter (Fiona). Most of the scenes are with Fiona, who brings two-dimensional to a whole new level. Not only is she posh and obnoxious but she also has some unfathomable grudge against Alex (something to do with his being from the City) and she and some hooray Henry friends try to kill him for a joke during an afternoon's bird shooting (if that sounds awfully dull and irritating to read, it's because it is). There are several chapters wasted on the tedious Fiona, who is used to two set-piece action scenes - one involving two horses outrunning a train in a tunnel and the aforementioned hunting incident. I think that you're supposed to let out a little cheer when Alex shoots her with a tranquiliser dart (released from a copy of Harry Potter), but for me it was more an eye roll and move on moment.
There are some interesting scenes in the book. The opening chapter is very strong (focusing on the assassination of a US mogul) - imaginative death, chilling assassin (who we don't see more of, unfortunately) and the final scene where Alex ends up battling a clone (Dr Grief's plan being to create clones of himself, have them undergo plastic surgery and then replace the sons of rich businessmen with them to eventually achieve world domination) is very tense and quite exciting (and whilst I usually loathe cheap cliffhanger endings, I will admit that this one had me reaching for the next book to see what happened). We also see a return of Wolf (a member of the SAS who trained with Alex and had a grudge against having to train with a boy until eventually he Learnt To Reluctantly Respect Alex).
In terms of the plot, I did feel that Horowitz pulled his punches in some areas. For example, whilst he has no problems with starting the book with a dramatic death, he's careful to keep deaths to the adults - the boys who have been replaced are carefully kept in a dungeon by Dr Grief Just In Case, when in fact this seems to make v. little sense - for his plan to work, surely he'd have just killed them and be done with it. In fact, I think that there could have been a real emotional punch if James Sprintz, a boy at the school with whom Alex strikes up a friendship had ended up dead - just because it would have forced Alex to deal with it, rather than go through life as though he's on Prozac. Seriously, it's beginning to bug me how a 14 year old boy can see so many horrible things and yet not become catatonic about it.
Alex still fails to grow on me as a character. Partly this is because he seems to do stupid things for no real motivation. For example, the scene where he decides to hijack a crane in order to lever a barge containing two drug dealers out of the water and into a police station served little purpose other than to give MI6 more leverage to force Alex to return to the spygame for them. On the subject of contrivances, the gadgets really don't interest me as much as they should given that you know that each one will be available at a handy moment in order to get Alex out of trouble - it would be so much more interesting if Alex was given a wider number of gadgets and then have some of them left as not being used (preferably so they can pop up in later books as a nice surprise).
I also want to make a point about misogynism because it can still be found - not only with the ghastly Fiona but also Miss Stellenbosch, who's about as stereotypical a bull-dyke henchman as you could expect to see anywhere. Mrs Jones continues to evolve only as a matronly type who is torn between duty and protecting a boy young enough to be her child and Jack really doesn't do anything at all. I'm not one of those people who think that there has to be complete equality within a text (and I appreciate that these books are targeted at boys rather than girls), but there really aren't any interesting female characters at all here - certainly none who are likeable within their own right and it would be nice to have just one girl or woman who can stand up for herself without being completely evil about it.
Ultimately, the 'tell rather than show' approach continues to be the downfall of these books (for me, anyway). I can't get into something when I'm constantly subjected to a paragraph of exposition explaining how Alex remarkable knows something or can suddenly do something. Even allowing for the age range of the target audience, it smacks of laziness (and this is not something I expect from a writer as interesting as Horowitz).
The Verdict:
Whilst I think that scene wise, there was more to redeem this than there was in Stormbreaker, the lack of characterisation continues to irk. I'm still not caring about Alex as a character and whilst there's been some interesting developments on the part of a couple of the minor characters, it's troubling how little emotional resonance there is within the narrative and it's also troubling how there are no interesting, strong female characters either. In conclusion - not quite as disappointing as Stormbreaker, but the series still has a long way to go in terms of redeeming itself as a good read.
When an investigation into a series of mysterious deaths leads agents to an elite prep school for rebellious kids, MI6 assigns Alex Rider, fourteen year-old reluctant spy, to the case. Before he knows it, Alex is stuck in a remote boarding school high atop the Swiss Alps with the sons of the rich and the powerful, and something feels wrong. Very wrong. These former juvenile delinquents have turned well-behaved, studious - and identical - overnight. It's up to Alex to find out who is mastermining this evil plot, before they find him. The clock is ticking - is Alex's luck about to run out?
Much of what I said in my review of Stormbreaker can be repeated here. Again, the villains are two-dimensional (Dr Grief and his henchwoman, Miss Stellenbosch) and rejects from the James Bond franchise and the characters we met in Stormbreaker don't really develop much further (with the exception, I must say, of Alan Blunt who is shaping up to be a real stone-cold, ruthless mo-fo).
We do meet some new characters - in order to go undercover at Dr Grief's Point Blanc Academy, Alex must spend time with a supermarket mogul called Sir David Friend, his wife (Lady Caroline) and daughter (Fiona). Most of the scenes are with Fiona, who brings two-dimensional to a whole new level. Not only is she posh and obnoxious but she also has some unfathomable grudge against Alex (something to do with his being from the City) and she and some hooray Henry friends try to kill him for a joke during an afternoon's bird shooting (if that sounds awfully dull and irritating to read, it's because it is). There are several chapters wasted on the tedious Fiona, who is used to two set-piece action scenes - one involving two horses outrunning a train in a tunnel and the aforementioned hunting incident. I think that you're supposed to let out a little cheer when Alex shoots her with a tranquiliser dart (released from a copy of Harry Potter), but for me it was more an eye roll and move on moment.
There are some interesting scenes in the book. The opening chapter is very strong (focusing on the assassination of a US mogul) - imaginative death, chilling assassin (who we don't see more of, unfortunately) and the final scene where Alex ends up battling a clone (Dr Grief's plan being to create clones of himself, have them undergo plastic surgery and then replace the sons of rich businessmen with them to eventually achieve world domination) is very tense and quite exciting (and whilst I usually loathe cheap cliffhanger endings, I will admit that this one had me reaching for the next book to see what happened). We also see a return of Wolf (a member of the SAS who trained with Alex and had a grudge against having to train with a boy until eventually he Learnt To Reluctantly Respect Alex).
In terms of the plot, I did feel that Horowitz pulled his punches in some areas. For example, whilst he has no problems with starting the book with a dramatic death, he's careful to keep deaths to the adults - the boys who have been replaced are carefully kept in a dungeon by Dr Grief Just In Case, when in fact this seems to make v. little sense - for his plan to work, surely he'd have just killed them and be done with it. In fact, I think that there could have been a real emotional punch if James Sprintz, a boy at the school with whom Alex strikes up a friendship had ended up dead - just because it would have forced Alex to deal with it, rather than go through life as though he's on Prozac. Seriously, it's beginning to bug me how a 14 year old boy can see so many horrible things and yet not become catatonic about it.
Alex still fails to grow on me as a character. Partly this is because he seems to do stupid things for no real motivation. For example, the scene where he decides to hijack a crane in order to lever a barge containing two drug dealers out of the water and into a police station served little purpose other than to give MI6 more leverage to force Alex to return to the spygame for them. On the subject of contrivances, the gadgets really don't interest me as much as they should given that you know that each one will be available at a handy moment in order to get Alex out of trouble - it would be so much more interesting if Alex was given a wider number of gadgets and then have some of them left as not being used (preferably so they can pop up in later books as a nice surprise).
I also want to make a point about misogynism because it can still be found - not only with the ghastly Fiona but also Miss Stellenbosch, who's about as stereotypical a bull-dyke henchman as you could expect to see anywhere. Mrs Jones continues to evolve only as a matronly type who is torn between duty and protecting a boy young enough to be her child and Jack really doesn't do anything at all. I'm not one of those people who think that there has to be complete equality within a text (and I appreciate that these books are targeted at boys rather than girls), but there really aren't any interesting female characters at all here - certainly none who are likeable within their own right and it would be nice to have just one girl or woman who can stand up for herself without being completely evil about it.
Ultimately, the 'tell rather than show' approach continues to be the downfall of these books (for me, anyway). I can't get into something when I'm constantly subjected to a paragraph of exposition explaining how Alex remarkable knows something or can suddenly do something. Even allowing for the age range of the target audience, it smacks of laziness (and this is not something I expect from a writer as interesting as Horowitz).
The Verdict:
Whilst I think that scene wise, there was more to redeem this than there was in Stormbreaker, the lack of characterisation continues to irk. I'm still not caring about Alex as a character and whilst there's been some interesting developments on the part of a couple of the minor characters, it's troubling how little emotional resonance there is within the narrative and it's also troubling how there are no interesting, strong female characters either. In conclusion - not quite as disappointing as Stormbreaker, but the series still has a long way to go in terms of redeeming itself as a good read.
