Scorpia Rising

The last in the Alex Rider series. The final mission, will Alex survive it and see 16? That seems to be the question in Anthony Horowitz's final Alex Rider novel. Alex has a reprieve of several months where he has lived like an ordinary student with his friend Jack Starbright as his guardian. Things are so "normal" that Jack is seriously thinking about leaving Alex and going to take care of her ailing parents. Unfortunately, things do NOT stay normal for very long. Once again Alan Blunt, outgoing head of MI6 and his assistant Mrs. Jones make a visit to Alex and Jack in order to talk him into being put undercover in a school in Egypt. At first Alex is not prone to do them any more favors until his best friend is shot. Alex is lead to believe that students at Cairo College could be in danger, so he regretfully decides to go to Egypt. Jack, however, demands to go with him or there is no deal. They arrive in Cairo and spend a couple of really fun days exploring and having a good time. Alex goes to school, makes friends very quickly and starts to fit in pretty well. But he absolutely abhors the spying he has to do while he is there. A little after a week, things begin to fall apart as Alex follows the target he has been assigned to a boat on the Nile River. Once he boards the boat and starts following Gunter, Alex discovers a dead body and then must survive the boat exploding. The action is nonstop after this and Alex decides that he has been lied to and is going to leave. I will not spoil the story for readers of this review but be prepared for a shock. Horowitz had Alex go out in a blaze of glory. Lots of action and some excellent surprises and one not so much. The additional characters are colorful and pretty much one dimensional but were still very interesting. If readers enjoyed the series they will read Scorpia Rising with regret because there will be no more adventures for their teenaged James Bond. I get hooked on series and when they are fun to read with lots of action, I find that I wish they could go on forever. I know he ended the series at a good time. I am sure he thought about all the television series that went on past their prime. Still, I will miss Alex, Jack, Smithers and even Mrs. Jones. This is a good read and won't take to long, simply because you have to know what is going to happen next. The cover is enticing, so pick it up and happy reading!

Hate List

Ordinarily I do not read these kind of novels. I read to escape because there is too much of this kind of stuff in the papers, on the radio and on television. However, the synopsis inside the dust jacket got me curious. It was a little slow getting into the book, but I was definitely glad I stuck with it.

On a May morning at Garvin High School, Nick Levil leads his girlfriend Valerie Leftman into the Commons looking for a girl who broke Val's MP3 player. Val thinks that Nick is going to make Christy Bruter give her the money for a new player. Instead, to her horror, Nick pulls out a gun and shoots Christy in the abdomen. He then proceeds to shoot other students. As Valerie begins to realized that Nick is not going to stop, she runs to him so she can make him stop. As she shields another student, Nick shoots her in the leg. Perhaps the shock of seeing her shot, makes Nick turn the gun on himself, but at any rate the shooting stops.

I cannot even imagine how I would react if I experience such a traumatic, horrific event. The author seemed to capture the atmosphere of Garvin after the shootings. How the whole community was affected and how the people were changed. No one was left unscathed.

The journey that Valerie began after that tragic day is mind boggling, extremely painful (both emotionally and physically) and emotionally draining. Alternating between despair, guilt, loneliness and need for forgiveness and acceptance, Valerie barely makes it through the school year. She was very troubled and confused. Perhaps if she hadn't been so angry, she might have been able to prevent Nick from killing anyone. She gets help from a psychiatrist and unexpected help from someone she would never have thought would give a damn about her.

The other characters who run the gamut of those who want her in jail to those who see her as a hero, seem to be true-to-life. It was interesting to get to know the characters before the shooting in flashbacks and see how much they have changed. I could identify with each one of them and could understand why they felt that way. And yet I abhorred those that hated her because hate was the very reason so many had died.

The end is bittersweet. I guess I wanted a happy ending, but how could something like this be a live happily ever after kind of ending? Perhaps this is as good as it can get. At least there is some hope. Jennifer Brown wrote what seems to me to be a realistic novel. Too bad this one has played out way too many times not only at schools but at too many other places in the world.

Hate List makes you think about how fragile life really is and how all to easily anyone could make up their own hate list and do something about it. This is a book that should read and discussed. Perhaps if we looked more closely at our own feeling and tried to come to terms with our bias, we could prevent some of the tragedies that occur all too often in this world.