No. 6 in the series (of 10) ... Alex (James) goes into space!

(27/09/22) *Includes spoilers*
This is no.6 of 10 in the series, or so I thought, but actually 13 (as of 2022), and some short stories, and possibly more to come. It starts with Alex Alex Rider in hospital recovering from a sniper bullet wood at the end of Scorpia, which I had completely forgotten, so no spoiler! It is while in a private hospital in London, at the pleasure of MI6, that he gets entangled with oligarch Nikolei Drevin via his son Paul. After this, Blunt and Jones feature very little, as Rider mostly goes off on his own ridiculously dangerous stunts and then gets co-opted into a CIA mission. It feels like wish-fulfilment as I had wanted less of the antagonism with his normal ‘handlers’ (see Review). Of course Drevin is a dastardly super-villain, and he has a tropically island lair, and is launching a rocket to his space hotel (Ark Angel), but it’s actually a bomb, mwhaa, mwhaa … All good stuff, although to add to my worries about AR’s education, I worry that Horowowitz is just putting a 14-year-old boy, yeah right, through too much much stuff without sex, drugs or alcohol! In this episode; fights and derring-do in a hospital, tightrope-walking, a sky surfing(?), almost torture, weightless in space, go-karting, and locked in a sunken ship. Phew.

This will be left somewhere in Storyhouse this evening, before a LitFest author event. If you find this, welcome to book crossing. Enjoy!