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Post by Dante on Apr 16, 2011 14:40:05 GMT -5
Was Eagle Strike the one with the villain with the world tattooed on his face, or was that the next book? Yeah, it was the next, now I think about it. Everything you're saying about ES makes me think I probably really liked it, too - making real use of recurring characters rather than having them sit on the sidelines forever is both good writing and... well, just plain logical; the nature of the plot is such that they'd be bound to get drawn in eventually. The villain was relatively original, too - not an insane megalomaniac in quite the same way.
Edit: And it does sound like the time progression of real life is starting to assert itself a bit more over that of the series... quite a few other series I've read since then generally have each book take place around a year after the last, mirroring the release schedule, and I think that's the wisest route if it's the kind of series that can accommodate it.
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Post by cwm on Apr 21, 2011 6:10:35 GMT -5
Scorpia:
I always thought this was one of my favourite Alex Rider books, so I was surprised at the number of problems I did have with it. Once we get past the somewhat gratuitous opening chapter with the bag-thieves, who basically seem to be there to spice up some exposition – then again, maybe that’s what makes the series so successful, the fact that there are rarely any big chunks of text with just exposition. In each book there’s typically one chapter that serves as the villain giving an infodump about his plot, and a lot of the other time Alex thinking things through is interjected with explosions and gadgets and stuff. That gives them a lot of re-read value which I’m not so sure is found in Harry Potter. (I would note that this is the one book where Alex works out the plan by himself based on what he’s learnt instead of the plan being given to him directly by the big bad, which works well and really backs up the idea that Alex is a phenomenal child, which was sort of being let down previously by the fact that he didn’t have a clue what was going on until the villains told him). Despite that, this book is in many ways slower-paced and lends itself to a more careful reread as Alex’s situation changes so much. I like the fact that we finally get to see close-up how Alex's normal life is being affected on the school trip as it emerges that people think he's in therapy or a thief, and his frustration at his reward for saving the world from a nuclear disaster a tutor and extra homework - but it irks me that Jack Starbright is basically demoted to the sidelines again after her increased use last time. Her time will come, though.
I appreciate the amount of research Horowitz does for Invisible Sword – despite his worries that it might be fanciful, it comes across as a completely credible threat because of the scientific research he does. The plot itself is strong, although I’m not sure Alex committing himself to Scorpia is entirely believable – then again, Julia Rothman is manipulating the show throughout, keeping its true purpose hidden throughout. However, it’s clear that Scorpia are Not Very Nice People throughout, and since he went after Damian Cray entirely of his own accord… eh. MI6 seem to have killed his father, but he was a murderer, and Alex even acknowledges that he understands why they would do it. MI6 have ruined his life and not given a damn about him, but he has genuinely cared about saving his country/the world on previous occasions, and that's why it doesn't quite ring true that he'd sign up to Scorpia. To be fair it's pretty clearly done on an impulse and he does seem to have doubts about it throughout, but once he enters the school those are mostly about whether or not he could actually kill someone. He never even picks up on the idea that he might never see Jack Starbright again. His realisation that he's glad he didn't kill Mrs Jones is the signalpoint for him realising the gravity of the situation he's landed in, and the book is all the better afterwards.
I’m also not sure about how the ENTIRE John Rider story is compressed into that last chapter. One or two more hints or a bit of foreshadowing – all we really get is that Mrs Jones and Julia Rothman know something Alex doesn't - then again, this is ‘deep cover’. It’s also affected by how little Alex seems to reflect on it in books to come – by the last chapter of this he’s only just come to terms with it.
Oh, boy, the last chapter – I remember the controversy that caused when it came out. IIRC Anthony Horowitz had to bring forward work on Ark Angel and go on BBC Breakfast to defend himself, when in truth he’d already had it planned out how Alex would survive and assumed everyone would think Alex would be OK. As is, given that the evidence in the last chapter amounts to the rifle used in the sniper attempt is too low-calibre to actually kill someone and it’s never stated Alex is dead, he may have overestimated the audience’s intelligence on this occasion!
And I just want to put it out there that the entire climax on the balloon, whilst invoking the typical ‘in the nick of time’ trope, is utterly awesome.
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Post by Dante on Apr 21, 2011 6:32:53 GMT -5
The funny thing is, I barely remember any of Scorpia. I remember less of the books the more recent they are. It's not as if I've ever reread them or anything. Strange. But as to the "infodump factor," I think that that... well, it was probably introduced as part of the genre. Sit down, Mr. Bond, and I will tell you my whole plan. But there's only so far "it's just the genre" will take you. I do remember the plot seeming like it could've been put together a little better, but I couldn't articulate anything specific about that outside of the things you mentioned. But as for Alex being killed, I don't think I ever bought it. It was obvious that if there was ever another Alex Rider book, which we may have already known there would be, then he'd escape death somehow.
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Post by cwm on Apr 21, 2011 9:15:17 GMT -5
Hmm. Looking back, it seems as if according to AH, most of the complaints about Alex's "death" came from parents who said "my child has been reading these books for years, how could you be so heartless..." That's not to say that there were no upset children writing in, since he did get a letter from a teenager with vitiligo calling him out on its representation in the book, but I wonder if the 'Daily Mail brigade' were the biggest voice there.
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Post by Dante on Apr 21, 2011 10:39:40 GMT -5
I'm having difficulty taking this in. Was there really that much fuss over Alex apparently being bumped off? I don't remember it at all. I hope nobody told them about The Demonata, they'd be apoplectic. Unless that was just Darren Shan trying to one-up Horowitz in their endless and also meaningless rivalry. ...Come to think of it, why did Horowitz feel the need to fake Alex's death anyway?
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Post by cwm on Apr 21, 2011 11:58:40 GMT -5
There was quite a fuss generated; I remember some of the upset and Horowitz says there was a lot of correspondence accusing him of being heartless, necessitating the BBC Breakfast interview. He writes about it a bit in the back of the new edition of Scorpia.
Horowitz had already planned parts of the next book out (and presumably had the hospital stuff in mind) and it was part of his character development that confirms to Alex that he really doesn't want to be a spy and he wants to get out before he's killed.
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Post by Dante on Apr 21, 2011 13:18:42 GMT -5
I genuinely don't remember any of that. And that's a shame, because I think I would have found it quite interesting. I have a hard time believing Alex was the only protagonist in recent memory to apparently die or even actually die, but then again facts never mean much to the outrage brigade. I shouldn't be surprised if there were some vested interests who wanted to have a go at Horowitz for other reasons. Maybe they didn't like Foyle's War. And I take it that you have all of the new editions with their bonus material and so on? Is there anything worth knowing about?
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Post by cwm on Apr 21, 2011 13:35:11 GMT -5
No, I looked through them in WHSmith a while back. There's an extra non-fiction chapter at the back of each with a few of Horowitz's thoughts, generally about the book but also a bit about character names and gadgets and stuff. It's certainly not worth double-dipping for.
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Post by Dante on Apr 21, 2011 14:48:12 GMT -5
Oh, so when they say there's an extra chapter in all of the new editions, it's not actually an extra story chapter... so it's sort of like a double con, really. Not only do they want you to buy again for an extra chapter, it's not even really an extra chapter, just author's notes. (Not that those aren't good; they just aren't plot.) Actually, I think I heard that the paperback of one of the more recent ones contained an extra story chapter that explained the motivations of one of the characters, but I can't pretend to even remember which book it was. Snakehead and Ash?
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Post by cwm on Apr 25, 2011 5:25:20 GMT -5
Yes, Snakehead, the first book to come out in hardback, had an extra chapter in the back of the paperback edition. It was also made available to view online for those who'd already brought the hardback. You may also be interested to know that when the paperback of Crocodile Tears came out, I believe it was WH Smith that had an exclusive limited edition cover, which was identical to the normal one except bronze instead of green. Onto Ark Angel: I like how this book opens – always liked the dark run about the hospital taking care of the kidnappers. Alex getting thrown back into MI6 is well done – and I love the twist that Blunt planned this all by putting him in the bedroom next to Paul Drevin. I suppose I should get the “he goes into space!” bit over and done with. A few people did think that this was where the series jumped the shark and abandoned any pretence at believability, but I like it. What really sells it to me is the bit where Alex is distracted from his mission to get a glimpse of the Earth – an utterly believable response. You can tell Anthony Horowitz really cared about getting it right, and that’s what makes it work. Other thoughts – once again, the formula is played with a bit, as Alex never gets any kind of briefing or debriefing at Liverpool Street and spends the entire thing (bar a brief encounter with Smithers and Mrs Jones’ visit at the beginning) away from MI6. Otherwise business as usual… but the problem is that the entire Drevin/Force Three plot is a bit too obvious. I’ve no great problem with Horowitz’s usual manner of revealing one or two snippets and then giving us the whole big picture in one chapter, but here he had a good opportunity for a real mystery. As is, the clues that Drevin is really the mastermind behind Force Three are dropped with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer being hit against a stick of highly unstable dynamite repeatedly – I swear about a page is dedicated to the revelation that Force Three kept Alex in a block of flats owned by Drevin, it’s pointed out directly that no guards were watching Paul when he was a target (granted the story is from Alex’s POV so it’s reasonable he would notice this), and it’s so blatant that he ordered the murder of Adam Wright I’m amazed Horowitz bothered to leave any ambiguity. It ruins Horowitz’s attempt to have a different kind of villain by switching who is the main villain of the piece. What would have been better would be to leave things more unclear until the meeting with Joe Byrne and then drop them in as Alex pieces things together. Presenting Drevin as a bit more innocent and not making the clues so damn obvious would have made all the difference. I do wonder if the effect of Scorpiagate changed how much intelligence Horowitz regarded the readers with. The revelations at the end of the last book aren’t really picked up on – it’s acknowledged that John Rider was a spy but Alex doesn’t really reflect on them. That’s all that bugs me about an otherwise pretty good book. And one more thing. I'd be interested in compiling an exact timeline of the events of the books, day to day. In particular for Scorpia through to Snakehead, as all three virtually run non-stop next to each other, and there's a potentially very serious continuity error presented as a result. It is stated that the Scorpia meeting in chapter 2 of Snakehead takes place three weeks before the first chapter - if so, it could actually be taking place before the events of Scorpia have even finished. Hmm... this will need to be looked into some more. Obviously any timeline would be pretty screwed up by the fact that the series moves from Nintendos to iPods in a year, but if we overlook that Alex's life should be able to mapped out pretty well. Looking at the timeline presented on the Alex Rider wiki, I see they've added an extra few weeks after the end of Scorpia to get round the problem of Scorpia and Snakehead's timelines overlapping - but that's not backed up by the book itself, where the events of Scorpia take place in late August/very early September and then Ark Angel picks up twelve days later. This is going to have to be some kind of day-by-day timeline. Hmm. All this talk of timelines of the series is making me realise how difficult I find it to regard the whole series as one journey. The 'villain of the book' thing means that very few ideas are picked up on between books - Alex's character development is the only thing consistent between all nine. Otherwise, the John Rider revelations are the cliffhanger between Eagle Strike and Scorpia and get picked up on a bit in Snakehead, and other characters dip in and out... there are no big story arcs like Harry Potter or ASOUE, which is probably why they seem so disconnected. And one more thing. Here's a 'missing chapter' from Stormbreaker hidden away on the internet I hadn't seen before I found it on the Alex Rider wiki you might like: g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/books/promos/Stormbreaker_Missing_Chapter._V5608245_.pdfIt looks like a slightly modified version of that made it into the graphic novel - can't remember if it's in the film or not.
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Post by Dante on Apr 29, 2011 9:35:08 GMT -5
I'm back now, and have read Scorpia Rising, but I'll leave that a minute and we can talk about Ark Angel... again, I just don't remember this very much. I don't remember who Paul Drevin is at all. I just remember that Alex goes into space and the fake villain is a guy with a globe tattooed on his face - typical Horowitz ridiculous showy villain. Which is fine, but I don't think he ever got any personality or even really did much, did he? That would certainly have helped make the bait-and-switch more surprising. I don't really mind the space thing. Again, it's the genre, and if Horowitz tried to make it work and be believable then we should take it seriously rather than rolling our eyes. I don't remember my reaction to it. But I don't think I minded. Horowitz... actually, one thing I've come to realise, quite unconsciously, is that Horowitz takes his locations and settings very seriously; there's almost an aspect of travel writing in the series. So to include space is something that goes along with that, covering every environment.
I think you're right that it's hard to find much continuity in the series. Little actually carries over between books. I'll come to this as regards Scorpia Rising, but the episodes don't really seem connected. You could probably skip any one of the books and it wouldn't matter.
As to the missing chapter, I may or may not have read it before; I don't really remember. It doesn't really have anything to do with the plot, I can see, but it does help to reinforce some of the ongoing themes.
Edit: OH YEAH Scorpia Rising, I should probably write about that. Umm... huh. I thought it wasn't really epic enough. I got the impression it was this crazy pursuit around the world and instead it's mostly just another Alex mission, the plot doesn't even really get into gear until it's almost over, and frankly, it doesn't feel important! What do the Elgin marbles have to do with Alex, and is this really all for the paltry sum of just forty million pounds, from a man who is a multi-billionaire? I was hoping for the net closing around Alex to be something that was drawn out a bit more, for him to really feel claustrophobic and hunted, but it just doesn't happen. He goes from free to trapped - no hunt, no chase. It really didn't feel as if it was enough about Alex. As for Razim, I think he, too, needed more of a quirk. It didn't need to be much, just a really eccentric outfit or something. A normal guy in a normal suit with a normal name who's just one-twelfth of Scorpia doesn't really cut it for me. Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed the book. But I felt like there should have been more. (Also, the salt death was kinda random. I didn't know salt could do that. Was that ever made clear?)
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Post by cwm on Apr 29, 2011 17:21:55 GMT -5
My brief scanning of the Wikipedia article on salt was inconclusive, but I imagine it could probably have similar properties. Certainly I don't think anyone is going to check whether Horowitz was accurate here or not! Re: your qualms with the Elgin marbles and Scorpia's motives. Scorpia needed a method of getting the Elgin marbles back, and they decided taking out Alex would be an added bonus. They needed this operation to prove they were back on the map, it wasn't strictly about the money. I think "not being epic enough" is a line finales have to toe carefully. Yes, it's the last one ever and you want to make it feel like the end - but there's also "epic for the sake of epic", which is rarely a good thing. Other points: I don't know how you can call Razim 'a normal guy'. It's made repeatedly clear, right from the beginning, that he's an utter sociopath on a horrific scale. I suspect we agree more about the plot coming in late and the closing net being a bit undramatic than I think, and I will come to be more critical of it when I reread the book. It's laid out very clear from the beginning that Alex is in a massive trap, he's playing right into Scorpia's hands... and then he does just blunder into the trap. But there's no real indication of a net closing, apart from a brief moment when Alex wonders about "wheels within wheels", and all he's got to go on then is a few dregs that don't really indicate a trap. Equally, though, I'm finding it difficult to find another way as to how it could have been done. On first read I said that the end left it very unlikely that there could ever be another Alex Rider book, but not impossible. I now think that was unfair of me. The ending doesn’t conclusively finish off the series (it’s perhaps conceivable that some intelligence force could press Alex into service soon, however unlikely), but the only way that could really have been done was to kill off Alex – and I’m very glad Horowitz didn’t take that route. I find it perfectly satisfying that this would be the end of it all – Horowitz considered stopping at Snakehead, and I’m so glad he didn’t. The most important thing for me is the last 100 pages. Things seem really hopeless, and it's not because the villain has succeeded or anything grand, it's because one person who I won't spoil just in case is dead. Horowitz plays on the fact that the book was publicised with the knowledge that someone would die by setting up a few characters for death, but that’s no bad thing. When the character who dies finally does buy the farm, it’s so sudden in a way, yet also drawn out, that there’s perhaps a page or two of doubt before realising they really are dead, and the dramatic impact is tremendous. The final pages are a bittersweet farewell. I take serious issue with Horowitz saying that this was “a fate worse than death” for Alex, though, because by the end it’s clear that he’s already healing from what happened. Time will repair his wounds, but it is absolutely right that what happens next is not chronicled. Sorry, rambling on there... So yeah... I think I do agree with you about how the plot was handled, but not about how it's not 'epic' enough. It's an end for Alex, it's the right end. A few questions: - What did you make of the use of the periphery characters - Mrs Jones, Alan Blunt, Smithers? - Did you notice the same plot hole in the last chapter that I did?
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Post by Dante on Apr 30, 2011 3:20:12 GMT -5
My brief scanning of the Wikipedia article on salt was inconclusive, but I imagine it could probably have similar properties. Certainly I don't think anyone is going to check whether Horowitz was accurate here or not! Oh, I'm sure it was accurate. I just wish there'd been a point earlier in the novel where Razim, say, had lingered on the properties of a big pile o' salt. It would even count as foreshadowing, and we might wonder just who was fated for such a death. I can appreciate that, but there wasn't really any personal tie. Razim's a new member of Scorpia who hasn't encountered Alex before, and nobody really cares about the Elgin marbles. The plot Razim devises could be used to blackmail the British government for anything; the marbles don't matter. And it is really Razim's plot, not Scorpia's; the rest of Scorpia effectively has nothing to do with it outside the opening chapters. I do agree, and I'm quite fond of some finales which are quite small-scale, but I think if you hype something up as Alex's final mission which is all about him, then it has to actually be all about him, and that was something that disappointed me. Because the plot could have worked without Alex, it could have worked with any British agent. It being Alex added extra punch because of his age, but proof of the British assassinating the U.S. secretary of state is more than damning enough on its own. Yeah, but he's a normal sociopath. He doesn't really have a gimmick other than being evil. He needed a horrible scar down the side of his face that drives him to scar other people the same way, or his obsession with pain should've been represented in other outlets as well. Or just a nickname. He just doesn't feel very interesting to me. I definitely agree that killing off the hero - or indeed, the main villain - is a bit old hat and not very interesting. You have to come up with something more original than that to explain why your hero can never again engage in any adventures. And in the end it's a bit small-scale here; Alex doesn't want to be involved with the secret services again, but big surprise, he already didn't want to be for the past few books. The only real difference is the change in management and that he's now out of their jurisdiction. I think a couple of "meanwhile, back at headquarters..." cuts to Blunt and Jones would've helped, as I really didn't get enough of a sense of Jones's involvement. Everything they did was quite right for them, but I was a bit underwhelmed. No complaint about Smithers, other than something I think you said but I can't find where about his inventions being underutilised. Did Alex use the hatnav at all? It'd be a shame if he didn't, given that it was a competition-winning idea. Also, your outside link doesn't work, but I've fixed it for you in this quote. But I agree with the idea you expound there. It was mission accomplished for Blunt in the same way that it would have been for Scorpia, and I always assumed that it was just meant to be a trap to lure him in, not to actually kill him. I guess the problem with Jones's explanation is really just with that explanation and not with the attack itself.
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Post by cwm on Apr 30, 2011 10:02:46 GMT -5
There's a bit where Julius notes the idea of killing Alex by flaying his skin off and rolling him into the salt, and Razim wonders about the effectiveness of such a method. We know the salt piles are there and that they're potentially lethal, which is enough.
Re: the plot working with any British agent. Alex was the only person on Earth who had a clone, and Julius was vital to the plot - there'd be hundreds of eyewitnesses saying he was there and slipped out just minutes before the secretary died, then turned up shot dead a few minutes later. It's important that Alex is captured live on television at the scene of the crime, and since the real Alex couldn't be used... Also, it involved luring a British agent to Cairo in the first place, and part of the trap was getting Blunt to send Alex as he was the most obvious agent to investigate a school.
EDIT FOR EXTRA POINT THAT'S JUST OCCURRED TO ME: It wasn't just proof of the British assassinating the secretary of state - it was all the times they'd previously employed a minor, which would have made it even worse. Even if something went wrong with the assassination attempt, they've still got that.
I'm afraid I'm not sure what you're trying to say here... the plot of the whole book was about blackmailing the British government, so you think it should have been something larger in scale than the Elgin marbles?
Scorpia's involvement - they're a good villain to use again because I imagine the whole 'someone approaches them with a mission' might make it a bit easier to write. Plus, given how prominent they have been throughout the second half of the series, I think it's a nice touch that the series ends with them disbanding.
Think I'll have a bit more to say about this in the reread of Crocodile Tears...
Writing up reviews of Snakehead and Crocodile Tears at the moment, since I sort of read them both at the same time... I whizzed through Snakehead for much the same reason I did Eagle Strike, but just sort of got Crocodile Tears out of the way because I find it really quite a bland book.
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Post by Dante on Apr 30, 2011 11:58:23 GMT -5
I suspect we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, cwm; to me it just wasn't tight-knit enough. It's a good book, but I was expecting more.
Edit: On the plus side, maybe Horowitz will now have time to write the last Power of Five book.
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