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Post by Dante on Mar 22, 2011 12:14:41 GMT -5
From what I've read it sounds like the ending is going to be pretty bleak. Really? Wow, I'm looking forward to that, then.
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Post by cwm on Mar 22, 2011 12:43:00 GMT -5
Sorry, I momentarily forgot where I was. Walked right into that one.
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Post by cwm on Mar 31, 2011 10:31:14 GMT -5
I tried to avoid major spoilers as much as possible in the post below (I succeeded in not giving away any major revelations), but don't read unless you want to be as unspoiled as possible:
Well, I picked up Scorpia Rising this morning, and... well, it's pretty damn good. It's going to need a re-read, but there's a really twisty plot (it's seven chapters in before we even meet Alex, the first six all being about the set-up), with lots of surprises to the end - I genuinely didn't guess Blunt's secret until it was revealed, although I suppose someone else might. The villain is easily the nastiest of all 9 books - I won't say what he does but it's really shocking.
I wasn't sure about the inclusion of Scorpia in this book - I liked the end of Snakehead with the implications that they weren't going to survive much longer - and this seemed to be compounded with all the new members introduced in the book. It all came together in the end, though.
Smithers isn't in this book all that much as I might have hoped, but he completely owns every single part of it that he's in. His secret might seem a bit random at first, but it's actually a good piece of symbolism that Alex really can't trust anyone.
The main thing that bugs me is that Horowitz stated that once we finished this book, we would be in no doubt that this was the last Alex Rider ever. Having read it, I think it would be EXTREMELY unlikely that there could ever be another Alex Rider book, but not impossible.
Overall - I approve. Some real shocks and twists, a few continuity references without it feeling like bringing stuff back just because it's the finale, a few things left ambiguous... it's a good finale to the series. I felt really quite sad when I got to the end of this because I discovered Alex Rider nearly a decade ago, whereas I found Harry Potter and ASOUE about five years before their respective ends, so it's lasted a lot longer for me.
The one thing that's really bugging me is how utterly pointless Crocodile Tears was!
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Post by Dante on Mar 31, 2011 11:03:58 GMT -5
Just skimmed your spoilers. Sounds... interesting. Don't think I caught any giveaways there, but it's definitely reminded me to be interested. I'll probably order this soon; there are a few other things I need to get at the moment, so it's the right time. Viz. Crocodile Tears, it sort of seems a relic of the more episodic nature of the early books, where you didn't necessarily need to have read everything to know what was going on. The series does seem to have had trouble deciding whether it was made up of stand-alones or was continuity-driven.
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Post by cwm on Apr 9, 2011 13:39:25 GMT -5
Have just commenced a reread of the entire series.
Stormbreaker: it does feel a bit lightweight compared to later books. There's the action sequences and gadgets that always show up, but Herod Sayle isn't the series' best villain - in fact, he seems a bit out of place compared to Grief or Sarov. I do find it interesting that there weren't any gadgets in the first draft of this, because the gadgets are some of the best part of the book, giving Horowitz a chance to be really creative.
Despite the swing between stand-alone and continuity-driven Dante mentioned, you can see the tone being set here, with Alex realising that in a way MI6 are no better than the villains at the end. Beyond Sayle's plan, this book isn't that grim - the worst injury Alex gets is when he gets hit in the face, which seems like peanuts compared to the later instalments.
It's a strong opening on the whole and still a really great kids' book.
The fact that the series has taken place in such a short timespan has always bugged me - looking back at this book, I'm not sure if I can believe that Scorpia Rising is going to take place 16 months down the line. I feel Alex probably could have grown up to age 16 within the series for a little more spacing - we'll see how I feel once I've read more instalments, though. In some ways I believe it, in others I don't.
The series has always been a pretty big user of artistic license though - notice how here the book is set in 2000 and features Nintendos, but by Snakehead, set later in the same year, Alex gives the exact date of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and the gadgets have moved on to iPods!
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Post by Dante on Apr 9, 2011 14:45:55 GMT -5
That's one of the problems with having a series published over years but set over... well, many fewer years. TPP seems to make a bit more sense if you assume that the last five books have taken place over a lot longer than a fortnight, for instance.
Also, I have Scorpia Rising, but I probably won't be reading it for a couple of weeks; I have some books that I've left for years and really should get through. I promise to bring a faithful account of my reactions right here, though.
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Post by cwm on Apr 11, 2011 9:43:33 GMT -5
Point Blanc reread: I was surprised by how many of the same beats both this and Stormbreaker hit. Alex does something that shows how exceptional he is, MI6 get involved and bundle him off under a new identity, Alex infilitrates someplace under that assumed identity, gathers evidence that something is not quite right but not the whole picture, but then gets found out and the villain spills the plan to him, then leaves him to die but he escapes and gets back to MI6, saves the day, then at the end after he's been debriefed there's a post-climax confrontation... the structure is quite similar, and it's good that starting with the next book Horowitz tinkers with it a bit more. I'm not sure how much substance there is to the main sections of the first two books - by and large it is just Alex wandering about until he blunders into the plan. Now that I think about it, the final chapter is more or less identical to the Diamond Brothers book Public Enemy Number Two - and Horowitz liked using the 'post-climax confrontation' in that series too, as I recall.
The book itself serves to confirm to Alex that MI6 don't care about him and just want to use him, and damn the consequences - this was hinted at in Stormbreaker but this book really sets up something that's going to be a big plotline throughout the books.
I find it interesting that Dr. Grief was thought up before Herod Sayle but Horowitz chose to hold him off because he was worried readers would find the whole cloning thing too unbelievable - I don't really have that problem and find Sayle far and away the most uninteresting, one-dimensional villain of the series. That said, it feels right that Grief wasn't used first somehow - having Alex involved in this kind of plot second wouldn't be right, whereas the plot of Stormbreaker to save the UK as opposed to the entire world is a less extreme introduction.
And one thing that's always really bugged me is the opening with the crane and the barge. Alex is an unusual boy, but he's not an idiot - why the hell did he think it was a good idea to lift up the barge with a crane that he didn't know could take the weight and put it in a carpark?
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Post by Dante on Apr 11, 2011 10:06:39 GMT -5
Stormbreaker and Point Blanc being quite similar is part of what makes the early series quite episodic, I think. One could argue that you have to have a formula before you can subvert it, but I'm not the one rereading the books, so I'm not qualified to make an argument like that. I see what you mean about the "post-climax confrontation"; I quite like it as a device, but it only really works once, since it's a form of plot twist. If you started using it regularly, there wouldn't be any point to it. Fortunately Alex Rider and Diamond Brothers are very different series issued at very different times.
As to the opening with the crane, I just took it as part of the spectacle - one of the bold set-pieces that litter the series. You could probably make an argument that much of the plot exists to shuttle Alex from one of these to the other, but again - I'm not the one rereading the series.
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Post by cwm on Apr 14, 2011 8:47:23 GMT -5
Skeleton Key: I found it quite difficult to write anything on this book; I think it’s very good, and helped by having a twistier plot than the first two. A lot of set-pieces, as Dante noted, but that’s not a bad thing, and they seem to have an actual point, which the whole thing with the crane last time didn’t; Alex’s encounters with Big Circle back up just how much danger he’s in, the encounter with the great white reveals Sarov’s trap in the cave… this book just somehow seems to have a lot more thought put into it than the first two, which isn’t to put them down at all. Sarov, for his part, is a good villain; Herod Sayle seems a world away.
The formula being shaken-up helps a bit: Alex working for the CIA, and then he truly ends up alone after the CIA agents get killed. I’ve always found that bit really effective: they dive in and Alex never seems them killed, only realises what happens. The book as a whole is much darker; at the end, when Alex is reflecting on how isolated his double-life is leaving him, is really quite chilling.
I'll also mention the graphic novel briefly on that point: How Alex's isolation is shown in the graphic novel looks excellent even if it's an obvious way of doing it.
There are, however, two changes I take issue with. One is the removal of the fight with the jetski near the beginning; as it stands, Alex's holiday is interrupted by MI6, and he has to take their word for it that the triads are out to get him and they are as dangerous as they seem (something the jetski fight in the book added a lot of credence to) before he's forced onto another mission he doesn't really want to do. I'm not sure if that was a good or a bad change, but we'll come to that in later books.
Also: Sabina. Keep in mind that in the canon of the graphic novels Sabina is completely aware of Alex's double-life. At the end, an utterly dejected Alex tells her he saw a man take his own life because he rejected him last week, and she breezily says she doesn't believe that before moving on to talk about the South of France. That's just stupid.
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Post by Dante on Apr 14, 2011 9:57:28 GMT -5
Skeleton Key is about where I'd expect the series to get good, yes. After a couple of books I can well imagine that one's style must mature, and if you're writing a series then a bit more meat is going to creep in, not just for your own interest but for the fans. Isn't Artemis Fowl a bit the same? And if the set-pieces actually serve a purpose, all the better. I don't mean to suggest that they shouldn't be there, because of course they should, they're arguably part of the genre. Just that, at their best, they shouldn't really be random.
I haven't read the graphic novels - or seen the movie, for that matter. Any good? Interesting that they are that much more of an adaptation, but I suppose they would be. Speaking of which, didn't I hear that the CIA agents are so much more sympathetic in the American edition?
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Post by cwm on Apr 14, 2011 11:31:57 GMT -5
The movie - and the video game, for that matter - are best forgotten about by fandom, I gather. I personally thought the movie wasn't that bad, and had a good cast, but I gather it wasn't successful enough for any sequels.
The graphic novels are OK, but they don't appear to have any plans to adapt Eagle Strike onwards - which is a shame, I think, as I'd be interested to see what they do. The art is excellent and absolutely nails most of the characters - their General Sarov is particularly good, and their Dr Grief genuinely creepy - and the story remains relatively faithful to the books.
I've never read any of the American adaptations, but I do gather that changes to the original text have been made (including the aforementioned alteration to Scorpia). I do know that they renamed the CIA agents in the American version, because when Ark Angel came out the US version forgot to change the names to match what they'd used in Skeleton Key and that caused a bit of confusion.
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Post by Dante on Apr 14, 2011 12:00:32 GMT -5
My understanding of the movie is that one of the officials Horowitz was dealing with was a crook who massively failed to uphold the promises he'd made regarding how widely the movie would be screened, ensuring that there wouldn't be enough profit to consider a sequel. I'm pretty sure I read this on his website; he was quite bitter about the whole thing, understandably so. I looked through a lot of his old news articles and couldn't find it, but I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine the whole thing.
Changes to the American editions of British books used to be rather in vogue, weren't they? I remember Harry Potter suffered the same miserable fate. Actually I don't think it's such a huge deal but I also think they shouldn't feel the need to mess with these things, we are all perfectly comfortable with the fact that people live in different countries and have different cultures and opinions.
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Post by cwm on Apr 14, 2011 12:27:27 GMT -5
I did hear the movie was underreleased, yes. The fact that it was done deliberately by a crook, I must admit is new to me. Wikipedia states that ITV are planning a new adaptation of Stormbreaker, but then Wikipedia says a lot of things...
It's really quite bizarre here because Alex is dealing with the CIA - which makes it all the more blatant that he's from England and has no reason to use Americanisms! I did read that the explosive Michael Owen keyring here is changed to Tiger Woods... sigh.
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Post by Dante on Apr 14, 2011 13:56:55 GMT -5
It's okay, though, because the CIA are using British clichéd ideas of Americanisms so there's still the all-important culture clash.
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Post by cwm on Apr 16, 2011 14:23:36 GMT -5
Eagle Strike: From working for another secret service to not working for anyone was, I suppose, the next logical step after SK, and it works really well. It’s good to see Jack Starbright being used a bit more here, as she had a lot of untapped potential in the first three books. Damian Cray, given that he’s basically an evil Elton John, is a good villain. Sabina’s involvement shows how MI6 is ruining his life… and for what it’s worth, yeah, this is basically Alex moving from big action scenes such as the real-life reconstruction of the Gameslayer to the bicycle scene, a few snippets before the plot gets dumped on Alex in one chapter, and then moving onto the big climax. But that’s not a bad thing. I raced through this book much quicker than any other in the reread because it's such an engaging story - the driving line of Alex working on his own is brilliant, it's liberally peppered with brilliant action scenes... this one seems to have an unusually small cast, with Cray, Yassen, Alex, Jack and to a lesser extent Sabina making up the bulk of the action and others popping in for a few chapters at a time. There are no big clusters of periphery characters as with the first three books for the most part, I find, lending it an interesting increased amount of action.
One qualm is that this is where the series being released over the course of 11 years but taking place inside 16 months really starts to irritate. The scenes where Alex is having a go at Blunt for refusing to help him might make a bit more sense if it hadn't been just five months since he first met Blunt. Then again...
Given that Horowitz wasn’t able to visit Air Force One (I met him once and he told me that what he said to them was “Can I go and blow up Air Force One?” – great phrasing), the first of two times he’d been unable to do thorough research into something for the books and had to rely on shows like The West Wing for reconstructions, he did a very good job.
“Rely on The West Wing” is a good maxim for life, I feel.
(PS: I find the original cover for this book, with the launching missile and countdown, very striking - no pun intended. The cover used in subsequent editions is a bit bland and also gives part of the plot away, and is the only rebranded cover that I feel is actually worse than the original.)
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