Stormbreaker by Anthony HorowitzMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I've seen the film and heard a lot of things about this book. So, I finally decided to give it a go. This is a young adult novel, through and through. If you're looking at it from a grown adult's perspective, you're reading it wrong.
It's fun and compelling with a lot of exaggerated action. It's not believable, and isn't meant to be either. 14 year old Alex in real life would not have survived a day in these circumstances.
However fun it is I'm not sure why there are so few active female characters. It really boggles the mind. The only one that is significant, if you could call it that, to the story is Nadia Vole, and even she doesn't figure that prominently in the story.
Also not sure about the Lebanese being the bad guy. He's painted as a freaking maniac. And considering he's pretty much the only POC character in the entire book it kinda sucks that he's evil. I'm sure it seemed a good idea at the time though.
The writing is clever but not fantastic. It's not expository but there's often details thrown in that a person in those hairy situations wouldn't know or care about. Things like a engine capacity, etc, is not something a child would suddenly conjure in his mind the moment a car comes careening towards him.
In hindsight it's easy to nitpick most things, but if I do go back to the series hopefully it will improve.
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