Book Review - Point Blank (Alex Rider, #2)

Point Blank by Anthony Horowitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

'Point Blank' throws us alongside Alex Rider, teenage spy and MI6 agent as he is tasked with his second dangerous assignment.

People are dead and Alex is the only agent young enough to infiltrate the notorious and secretive Point Blank school. He goes undercover, first with a family in England, pretending to be their son, and then on to the school. This is unlike any other educational institution Alex or the reader has come across.

Only a handful of students attend, and they are given free reign to attend or ignore classes when they arrive. But after some time, all the students begin to comply with the wishes of their headmaster. Can Alex get to the bottom of this case before he too turns into an obedient automaton?

This book was less inspiring than Stormbreaker, which in itself had a number of issues. While it is a thrilling ride, it borders on the absurd rather than the fantastic. There is also the repetitive feeling of the MI6 and fake-Q scenes. Of course, this is a young adult novel that is around 15 years old, so my jaded point of view is quite amiss with the author's original intentions. The worrisome thing is that Alex appears to have put his Uncle's murder, and the identity of the killer on the back burner. It is hardly alluded to at all in this book, which makes it less logical.

We have the same problem of absent female characters, except for the nasty ones. Seems like none of the women Alex meets are ever nice people. He has Jack, but she comes in for one scene in the entire book.

Also, there's an emphasis on the otherness of the villains, which is problematic simply because different does not, and should not, equal evil.

The ending is a surprising one. It comes out of nowhere and works. The book closes on a cliffhanger, not one that works after 15 years, but one that must have had readers of the day chomping at the bit for the next issue.

I am not all that enthused to pick up another Rider book, but I'm sure I'll be pleasantly surprised when I do.

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