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flashrock's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
jasonlaw77's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
clockworkp's review against another edition
3.0
I agree with one of the reviews that I saw here: the enjoyment of this instalment depends on how
much information you have on the series. If this is your first time encoutering the world of Alex Rider (valid option, for the most part the book stands on its own), then you are going to enjoy the action, and the plot has its moments.
But if you are already a fan of the serie, be warned, there are really bad plotholes. At the point that here the information that Yassen has on John Rider, (the thing that moves the plot towards Scorpia
in the first place) has been changed. Now it doesn't makes sense the reasoning for Yassen telling Alex the "truth" about his father. If this wasn't bad enought, here Yassen isn't present in the operation in Malta. That plot was important, WTF? Things like that make me believe that the author didn't even make sure that the time line in his stories stay consistent and didn't care. This is the wost kind of fanservice, the one that destroys the canon and fanon.
Anyway, as I said before, the action is amazing. The plot is predictable, but you want to continue reading to see what new situation Yassen will encounter. If it was its own thing I would rank it with the best of the author, I really enjoyed reading it.
ianmcnamara's review
5.0
hpstrangelove's review against another edition
3.0
I don't like spoilers, so won't get too specific, but I assume the reader is familiar with Yassen from Stormbreaker, Eagle Strike, Scorpia, and Snakehead. In this book, Yassen and John Rider's relationship and their time with Scorpia simply isn't in sync with the other books, especially with Snakehead and the story Alex's godfather Ash tells about Malta.
In fact, Malta is completely ignored in this book. I've made allowances in the past with the other books when a few small details don't match up between them, but this one I can't. Mdina is such an integral part of canon. Yassen and John are supposed to be partners, all the way until their assignment in Malta 'goes bad'. It's the motive behind Ash's actions in Snakehead, the motive in Eagle Strike for Yassen telling Alex about Scorpia in the first place. It makes the chapter 'Power Plus' in this book simply hard to accept.
As a fan of the series, I was disappointed with how this book turned out. I really wanted to like it because it was well written. It started out strong, but failed for me in the end.
artemis's review
okay, at first i wasn't planning to write any reviews on the alex rider series, but shit. this is simply the best part of the whole series. i love yassen and this book contributed to that. before, he was known to me as an assassin with a weakness that is alex; now i know him as a man with a traumatic past that became who he is mostly because of not having another choice. because of the chain of downright unpleasant experiences that shaped him as a person.
i honestly didn't know what this book would be exactly about, and at first i was wondering why it started with yassen's (or yasha's…) childhood of all things. as i kept reading, it made so much sense. fuck. he really is so similar to alex but they ended up so differently. to think that if he was given opportunities, he'd never have to start killing. maybe he'd even still be alive. this shit makes me so sad to even think about. his life, starting in the very boyhood, was so damn unfair. he suffered through so much.
“The place of my birth had now become a sentence of death.”
the fact itself that it was just a kid who had to think this way is devastating to me.
and there was a parallel between yassen and alex that made me so, so emotional:
“It was surely the reason why fate had brought me here, and it no longer mattered if I lived or died.
I would kill him. I swore it to myself.
I would kill him.
I would kill.”“Yassen shrugged. “I kill a lot of people.”
“One day I’ll kill you.”
once again, yassen and alex are so similar. but alex never kept his promise. never had the chance to. yassen did kill his enemy. maybe that's, at the end, why their lives went in such different ways. but even then, i wonder if it'll stay this way. with all the trauma alex went through and with all the choices he wasn't allowed to make, i wonder if there's a possibility he'll ever be more like yassen than he'd ever expected.
i still miss yassen. i could wish his life had been different. but it wasn't possible. so now the only thing i can wish is to get to know the rest of his story.
“The two of them had come from different worlds, but they had so much in common. At the same age, they had lost everything that mattered to them. They had found themselves alone. And they had both been chosen. In Alex’s case it had been the British secret service, MI6 Special Operations, who had come calling. For Yassen it had been Scorpia. Had either of them ever had any choice?”
bumblebee's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
danielcharlton's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0