#Alex rider books free
Although Sayle is something of a generic villain, and sadly Horowitz makes Alex mock Sayle’s accent at one point, the plot to disguise the Stormbreaker computer as a generous gift to the nation is a stroke of genius.Īny kid that grappled with Windows 98 on a naff old computer at school could surely believe that the real-world government would probably fall for Sayle’s ruse, gratefully accepting the free computers with no questions asked, which makes the whole book seem that little bit more plausible.
#Alex rider books Pc
In ‘Stormbreaker’, you get Herod Sayle, a Lebanese computer genius who seeks to get revenge on the Prime Minister by putting a deadly PC into schools.
Certainly, Horowitz is always keen to establish a clear villain and make the stakes feel real before he really lets loose.
#Alex rider books series
With gadgets and action getting so silly, the Alex Riderbook series could’ve veered into parody territory if it wasn’t held together by some engaging plot-lines that make the whole endeavour feel somewhat grounded. It’s like nothing was off-limits to Anthony Horowitz while writing these stories, and it feels like he was really letting loose with every barmy idea. It’s moments like this, which often play out as the climax of a pacey plot, which give the Alex Riderbook series its unique style of over-the-top action. These gadgets prove that the Alex Riderbook series didn’t take itself too seriously, and that sense of playfulness filters through into the plots of books and the type of action scenes that they serve up.Īlex Rider Review: Amazon’s Earnest Teen Spy Thriller By Louisa Mellorīut who wouldn’t want to shoot down a mountain on an ironing board? Or defeat a deadly jellyfish using a tube of not-actually-acne-cream? Or capture some drug dealers in a canal boat by commandeering a nearby crane? Or jump out of a helicopter and crash through the roof of the Science Museum in London, before shooting the Prime Minister to stop him activating a new computer that will kill thousands of school kids if it comes online? Later books made the playful gadgets a tradition of the series: particular favourites in the ‘unlikely items to be gadgets’ category include some gel pens, a copy of ‘Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets’, and a flash grenade concealed in a Michael Owen keyring. In a similar way that adults can pretend their watch is as cool as James Bond’s, younger people could run around with their Gameboy and pretend it was a high-end piece of spy tech. Kid-friendly gadgets like this helped create the sense that Alex could offer wish-fulfilment to children. (Fun fact: after the Nintendo DS was used in the film version of ‘Stormbreaker’, later editions of the book replaced the Gameboy with a DS.) In ‘Stormbreaker’, for instance, Smithers kits out Alex with some real corkers: a tube of acne cream that can burn through metal, a yo-yo that functions as a grappling hook, and a Nintendo Gameboy that could detect bugs, help with surveillance and provide a smokescreen. He’s basically Q from the James Bond franchise, but Smithers’ inventions are nonetheless very enjoyable and playful. The book introduced Smithers, a member of the British secret service who relished the opportunity to design spy tools for a 14-year-old for a change.
The first book in the series, ‘Stormbreaker’, really hit the ground running in this regard. If you try to cast your mind back to a time in your childhood when you first read the Alex Rider books, the teen spy’s array of somewhat-geeky gadgets may well be the first thing that comes to mind. Harry Potter may have succeeded in spawning a Hollywood franchise on its first attempt, but Alex Rider didn’t, and we’re grateful to see the character getting another shot at breaking into the real-world with this live-action series.īut what exactly is it that makes us remember the Alex Rider books so fondly? Why are they worth a second set of executives chucking money at them to try and make a successful live-action adaptation? We’ve revisited the series to bring you some answers… Clearly, executives in the entertainment world had been thinking along similar lines. There’s something about these books, though, and it wasn’t just fans that wanted to see Alex get another bite of the adaptation cherry.
#Alex rider books movie
A teenaged super spy that spawned a series of novels in Anthony Horowitz’s young-readers franchise, Alex has already had one attempt at the live-action arena: a movie version failed to take the world by storm back in the noughties. The Alex RiderTV series arrives on Amazon Prime Video this week, providing a grittier, more grown-up vision of Alex’s adventures than in the books.
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