STORMBREAKER - FIRST ALEX RIDER NOVEL BY ANTHONY HOROWITZ

Stormbreaker is the first novel in the Alex Rider series written by Anthony Horowitz for Young Adults. In the writer’s own words “I’ve always wanted to write a modern ‘teenager saves the world’ story. It was a recurring fantasy when I was at school that I wasn’t a bored thirteen-year-old, stuck in a gruesome north London prep school, but that I was, in, in reality, an MI6 agent.”

                Stormbreaker introduces us to Alex Rider, a fourteen year old orphan boy, who has been raised by his uncle Ian Rider. Ian Rider, a Banker by profession is killed in a car accident. Alex grows suspicious when he learns that his uncle, who was a stickler for road safety, was not wearing his seat belt. Alex starts investigating his uncle’s death and soon learns that he was in fact an MI6 agent. Ian’s last assignment was to investigate the activities of Herod Sayle. Herod Sayle is a millionaire who has announced to donate his company’s state of the art computer called Stormbreaker to every secondary school in Britain. Alex is forced to join MI6 by its Chief Executive of the Special Operations Division Alan Blunt. He is given gruelling SAS training & then sent undercover to uncover the truth behind the truth behind Sayle Enterprises. Alex starts investigating and soon learns of the deadly secret of the Stormbreakers’ which can destroy Britain for generations to come. Alex races against time as he must now not only save himself from the immense danger to his life but the whole of Britain from extinction.

                Stormbreaker is a Bond novel written for the young readers. Here we have plenty of cool gadgets - a motorized Yo-Yo, a tube of Zit-Clean Cream which can cut through metal and last but not the least a Nintendo Game Boy Color which can turn into a fax machine, a X-ray machine, a bug finder or into  a smoke bomb. The action sequences, especially the one with the Portuguese man-of-war, are breathtaking. Alex Rider is every bored schoolboy’s fantasy. Highly recommended for young readers of 10-16 age group.

P.S. – If you have watched and enjoyed the 2003 Spy movie Agent Cody Banks, you will simply love Horowitz’s Stormbreaker no matter what your age.