A Review Of Anthony Horowitzs Stormbreaker English Language Essay

Anthony Horowitz is best known as a screenwriter and childrens novelist. Born in 1955 in North London, he was educated at Rugby School and York University, and published his first book, Enter Frederick K Bower, in 1978.He created the television series Foyles War, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders, Crime Traveller and Menace, and has written episodes for many more, including Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Murder Most Horrid and Robin of Sherwood.His books for children include the Alex Rider series about the teenage secret agent: Stormbreaker (2000), which became a film in 2006; Point Blanc (2001); Skeleton Key (2002); Eagle Strike (2003); Scorpia (2004); Ark Angel (2005), winner of the 2006 British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year; Snakehead (2007), shortlisted for the 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize, and The Mission Files (2008), an essential guide for the teenage spy. The latest in the Alex Rider series is Crocodile Tears (2009).Further series are the Diamond Brothers series of mystery stories and the Groosham Grange series – the most recent of which is Return to Groosham Grange (2003). He also writes short stories and these, originally collected as Horowitz Horror (1999) and More Horowitz Horror (2000), have been reissued as Scared (2000) and, more recently, as The Complete Horowitz Horror (2008). Recent books are Necropolis: City of the Dead (2008), the fourth in the series Power of Five, coming after Raven’s Gate (2005), Evil Star (2006) and Nightrise (2007); and The Greek that Stole Christmas (2007), the most recent of the Diamond Brothers series. Anthony Horowitz has also written a horror film, ‘The Gathering’, starring Christina Ricci.  Anthony currently lives in London.

The book stormbreaker is 240 pages long and is about a boy named Alex Rider. In this book Alex is sent by a British spy agency called m16, to find out why his uncle was killed. Alex discovers that his uncle’s murderer is planning on releasing a deadly disease on the U.K. through his supercomputer called the stormbreaker. (<http://shakespeareloverblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/stormbreaker-summary.html>)

When 14- year-old Alex Rider hears of his uncle’s death in an auto accident, he becomes very suspicious. As far as Alex knew, Ian Rider had been a banker, a very careful man. He was also Alex’s only living relative. Following up on his uncle’s fate, Alex discovers that the car is at a junkyard and is sporting dozens of bullet holes and blood on the seats that proves his uncle was murdered. So who killed Ian Rider and covered the act up? Alex’s journey for the truth introduces him to Alan Blunt, a spy for Britain’s MI6 spy agency. When he was seeking further information, Alex is forced by Blunt into becoming the youngest spy to ever work for MI6.Herod Sayles, a millionaire is giving away thousands of his newest computers, which are called Stormbreaker, to London’s schools. Alex’s uncle was investigating the man and the computers when he was killed. If Alex doesn’t agree to do the mission, Blunt promises that he will be sent off to be an orphan, and that his housekeeper, Jack Starbright, will be sent back to America. Before he can adjust to getting forced into doing it, Alex is sent on a three week testing course training with the SAS military. Pulled out of training, Alex is thrown into the mission.

(http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-stormbreaker-alex-rider-adventure/#ixzz1I9Khz2ij)

Alex starts testing the stormbreaker for a couple of hours and gets bored so he starts to sneak around a bit. He finds his way into a laboratory where he finds them working on the Stormbreaker computer. Alex is quickly caught by the security guards and is tied up were Herod Sayle questions him. With Sayle are his crime buddies Mr. Grin and Nadia Vole. Herod Sayle says that he knew Alex was a spy all along and that he was just waiting for Alex to do something like that. Before Sayle plans on killing Alex he tells him everything he is going to do to the kids in London. First he is going to make the mayor responsible by having him activate the stormbreakers. Then once their activated the will release a deadly gas that will kill everyone in London. After Sayle tells Alex what his plan was Sayle leaves, and puts Nadia in charge of killing Alex. Nadia plans on killing Alex by putting him in a giant jellyfish tank hoping that it will kill him. But Alex is to smart and burns his way out of the tank with special toothpaste he got which can burn through anything. So Alex escapes and finally kills Sayle right when he’s about to activate the stormbreakers. Alex then becomes a national hero and everyone thanks him for his good work.

(<http://www.fandango.com/alexrider:operationstormbreaker_v326905/summary>)

(<http://englishproject32.tripod.com/summary.html>)

The theme of this story is that anyone can be a hero if they really want to. Alex becomes a hero because he has a good heart and wants to save people. He also knows what it is like to lose someone you really love. The second thing that causes him to be a hero is he stuck there in hell when he could’ve just left and let everyone die. This story shows how much people will go through to save other people, and it makes you think if you would do the same.

<http://bookstove.com/children/review-storm-breaker/>.

In the book Point Blank, a 14 year old secret agent named Alex Rider who works for London’s M-16 is sent on a very dangerous undercover mission. Alex is sent in the role of a student to a finishing school called Point Blank in the French Alps. It’s a place that only accepts the sons of very rich and powerful people. His mission is to investigate whether two murders of very rich men who both sent their sons to the finishing school are related. What Alex doesn’t know is that that Dr. Grief (the person running the school) has a plan to take over the world using the kids at the school. The entire book is an unfolding of the mystery of what is going on at the school, as Alex makes discovery after discovery, and also is in danger because Dr. Grief and his assistant become aware of what he is up to. When Alex first gets to the school things seem pretty normal except the other kids all seemed to be acting the same and perfectly behaved, like they were brainwashed or something. Alex is told that the third and fourth floors are completely off limits and he knows that something up there is happening. When he gets up to the third floor he sees that it is an exact replica of the first floor, including the kids’ rooms, and there is evidence that someone is living in each room, doing every single thing that each kid does. In fact, there are televisions in the upper rooms with spying views of the same room downstairs. When Alex is about to leave the school, having seen enough, Dr. Grief catches him and plans to kill him the next morning. Expecting Alex to die Dr. Grief reveals his plan to Alex. 14 years ago Dr. Grief had cloned himself 16 times, the number of kids at the school. After waiting for them to grow to be 14, he opened the school and found the 16 kids who were now the students. He had a plastic surgeon change all his clones in order to look exactly like each one of the kids, and had them copy the kids’ actions on the replica third floor. Finally he planned to have each clone of him take their place in the kids’ powerful families, and grow into the most powerful people in the world. But he is unaware that Alex has a plan to get out of Point Blank and warn m16. So Alex does exactly that and shuts down the whole school.

(<http://www.shvoong.com/books/89197-point-blanc/>)

I think the theme of this book is that you should always be aware of your surroundings no matter what. Even when you think there is nothing wrong just be aware because that is usually when something is wrong. At times in this book Alex thought that there was nothing wrong and it wasn’t true there was a lot more wrong then he thought. Overall this is a good theme because it teaches people a lot of lessons about life and to be always aware of what is happening and what will happen.

(<http://www.scribd.com/doc/13763470/Point-Blank-by-Anthony-Horowitz-book-report>)