This is a book series I feel highly
obliged to recommend to everyone because this is the book series that first got
me into writing. Up until I read this book series I was reading very girly
books such as The Clique Series, which used to be some of my favorite books.
This series changed the types of books I enjoyed reading, which untimely led to
me writing my first book.
It happened when
I was in seventh grade when we were forced to participate in battle of the
books for our literature class. One of the books we could read was the first
Alex Rider book, Stormbreaker. I read this book only because I was very
underwhelmed by the other choices; none of them seemed that interesting to me. After
I finished the book I was amazed by it and I thought it was the best book I had
ever read in my life. It automatically got me interested in the
action/adventure genre of books and pulled me away from the girly high school
boy problems books.
Thus began my
fascination with spy books, so I went and read the rest of the series, along
with two other spy series, The Young Bond series and the Cherub series. All
three of these series are by British authors, and I even had to order the
entire Cherub series on Amazon because only the first three books in the series
were available in America at the time.
So after reading
all of these books, I noticed the common theme that they all had male protagonists.
Alex Rider and Young Bond only have a couple female characters in the entire
series and the female characters in Cherub are very sexualized and not
portrayed in a very good light. I then found the Ghallager Academy series,
which does have a female protagonist, but it is very girly and focused too much
on romance and other stupid problems other than spying for my liking. This is
when I decided I wanted to write a book about a girl spy who could solve
problems by herself without the help of a guy, and still be focused around the
actual concept of spying instead of romance. So, The Year of the Elephant was born.
So you can see
that the Alex Rider series set off a chain of events that really introduced me
to the writing community, but now I will explain why the series is a good one. The
series has nine books in total, with eight telling Alex’s story and the other
the back story of a slightly minor character. Alex Rider, a recently orphaned
fourteen year old boy is recruited by MI6 to be a spy, because no one would
suspect him of being one. The whole series is almost like a coming of age story
for Alex. The entire series takes place in about the course of two years, and
he has gone through a lot in those years. Although coming of age is a very
common theme in young adult books, and it also includes the clichéd boy left an
orphan theme, I think this one is unique. It shows his coming of age through a
very action packed story, while also showing the real problems of the adult
world. Alex is basically the only teenaged character in the whole series, and
he finds himself thrown into a world filled with adults and their problems
expected to adjust to it just like that.
The missions
that Alex goes on in these books are also very unique and very interesting. *SPOILERS*
His adventures are far from boring as he faces many evil people and organizations.
In Stormbreaker he stops evil
computers from releasing a virus to millions of school children while also
having a run in with a giant jellyfish. In Skeleton
Key a Russian mad men with his mind set on communism tries to adopt Alex as
his son. In Eagle Strike he finds
himself abandoned by MI6 to take down a billionaire who threw Alex into a
nightmarish real life version of a video game. In Ark Angel he literally goes into space to stop a floating hotel
from crashing into the pentagon. And that’s only naming some of his adventures.
However, I think one of the best plotlines of this book involves an
organization named SCORPIA and an assassin named Yassen.
This plot line is subtly woven in to
the entire series, although it does get a few books of its own as well. In the
first few books Alex comes face to face with a mysterious assassin named Yassen
who has a connection to his past he doesn’t seem to understand. Yassen eventually
tells him to investigate an organization named SCORPIA to find out the truth
about his past where he finds out things about his father he had never thought
possible. The last book in the series titled Russian Roulette tells Yassen’s back story and really brings the
entire series full circle, leaving off at the point where the first book ends.
Overall, this is one of my favorite
book series of all time and it is a very action packed on the edge of your seat
read. If you enjoy spies then this is definitely a series I would recommend to
read. Even if you don’t like spy books, I still recommend you read it anyway.
~K.M.D.
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