Scorpia Rising, Anthony Horowitz

I have been back for a few days now and I still don't really know how to do this review. And I finished the book on the second day of my holiday.

I am in complete and utter shock.

I still can't believe Horowitz could have done something like this.

I refused to believe what I had read.

But that's not until towards the end of the book, and there's so much to cover. I think I should say now, that if you haven't read this book and are just looking for an overview, read with caution because I will be talking with nothing held back about the events that happen in this book.

Are you prepared to delve into utter, heartbreaking misery? I'm not.



So my last review was the chapter that concludes Part 1 of this book, and seriously, I look back on that time as a happier time in my life because I was blissfully unaware of the horror the next part would bring. Maybe I should stop being so melodramatic. We'll get to THAT bit later.

We join Alex in school, in a lesson, and he sees a sniper. He alerts everyone, and HIS BEST FRIEND TOM HARRIS WHOM I LOVE TO PIECES gets shot. :(( But, don't worry, it's only in the arm. Phew.Alex, naturally, runs out of the school and onto his bike, hoping to chase the sniper. Seriously. What person in their right mind would follow the person who just tried to kill him?

At the time I couldn't work out who this sniper was working for. Was it Scorpia? But they already had their plan. Unless it was because Mrs Jones and Alan Blunt had failed to take the bait and weren't using Alex. I just couldn't tell, but I guessed it to be the latter. When the truth is revealed at the end, I could have screamed in anger and hatred... but we'll get to that later.

As is typical of Alex, he follows the sniper to a helicopter, and manages to make it crash. Natch. So then he feels compelled to alert MI6, but Jack (eternal love for her) demands that Blunt and Jones come to Alex. Not him come to them. Wow, what a BAMF. She is forever awesome. I liked how humiliated Blunt felt by being summoned like this, and it just goes to show how important Alex has become to them. It wouldn't be to anyone that they took time out to come and visit them.

Alex asks for protection and, inevitably, they demand 'payment'. They want him to go to Egypt. Nothing dangerous, just keeping an eye on a school.

I HATE MI6 I HATE MI6 I HATE MI6

Why? Whywhywhywhy? Can't they just help him one last time? Alex is obliged to agree, and Jack insists on going with him. I was so pleased, because I love Jack and I thought Alex might be safer with her there too. Can someone please hold me while I cry?

Blunt and Jones do agree to send another agent though, and this time it's going to be Smithers. This reminded me of something. Ages ago I read an interview with Horowitz who teased that something huge would be revealed about Smithers. I worried for ages that he would be working for the 'bad guys', that he would end up betraying Alex, and I didn't think I could stand that. At this mention, I fleetingly thought it would be EPIC LOLZ if it turned out Smithers wore a fatsuit. Oh Helena. Your powers of furtune-telling are greater than you think. Right? We'll get to that though.

Alex and Jack go off an their adventure, and for ages there seems nothing wrong with the school. Smithers give Alex various eavesdropping gadgets, in order to help him listen in on head of security, who they suspect. Of course, this is a WHOLE BIG SCORPIA PLOT. After various mishaps, Alex has a run-in with the CIA who don't realise who he is, and torture him by the infamous 'waterboarding' technique. How someone could do that to a 15 year old boy is beyond me. Do they have no compassion? Fortunately he is saved by Joe Burn, head of CIA, and is informed that they are here to protect their Secretary of State who will be flying out to give a talk about international relations. A talk in which she will name Britain as a weakening country. They worry that she may be assassinated because of this. As a Brit, I wondered if I should feel affronted by this speech, but really I don't really care if we're a 'super-power' or not. In fact I think it would be nice not to be, maye the government wouldn't interfere with so much. But then, I'm not particularly informed about current politics, so I'm not the best judge.

Alex finds Jack again, and they agree to leave the next day, because things are definitely getting dangerour, and they were told it would be safe. He goes to see Smithers to tellhim they're leaving, and this is when THINGS GET 100% AWESOME! Not that they weren't already. Scorpia learn of Smithers' presence and decide to take him out. So we get to learn of all the gadgets he has built into the house. And they are truly awesome. My personal favourite was thesecret passage through the fridge and out into the street behind, but I did like the line about the exploding garden gnomes he has in England. Alex and Smithers are on the run from the 4 or 5 agents who are trying to kill Smithers, and when it seems like there's no escape, Smithers drops a bomb on us. Figuratively, not literally. Turns out that my random musings were 100% CORRECT!! Well what do you know? Is it enough to say that my mind was well and truly blown right then? I wonder if Horowitz always planned this...? Not only that, but his face is completely different, and he has an Irish accent. Deep cover or what? Anyhoo, he and Alex separate, and I assume that he makes it out ok, because we don't hear anything else about him.

Alex returns to the house he is staying in with Jack, only to find the house empty and a note telling him that Scorpia have her. Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit. I felt like my stomach had just ridden a rollercoaster and my body had chickened out and stayed on the ground.

NOT JACK YOU ABSOLUTE FUNSPONGE. THERE I SAID IT. I HATE SCORPIA, THEY ARE FUNSPONGES, AND FUNSPONGES ARE NOT COOL.

They leave instructions for Alex, and he obeys them, terrified that he will lose the one person who has stuck with him throughout (excuse me while I curl up in my sock drawer and cry for ten years). When he reaches the appointed destination, he comes face to face with - himself. Well, Julius Grief. But still. You think that's pretty bad, but then he's flown out into the desert with Julius and the Head of Security, who does actually turn out to be a bad guy.

We arrive at a place we've been before. Razim, the guy who was testing a measurement of pain, who lives in the desert. Alex and Jack are reunited briefly, and then things go from bad to worse. Razim confirms that he will be torturing Alex tomorrow evening, and he hopes that the anticipation will make the pain worse, as this would be informative to his studies. Know what? Funsponge isn't even strong enough for you, you bastard.

The next day, Alex and Jack talk, and she reveals that she thinks she's found a way out, and will try to get help as soon as they take Alex and don't pay attention to her anymore. I expected this to be the only way out. How wrong I was.

Razim and Julius take Alex to the torture room, and Razim explains that Alex must have no marks on him, because tomorrow he is to do something else for them, so he as devised a way to hurt him without leaving any scars. I was a little confused by this, and wasn't quite sure what to think. I'd heard that Alex came out alive at the end of this one, but that what happened to him was worse than death, so I thought we'd find out here. Imagining some terrible torture that would leave him paralysed. Oh, but it's so much worse.

Narrative switches to Jack who makes her escape, and it's surprisingly easy, but as soon as she got in the car on the way to the nearest city I felt relief. So then we switch back to Alex, and we see Razim turn on a television. Was he going to make Alex watch a Saw marathon? I know that would torture me. But no.

It shows Jack.

She is escaping.

No one is worried.

She is driving away.

Julius pushes a button.

The car explodes.

My head explodes.

My heart explodes.






Why?

I just can't get over it. I sat in my room that night and sobbed, because I just couldn't bear the thought that Jack was dead. I was so sure throughout the remainder of the book that Horowitz would be like, 'FOOLED YOU! It was just a trick, here she is!' as he's done so many times in this series, and I think it was because of this that it only sunk in till later. I still can't believe it.

Razim, heartless pig as he is, finds that emotional pain is far worse on physical pain, and writes this all down, which makes me sick.

You've probably all read the rest of the book, so I'll just say that Alex manages to stop Scorpia from killing the US Secretary of State and saves the day again.

But what I want to talk about now is what happens between him and Julius Grief. Because Alex actually kills him. With a gun, in cold blood. This really got to me, because throughout the series we all know, and he does, that he wouldn't actually be able to kill someone. And now Jack has gone and nothing seems to matter to him anymore. Everyone mentions how the light has gone from his eyes, how he is empty. It's absolutely heartbreaking. Mrs Jones says later on the killing Grief was like killing a piece of himself, because they are identical, and I hadn't thought of that. Could it be that he was effectively killing the 'spy' part of him? Is it a metaphor? Or is it an example of just how wrong you can go when you've been mistreated and abused, manipulated and lied to by adults. Jack was the final straw, and I worried that there'd be no going back now.

It's funny, because in Harry Potter the point is that Harry would never kill anyone. He has too much love in him, and despite the amount of people who have died for him he still never kills. When he defeats Voldemort he uses Expelliarmus, and Voldemort uses Avada Kedavra which rebounds; therefore meaning that Harry didn't physically kill. So what's the difference then, now that Alex has killed? I'm not saying he's gone bad, not at all, or that he's weaker. I just think that it's interesting how two children's authors have tackled similar problems so differently.

We learn through the POV of Edward Pleasure that Alex is now going to live with them in San Fransisco, which is good: he'll get away from MI6 (although now Mrs Jones is head, I don't think they'd use him anyway). But again, it was heartbreaking to read how Edward noticed how broken Alex is, how he strares for long periods of time into nothingness, and doesn't volunteer conversation. The only way things are looking up is that he notices that Alex has perked up minutely since he arrived, and hopes that he will keep doing so.

We're left believing that things are going to be alright, if not for a very long time, but at some point, as Alex leaves his life behind him and tries to forget the horror that has been the past year of it.