Scorpia Rising - Chapter 2: Measure of Pain

This is the first book in this series in which Horowitz has really strayed from the normal structure. This is the first time that the second chapter in a row is not about Alex, and indeed the first eight or so chapters will not be: it says in the contents that this is 'Part 1: Scorpia' and the next will be 'Part 2: Alex'. I wonder why Horowitz has done it like this. I suppose he had a lot of back story which he needed to convey for this story to work, and rather than interject them at different points in the story like usual, he's going to bunch them together. The question is, will this all take place before Alex's part starts or will they overlap? The latter might be quite interesting, though I don't know how exactly he'd do it. It's interesting to find out more about Scorpia and into the minds of those who control it. I can only assume this will come in highly important in the coming events...

Before I get into what happens in this chapter, I just want to talk about the synopsis - if you can call it that. It has got me thinking a lot. This is what it says:

Alex Rider wants his life back. But when you're the world's most successful spy, there's only one way out. Alex's final mission will be the deadliest of all.

One bullet. One life. The end starts here.

Ok, great, that really makes Alex's situation sound promising doesn't it? Let's break it down shall we?

• "Alex Rider wants his life back" - sooo maybe he really is being left alone by MI6 but the damage done by his previous missions is taking their toll and he can't cope well in the normal world. That would be heartbreaking, because all he ever wanted was to be a normal school boy.
• "...there's only one way out" - well that just sounds like death doesn't it? How else can that be interpreted?? Unless it's kill every enemy he's EVER made! Which brings us to the next point...
• "One bullet. One life. The end starts here" - aside from that being the coolest line in the history of everything except Harry Potter (because, let's face it, Harry Potter is on another level to everything else) - this sounds INCREDIBLY ominous. I mean, "One bullet" - is that a bullet to kill Alex or a bullet for Alex to kill with? "One life" - Alex's, or someone else's?

This brings up the interesting topic of whether Alex will actually be able to kill. We went through it in Scorpia and at that point therewas no real way he could kill. Now though, he has been through so much more, seen horrors most of us can't even imagine, and has been damaged maybe beyond repair. Has he changed enough to be able to kill? I wonder what that would mean for the series? He started off as a boy who's uncle had just died, and will he really end up a killer? Not to mention the message Horowitz is sending to his readers. Of course, he wouldn't be making murder ok, but he'd be turning their hero, the one who always stands up for what he believes in and saves the world rather than turn over and ignore everything, into a cold killer. He'd be turning him into Alan Blunt. And I don't know who could recover from that.



Moving into chapter two then. This chapter tells us about Razim, the man who has been assigned the project of taking the Elgin Marbles from England, and it is clear instantly that there is something seriously wrong with him. Born in Iraq he knew he was different from a young age, as his terrible tantrums and violent attacks drove three Nannys away. He soon realised that he was different because he felt absolutely no emotion. To test this, he strangled his dog.

This is an eight year old child.



That is just wrong.

So he does amazingly at school, but then Saddam Hussein takes over and his parents host a secret meeting to decide how to get rid of him. Razim records the meeting. He hands it over to the police. They shoot his parents.


This is some seriously twisted stuff here, probably far worse than Horowitz has ever gone before.

When Razim is being thanked by the police chief it is noted that, "he had the face of waxwork, eyes that could have been made out of glass. There was no warmth or curiosity. There was nothing at all." He is sent to a foster family and does well in everything, goes to university and then gets asked to join Iraq's terrifying secret service. Following comes a slowly expanding picture of this man and his hideous rise to power. He has allegiance with no one, cares for nothing and is completely and utterly ruthless. I think I can safely say that he could be Alex's most dangerous enemy, one that he might not even escape from.

Some men have found it difficult to comprehend fighting a teenage boy, but I am 100% sure that Razim wouldn't hesitate to kill a baby, and therefore I'm taking what the synopsis says as completely true: this really does seem like it will be Alex's deadliest mission yet.

But oh, wait, don't worry, Horowitz is not finished - he's just preparing to write something that will no doubt give me nightmares for years to come.

We go back to the present-day Razim, a man hidden away from his enemies in a desert fort, hiding a terrible secret. In a room which used to be a chapel he has some kind of lab with computers and scientific equipment. In the middle of the room is a man strapped to a chair. This man, we are told, is a French spy who came a step too close to finding out where Razim is hiding. Razim explains to the man that he's always wanted to invent something. He says that there is a measurement for nearly everything: temperature, pressure, weight, watts etc; and he has realised that there is no measurement for pain.

Oh great.

The thing is, everyone reacts differently to pain because everyone is slightly different, but wouldn't it be much easier if you could go to a doctor and give them a specific amount of pain you're experiencing so they can help you better?  But of course, Razim needs to do tests. And that's what he's going to do on this poor man. As he's getting his tools ready he thinks how he really should test this on a woman to make sure he doesn't leav anything out. And of course, if one comes his way, a teenager.

Crap.

Crocodile Tears - Chapter 18: Pure Torture

Just reading this chapter name was horrible. I was full of anticipation for this chapter - I didn't know what would possibly happen and even though what happened wasn't a 'traditional' type of torture, it was still horrible and nightmarish and almost unimaginable.

McCain said he would torture Alex because he didn't believe that Alex would tell him the truth about MI6 if he didn't. That's the worst part, because we know that Alex would have told him. Alex doesn't have much sympathy for MI6 anymore, and he knows that they know nothing so telling McCain wouldn't be detrimental to them anyway. But still McCain, sadistic as he is, thinks it will be fun to punish Alex again for something that shouldn't have anything to do with him.

Alex is got up in the morning after a night of no sleep. Can you imagine spending a night knowing that the next day you'll be tortured horrifically and there's nothing you can do about it? I remember reading about Torture chambers in castles and stuff, and I remember thinking that I would always tell them whatever they wanted to know before they did anything horrible to me if I was unofrtunate enough to be in that situation. Hey, I'm not that brave. I certainly wouldn't be in Gryffindor. But the point is, Alex doesn't even have a chance to prevent this torture, and the fact that he doesn't really know what MI6 have done about McCain doesn't help: he can't give much information.

When Alex asked "what's for breakfast" and was told that he was going to be, I was naturally very worried. That's not really something you want to hear when you're walking to your own torture is it? He's led by Bennett to the shore of the river and sees a tall ladder leading up to a pole that is hanging high above the edge of the water. He quickly works out that he's going to have to hang off the pole, like on monkey bars in play parks - but a lot more dangerous. Because there are Crocodiles in that river. Flipping crocodiles.

And now I understand the title. Alex notes that supposedly crocodiles weep when they kill their prey.

This cannot be good.

Two enormous crocodiles emerge and swim towards Alex, who is forced to climb the ladder. McCain and Bennett mount a viewing platform, about a meter away from this pole: they're going to watch as he slowly lets go and drops to his doom. When he gets to the top, Alex realises that he's highg enough that if he falls he'll break a leg, preventing him from running away as the crocodiles tear him apart and fight for the pieces.

This is certainly a very imaginative torture. And it's so horrible because McCain isn't actually doing anything to Alex: if Alex lets go it will be his own doing, his arms giving in to the weight of his body and letting him fall to his death.

McCain, tantalisingly slowly, starts to ask Alex questions. When Alex reveals that MI6 knew nothing about McCain, only Straik, McCain seems quite pleased and I wondered if he might let Alex off. Then Alex tells him that he told MI6 he saw McCain with Straik, and that pretty much does it. He decides he believes Alex, and he had earlier promised to shot at the crocodiles if he though Alex was telling the truth. But no. He's changed his mind. He thinks Alex is a rude little boy, and thanks to him his name is know known to MI6. Also he tried to kill him once: in Scotland. It failed then but this time it won't.




FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
WHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHWHY?

I HATE YOU DESMOND McCAIN.

McCain leaves Alex there, his muscles screaming, at the mercy of the crocodiles and Myra Bennett who apparently likes to watch this kind of thing.

The only way of escape I can think of is if MI6 come in a helicopter now and save him.

WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN?????

Crocodile Tears - Chapter 18: All For Charity

I am actually dying having to wait so long to read the next chapter. Hey, let's hope the world doesn't end before I do! This chapter was more exposition from McCain, explaining exactly what he was going to do. I know loads of people have said this, but is there a kind of 'bad guy syndrome' which makes all the bad guys explain what they're doing to the one person who could likely destroy them? Because seriously, all of them do it. I know it's necessary to move the plot on, but I'm ignoring that because that's boring. I know Alex is going to survive, that McCain won't kill him, because I know there's another book. Obviously it's a mistake telling him all this when there's the slightest chance he might escape and undo all McCain's work. Oh well, it's good for Alex.

McCain says that he decided to set up a charity because it was an easy way for him to make money. I'm not sure how on earth he gets away with it but somehow whenever people give to charity after some natural disaster he takes a huge load of that money for himself. How twisted is that? Using other people's desperate situations for your own advantage. I may have problems with McCain in relation to other 'baddies', but I definitely think he's evil.

But not only is he prepared to scrounge money those who need it, McCain has started creating his own disasters. He mentions the Nuclear Plant from chapter one, and now we know that Ravi was blowing the station up just to make a greedy man more money. And now he's setting up something else: a plague that will sweep over Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, affecting millions. Now, because he knows that these disasters are going to happen, he can send people from his charity there almost instantaneously without any questions asked, therefore being the first charity to appeal for help and the charity to get the most money. Good grief, he is not a nice guy.

All the things that didn't make sense earlier are now fitting together. The scene that Alex stumbled across earlier in that film studio is for an appeal video which McCain will release way before the other charities have even got to Kenya, and no one will know the difference.

And then, as I worked out last chapter, McCain tells Alex that by pulling the lever in the aeroplane he started of the plague. Remember Leonard Straik from Greenfields? He invented this gene thing which alters a single gene of a plant, making it potentially lethal. What Alex sprayed on the field was some kind of mushroom thing which, once out in the sun for a while, changes one of its genes and becomes lethal. The wind will blow its spores over to the next field, and the next, and the next etc, gradually touching nearly every field in these three countries.

Oh, and by the way, McCain casually drops into the convo that he killed Straik. By shoving a poisonous snail down his throat. Well that's nice.

So McCain is basically evil, and reminds Alex that, rather than ask him nicely what Alex knows and what MI6  know, he's going to torture it out of him. Tomorrow. And I really can't see how Alex is going to get out of this one.

Crocodile Tears - Chapter 10: Greenfields

WOOAAAH THINGS JUST GOT REAL.

THINGS ARE GOING TOO WRONG TOO QUICKLY. WHY DID I WILLINGLY DECIDE TO READ THIS ONE CHAPTER AT A TIME???

Again I didn't expect the story to prgress quite so quickly: this chapter we see Alex go to Greenfields, the GM crops place, already on his 'mission'. It was very different to the last chapter - I suppose that one was a sort of light relief before we came to this one which is very important and pretty serious. Alex goes on this school trip with his BFFs Tom and Jack (this book's the first time we've met Jack, making me wonder if he'll come into play later). Tom's the only one who knows about his MI6 background, so Alex warns him that he's up to something and is going to need Tom to cover for him.

They arrive and things are very dodgy. There are loads of guards, high security and a strange woman waiting to greet them. The way she's described makes her sound kind of machine-like: she's got a kind of computerised, emotionless voice - you know the kind that Sat Navs have - and it's very difficult to tell her age, she has plain blonde hair and apparently a plain, non-descript face. The great thing about Horowitz is how even when he's describing someone really boring and plain like this lady (Dr Myra Bennett) he doesn't describe them in a dull way. His humourous style of writing is very appealing to me, especially because I spend a lot of time reading 'proper books' which are wonderfully written but often lacking in humour, and he paints vivid pictures with words which many authors seem to stuggle to do.

Dr Bennett tells them about the poisonous plants that they're growing in the centre. Why do I have such a bad feeling about those? I can really see them coming up later in a very bad way for Alex... they're pretty deadly and she describes vividly the various ways in which one could die in there. Pleasant.

The school party are told that registers will be taken  at the beginning and end, so Alex has limited time to find his way to the boss's office and download the data and make his way back. Gah I hate timed things. He goes off really quickly, using a hidden map that Smithers supplied for him, and the camera-deactivating calculater to help him. Whilst on the way he sees armed guards, which makes me wonder what else this place is hiding. You don't have guns just to protect sciency stuff.

Alex makes it to the office and luckily there's no one there, so he goes in and sticks the USB into the computer. Actually before, he had to take one out, and owing to reasons I'll come to he never put it back in which made me worry that perhaps Straik (that's the boss man) will notice something's up =S The USB does its thing, but then DISASTER STRIKES!!!

FOOTSTEPS APPROACH THE DOOR.

THE USB HASN'T FINISHED DOWNLOADING.

THE FOOTSTEPS STOP OUTSIDE THE DOOR.

THE USB FINISHES.

ALEX HEARS SOMEONE ABOUT TO OPEN THE DOOR.

HE DIVES INTO THE ONLY HIDING PLACE IN THE ROOM.

WE DON'T GET TOLD WHERE THIS IS, SO HAVE NO IDEA IF IT'S WELL HIDDEN OR NOT.

TWO MEN ENTER THE ROOM.

ONE IS DESMOND McCAIN.

Now do you see why I can't stand to wait another day??

The Woman In Black - Chapters 9-12 TOO MUCH SCARY!!!

DID I SAY IN THE LAST POST THAT THIS WASN'T SCARY ENOUGH??? SUSAN HILL OBVIOUSLY SAVED ALL THAT IS HORRIFIC, TERRIFYING AND DEVASTATING FOR THE FINAL FOUR CHAPTERS BECAUSE I WAS FLIPPING SCARED!!!! I take back my words from yesterday. I could NOT BEGIN TO IMAGINE what lay in store for me!! How do I begin?

Arthur returns to Eel Marsh House the next morning and surprisingly spends a whole day there completely unharmed by any supernatural beings. HOWEVER that night he is woken by Spider the dog growling at the door. He could hear a noise coming from down the hall which he recognised but couldn’t quite identify. I thought this was particularly good in increasing the tension, because not knowing what was down the corridor, relying on Arthur to describe the sound, and not being able to hear it ourselves was very powerful as it forced us to focus on what Arthur was saying, rather than if we were watching the film we’d be trying to work out what the sound was ourselves.

The sound is coming from a room which Arthur passed earlier and which he knows has a locked door. He slowly creeps up to it, building the tension by describing this sound as something from his childhood which he knew should be perfectly innocent but in this case would be perfectly terrifying if he could only work out what it was. This was interesting, as so many horror films use things related to children and make them absolutely terrifying: children's voices singing nursery rhymes, dolls (which actually were written about by Freud, explaining why they can be so scary), clowns etc. He approaches the door and cannot open it, but still hears the sound. He returns to his room and attempts to sleep, knowing again that there is someone or something else in the house with him.

The next thing that's important is that next day he continures sorting through Mrs Drablow's papers (that's what he was supposed to do from the start) and discovers letters sent from someone called J to Alice Drablow, who obviously had a baby out of marriage and whose parents are forcing her to give it away. She doesn't want to but eventually gives it to Alice and there are papers of adoption along with these letters. Previously Arthur had found a grave with a name on it that started with J, so she obviously died here. Also, remember that child in the pony trap? Well Arthur heard that same noise again the night before, so it's obviously not human, and can I just say now that I INSTANTLY thought of a theory: THIS J PERSON IS THE WOMAN IN BLACK, SHE GAVE UP HER CHILD TO ALICE DRABLOW, THE CHILD DROWNED ON THE MARSHES, AND WHEN SHE FOUND OUT SHE DIED TOO. That is what I came up with.

Ok so later he hears this strange sound again, and he thinks he realises what it is. He walks slowly along the corridor and up to the door and - THE DOOR IS FLIPPING OPEN!!! DJFSE;HAEKESH HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?? I AM NOW SCARED FOREVER!!! Inside is A NURSERY, which is scary in every way because it's preserved as though there's a child still living there, even though they died years ago, and THE ROCKING CHAIR IN THE CORNER IS ROCKING!!!! There's no one there, it's described as though someone has just left, but WTF? Man I was scared.

That night there's a storm (wow that's original) and Arthur opens his bedroom door to venture out into the corridor, but he can sort of sense another being just walking past him. Hold me whilst I cry with fear please :[ Then there's a power cut so he's in total darkness  - :O - so he can't do anything/go anywhere so he goes back to bed. When he re-awakes at dawn he decides for some reason to go outside for a walk, and Spider runs off across the marshes, no doubt trying to escape that awful place. BUT he gets stuck and starts being PULLED UNDER and Arthur tries to save him and IT'S NEARLY THE MOST HORRIBLE BIT OF THE WHOLE BOOK but then they get free, Arthur faints and then wakes up under the care of Samuel Daily who came to rescue him. PHEW!  I can breathe again.

After that there's the whole explanation thing going on, and I was 100% RIGHT ABOUT MY THEORY! Only thing is that Jennet was Mrs Drablow's sister. But then Daily says the worst thing in the entire history of horror books. Every time The Woman is sighted a child dies. It is her revenge for her child dying and no one can escape from it. But this time no child seems to have died. Maybe the 'curse' is broken.

Arthur returns to London and marries Stella, his fiance who we never met previously. He begins to put the pastbehind him and they have a child and everything is happy. Then one day they're all out and the child begs to go on a carriage ride in a park. He and Stella go on board and move off. Arthur sees in the distance The Woman. She walks up to the horse pulling the carriage and scares it. The horse rears and the carriage is upturned. Stella and the boy die.

And I finally understand why Arthur reacted the way he did when asked to tell a ghost story at the beginning of the book, because not only were his experiences terrifying, but his later happiness was completely ruined by this avenging ghost who cannot bear to see anyone with something she lost. I really was not prepared.