![]() The security seemed a little… lax, for Skoda to be able to kidnap a kid and steal a sword and generally cause chaos without any full-scale security response. I liked the idea of a cameo from a side-character from an earlier story, but this seemed a little too outlandish. Having Skoda back was a treat, because I wasn’t expecting it at first. I’m surprised he didn’t assume there was something wrong beyond the norm, because I was totally waiting for Scorpia to parachute out of the sky with machine guns or something. All the Alex Rider plots are usually so complex and dangerous that I’m used to Alex being hit by malicious and nefarious plots. I don’t have the brain cells to react to things like he does, so I’m constantly impressed. He’s brilliant, and I have to respect it. Instead, this was a really good show of Alex’s creativity and character. Alex is on holiday, though that’s obviously never going to work out, and there’s actually no bad guy for once. ![]() Give me more wacky Alex Rider one-shots, honestly. ![]() The plot was interesting and mostly harmless (although reading it in the midst of COVID-19 chaos made it hit differently) and Meadows was genuinely hilarious. There was a moment when Alex recognised someone, and for a full paragraph I thought it was a Yassen story. Like the previous story, it was a lighter kind of Alex story. Alex was at his best, even with his toothache, and it was funny the whole way through. This was set after Stormbreaker, and I honestly found this whole thing hilarious. As a final note, I think I will literally have nightmares about the snake scene so thanks very much for that gory imagery. In the first few books we got hints but no actual proof that MI-6 were more nefarious than they seemed, but here we’re shown that they never pull their punches. I liked the flash of depth this gave to the series, with more visceral proof of the way MI-6 has been using Alex from the start. This short story was well-balanced too, which is hard to do with a low word count, it wasn’t focused on just character or just action but had a nice blend of both. ![]() The action sequences were still engaging, and after being elbow deep in Scorpia Rising and Never Say Die, it was nice to have a flashback to a happier and lighter-hearted Alex. It was compact but with all the hallmarks of an excellent Alex Rider novel, just cut a lot more tightly. It was a little weird to have a mission tucked in between Point Blanc and Skeleton Key that obviously hadn’t been mentioned in any of the original books, but I’m suspending my disbelief because I know that these were written afterwards and that the gap after PB when Brooklands was closed is the easiest place to fit another story in.Īltogether this was a pretty entertaining short story. Familiar and new characters appear in this mix of old and new stories. There’s a London street chase, a school trip with a deadly twist, and a day in the life of Alex Rider is like no day in the life anyone has ever seen before. In this collection of seven short stories, Alex’s life is no less fraught with danger and drama than in his main adventures. The timeline for Alex Rider is so tight, with only weeks between some of the books, how am I supposed to believe Alex got sent to Afghanistan in those weeks and it wasn’t mentioned in the original story? The timelines are just screwy. I think I would have liked most of these stories a lot more if I wasn’t constantly aware of the fact that they were jilting canon with every line. The stories were fun (and I’ve broken them down below) but they did contradict the main stories a little which was my biggest criticism. Nightshade is out today! I’m not usually a huge fan of short story collections, but I’m giving them a try in 2020 after reading a couple of incredible ones. ![]()
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