Scorpia: AP Lang Teen Fiction Relief

Scorpia is one of my all time favorite books. It has a complex storyline and lots of intense action. The book is long also, which makes the excitement last. I have always enjoyed the books from this series (The Alex Rider series). There have been four other books preceding Scorpia that all made me want to continue reading. They are all very well tied together relating many things in each book to other books in the series.

Although I thought that all the prequels have been outstanding, this book had a special touch to it that seemed to enhance it a little more than the other books in the series. I believe it was the setting that really sparked the flame of enthusiasm in Scorpia. Although the setting brought me all over Europe, Venice, Italy was the reason why this book was so good. The scenery was so exquisitely detailed I could almost imagine myself in Venice just be reading it. Apart from being beautiful, it also is an engineering marvel with the ways of transportation such as canals as roadways.

The plot literally takes you on an adventure throughout Europe through the eyes of a fourteen year old British spy. The excitement begins when Alex crashes a party in Venice and gets in a tangle with a Siberian tiger. The plot is bizarre from now on including the main conflict of the story of how Scorpia is trying to mass murder every child in London. It is because of this action packed plot that I have loved this book so much. At the very end of the book, Horowitz threw out a thrilling but chilling twist with Alex getting shot at the end. Ending the book like this basically forces you to read the next book in the series, Ark Angel, which I plan on reading as soon as school is out. I was kind of expecting a twist like this at the end because of the foreshadowing earlier about how Scorpia always gets its revenge.

Although I feel like I say this for every book I read, this truly is a great book. I was never bored of it; from, cover to cover I was heavily engaged and interested in what was going on. One thing that I really liked about this book is the fact that it is Teen Fiction and I have had to read Non-Fiction only in AP Lang, and this was a nice change of pace. Obviously I would recommend this to anyone because of how entertaining and electrifying it is.

Word Count: 427