Book Reviews

Fans of the Alex Rider Adventures will not be disappointed by the slam-bang action in this fifth book in the spy thriller series, although the ending may leave them feeling a bit dismayed. A parachute jump onto the roof of a super-secure pharmaceutical complex, a desperate escape from a water-filled cellar under the canals of Venice, elegant and witty encounters with mega-criminals bent on death -- it's all here, and Alex, still 14-years old, comes out ahead every time in spite of the heavy odds against him. "Go to Venice. Find Scorpia. And you will find your destiny," Alex was told by a dying man at the end of the previous book, Eagle Strike. And so we find him; in Venice, with his friend Tom, looking for clues to his father's identity and death. Was he an agent of M16, the secret world organization that has used Alex before? Or was he a tool of Scorpia, the powerful international criminal agency that specializes in sabotage, corruption, intelligence, and assassination? And which are the bad guys? Alex loses track as he is recruited by the beautiful and deadly Julia Rothman, one of the nine executives of Scorpia, to be trained at their Venetian island school for assassins and to take part in a plot to kill thousands of 12 and 13-year-olds in England. Caught between shifting allegiances and different versions of his father's life and death, Alex outwits and outfights everybody as the plot rockets along to a smash finish that will leave readers breathless and shocked.

Anthony Horowitz's enormously popular series about the world’s premier teenage spy, returns for another round with secret agent Alex Rider fighting ingenious villains and charming every girl he meets. Eagle Strike, Horowitz’s fourth fictional foray into the world of British spy agency MI6, starts out calmly enough as Alex and his lovely companion, Miss Sabina Pleasure, vacation with her family in the south of France. But before you can say Goldfinger, Alex spots his old nemesis, renowned assassin Yassen Gregorovich, on the beach. What Alex discovers is a plan so diabolical that it makes all of his previous adventures seem like a stroll in the Queen Mum’s garden. Alex must fight to keep Gregorovich from executing the plans of a mysterious and murderous madman--an operation code named "Eagle Strike." He will just have to face down a few minor complications first: a virtual reality game that inflicts real pain; a fleet of Porche 911 GT3-driving hit men; and even a near fatal brush with death aboard the most famous aircraft in the world, Air Force One. But he’ll persevere, or his name isn’t Rider: Alex Rider. Eagle Strike, like all of the ridiculously fun Alex Rider adventures, is a pure guilty pleasure from start to finish. Even the most reluctant of readers won’t be able to resist Alex’s Bond-like ingenuity and charisma. Anthony Horowitz is a master of pacing, and as Alex swings from one cliff-hanging chapter to the next, Horowitz proves that you don’t have to be Shakespeare to pen a crackerjack plot!

Grade 5-10-Fans of Horowitz's Stormbreaker (2001) and Point Blank (2002, both Philomel), and newcomers to the series alike, will not be disappointed with this rip-roaring escapade featuring the 14-year-old spy. Trying to return to a "normal" life as a schoolboy after a mere four weeks since his last MI6 adventure, Alex Rider is recruited right off the soccer field to check out some suspicious goings-on at Wimbledon. This assignment catapults him into a series of life-threatening episodes, such as coming face to face with a great white shark, dodging bullets as he dives off a burning boat, and being tied to a conveyor belt that is moving toward the jaws of a gigantic grindstone in an abandoned sugar factory. Soon the teen is single-handedly taking on his most dangerous enterprise yet. His mission is nothing short of saving the world from a nuclear attack, engineered by the psychopathic and egomaniacal former commander of the Russian army. Alex is armed only with a few specially designed gadgets, which are disarmingly age-appropriate: a Gameboy that doubles as a Geiger counter, a cell phone whose aerial shoots out a drugged needle that is activated by pressing 999, a Tiger Woods figurine that doubles as a small grenade when its head is twisted just so. This page-turning thriller leaves readers breathless with anticipation. When at last Alex returns home, his love interest, Sabina Pleasure, asks where he has been. "Well, I was, sort of- busy," he replies in a classic, understated, James Bond kind of way.

Grade 5-10-Move over James Bond, Point Blank's 14-year-old hero is also a member of Britain's secret service. Fresh from his training by MI6, Alex Rider is headed for an exclusive private school in the French Alps because the isolated mountain academy is linked to the deaths of two prominent men. Just like 007, Alex is equipped with special gear such as an exploding stud earring and a CD that doubles as a buzz saw. Though Alex finds himself in a few tight spots, his courage and ingenuity prevent the school's power-mad directors from using adolescent clones to take over the world. Author Anthony Horowitz packs plenty of action into his latest young adult thriller (Philomel, 2002). An exploding helicopter, a machine gunning strike force, and other shootings provide standard superspy-style violence. There's even the classic Bond ending with a last-minute villain to be dispatched. Narrator Simon Prebble adroitly handles a widely diverse cast of characters that includes several distinctive accents. With a plastic case that is both durable and informative, and good sound quality cassettes that are well-marked, this will be popular with listeners who like living on the edge vicariously.

Readers will cheer for Alex Rider, the 14-year-old hero of British author Horowitz's spy thriller (the first in a projected series). When his guardian and uncle, Ian, is mysteriously killed, Alex discovers that his uncle was not the bank vice-president he purported to be, but rather a spy for the British government. Now the government wants Alex to take over his uncle's mission: investigating Sayle Enterprises, the makers of a revolutionary computer called Stormbreaker. The company's head plans to donate one to every secondary school in England, but his dealings with unfriendly countries and Ian Rider's murder have brought him under suspicion. Posing as a teenage computer whiz who's won a Stormbreaker promotional contest, Alex enters the factory and immediately finds clues from his uncle. Satirical names abound (e.g., Mr. Grin, Mr. Sayle's brutish butler, is so named for the scars he received from a circus knife-throwing act gone wrong) and the hard-boiled language is equally outrageous ("It was a soft gray night with a half-moon forming a perfect D in the sky. D for what, Alex wondered. Danger? Discovery? Or disaster?"). These exaggerations only add to the fun, as do the creative gadgets that Alex uses, including a metal-munching cream described as "Zit-Clean. For Healthier Skin." The ultimate mystery may be a bit of a letdown, but that won't stop readers from racing through Alex's adventures, from a high-speed bike chase to a death-defying dance with a Portuguese man-of-war. The audience will stay tuned for his next assignment, Point Blanc, due out spring 2002. Ages 10-up.

From the very start of its very first scene, The Amber Spyglass will set hearts fluttering and minds racing. All we'll say here is that we immediately discover who captured Lyra at the end of The Subtle Knife, though we've yet to discern whether this individual's intent is good, evil, or somewhere in between. We also learn that Will still possesses the blade that allows him to cut between worlds, and has been joined by two winged companions who are determined to escort him to Lord Asriel's mountain redoubt. The boy, however, has only one goal in mind--to rescue his friend and return to her the alethiometer, an instrument that has revealed so much to her and to readers of The Golden Compass and its follow-up. Within a short time, too, we get to experience the "tingle of the starlight" on Serafina Pekkala's skin as she seeks out a famished Iorek Byrnison and enlists him in Lord Asriel's crusade:

A complex web of thoughts was weaving itself in the bear king's mind, with more strands in it than hunger and satisfaction. There was the memory of the little girl Lyra, whom he had named Silvertongue, and whom he had last seen crossing the fragile snow bridge across a crevasse in his own island of Svalbard. Then there was the agitation among the witches, the rumors of pacts and alliances and war; and then there was the surpassingly strange fact of this new world itself, and the witch's insistence that there were many more such worlds, and that the fate of them all hung somehow on the fate of the child.

Meanwhile, two factions of the Church are vying to reach Lyra first. One is even prepared to give a priest "preemptive absolution" should he succeed in committing mortal sin. For these tyrants, killing this girl is no less than "a sacred task."
In the final installment of his trilogy, Philip Pullman has set himself the highest hurdles. He must match its predecessors in terms of sheer action and originality and resolve the enigmas he already created. The good news is that there is no critical bad news--not that The Amber Spyglass doesn't contain standoffs and close calls galore. (Who would have it otherwise?) But Pullman brings his audacious revision of Paradise Lost to a conclusion that is both serene and devastating. In prose that is transparent yet lyrical and 3-D, the author weaves in and out of his principals' thoughts. He also offers up several additional worlds. In one, Dr. Mary Malone is welcomed into an apparently simple society. The environment of the mulefa (again, we'll reveal nothing more) makes them rich in consciousness while their lives possess a slow and stately rhythm. These strange creatures can, however, be very fast on their feet (or on other things entirely) when necessary. Alas, they are on the verge of dying as Dust streams out of their idyllic landscape. Will the Oxford dark-matter researcher see her way to saving them, or does this require our young heroes? And while Mary is puzzling out a cure, Will and Lyra undertake a pilgrimage to a realm devoid of all light and hope, after having been forced into the cruelest of sacrifices--or betrayals.
Throughout his galvanizing epic, Pullman sustains scenes of fierce beauty and tenderness. He also allows us a moment or two of comic respite. At one point, for instance, Lyra's mother bullies a series of ecclesiastical underlings: "The man bowed helplessly and led her away. The guard behind her blew out his cheeks with relief." Needless to say, Mrs. Coulter is as intoxicating and fluid as ever. And can it be that we will come to admire her as she plays out her desperate endgame? In this respect, as in many others, The Amber Spyglass is truly a book of revelations, moving from darkness visible to radiant truth.

With The Golden Compass Philip Pullman garnered every accolade under the sun. Critics lobbed around such superlatives as "elegant," "awe-inspiring," "grand," and "glittering," and used "magnificent" with gay abandon. Each reader had a favorite chapter--or, more likely, several--from the opening tour de force to Lyra's close call at Bolvangar to the great armored-bear battle. And Pullman was no less profligate when it came to intellectual firepower or singular characters. The dæmons alone grant him a place in world literature. Could the second installment of his trilogy keep up this pitch, or had his heroine and her too, too sullied parents consumed him? And what of the belief system that pervaded his alternate universe, not to mention the mystery of Dust? More revelations and an equal number of wonders and new players were definitely in order.
The Subtle Knife offers everything we could have wished for, and more. For a start, there's a young hero--from our world--who is a match for Lyra Silvertongue and whose destiny is every bit as shattering. Like Lyra, Will Parry has spent his childhood playing games. Unlike hers, though, his have been deadly serious. This 12-year-old long ago learned the art of invisibility: if he could erase himself, no one would discover his mother's increasing instability and separate them.
As the novel opens, Will's enemies will do anything for information about his missing father, a soldier and Arctic explorer who has been very much airbrushed from the official picture. Now Will must get his mother into safe seclusion and make his way toward Oxford, which may hold the key to John Parry's disappearance. But en route and on the lam from both the police and his family's tormentors, he comes upon a cat with more than a mouse on her mind: "She reached out a paw to pat something in the air in front of her, something quite invisible to Will." What seems to him a patch of everyday Oxford conceals far more: "The cat stepped forward and vanished." Will, too, scrambles through and into another oddly deserted landscape--one in which children rule and adults (and felines) are very much at risk. Here in this deathly silent city by the sea, he will soon have a dustup with a fierce, flinty little girl: "Her expression was a mixture of the very young--when she first tasted the cola--and a kind of deep, sad wariness." Soon Will and Lyra (and, of course, her dæmon, Pantalaimon) uneasily embark on a great adventure and head into greater tragedy.
As Pullman moves between his young warriors and the witch Serafina Pekkala, the magnetic, ever-manipulative Mrs. Coulter, and Lee Scoresby and his hare dæmon, Hester, there are clear signs of approaching war and earthly chaos. There are new faces as well. The author introduces Oxford dark-matter researcher Mary Malone; the Latvian witch queen Ruta Skadi, who "had trafficked with spirits, and it showed"; Stanislaus Grumman, a shaman in search of a weapon crucial to the cause of Lord Asriel, Lyra's father; and a serpentine old man whom Lyra and Pan can't quite place. Also on hand are the Specters, beings that make cliff-ghasts look like rank amateurs.
Throughout, Pullman is in absolute control of his several worlds, his plot and pace equal to his inspiration. Any number of astonishing scenes--small- and large-scale--will have readers on edge, and many are cause for tears. "You think things have to be possible," Will demands. "Things have to be true!" It is Philip Pullman's gift to turn what quotidian minds would term the impossible into a reality that is both heartbreaking and beautiful.

Some books improve with age--the age of the reader, that is. Such is certainly the case with Philip Pullman's heroic, at times heart-wrenching novel, The Golden Compass, a story ostensibly for children but one perhaps even better appreciated by adults. The protagonist of this complex fantasy is young Lyra Belacqua, a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Oxford University. But it quickly becomes clear that Lyra's Oxford is not precisely like our own--nor is her world. For one thing, people there each have a personal daemon, the manifestation of their soul in animal form. For another, hers is a universe in which science, theology, and magic are closely allied:

Not that Lyra spends much time worrying about it; what she likes best is "clambering over the College roofs with Roger the kitchen boy who was her particular friend, to spit plum stones on the heads of passing Scholars or to hoot like owls outside a window where a tutorial was going on, or racing through the narrow streets, or stealing apples from the market, or waging war." But Lyra's carefree existence changes forever when she and her daemon, Pantalaimon, first prevent an assassination attempt against her uncle, the powerful Lord Asriel, and then overhear a secret discussion about a mysterious entity known as Dust. Soon she and Pan are swept up in a dangerous game involving disappearing children, a beautiful woman with a golden monkey daemon, a trip to the far north, and a set of allies ranging from "gyptians" to witches to an armor-clad polar bear.
In The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman has written a masterpiece that transcends genre. It is a children's book that will appeal to adults, a fantasy novel that will charm even the most hardened realist. Best of all, the author doesn't speak down to his audience, nor does he pull his punches; there is genuine terror in this book, and heartbreak, betrayal, and loss. There is also love, loyalty, and an abiding morality that infuses the story but never overwhelms it. This is one of those rare novels that one wishes would never end. Fortunately, its sequel, The Subtle Knife, will help put off that inevitability for a while longer.

The long-awaited, eagerly anticipated, arguably over-hyped Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has arrived, and the question on the minds of kids, adults, fans, and skeptics alike is, "Is it worth the hype?" The answer, luckily, is simple: yep. A magnificent spectacle more than worth the price of admission, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will blow you away. However, given that so much has gone into protecting the secrets of the book (including armored trucks and injunctions), don't expect any spoilers in this review. It's much more fun not knowing what's coming--and in the case of Rowling's delicious sixth book, you don't want to know. Just sit tight, despite the earth-shattering revelations that will have your head in your hands as you hope the words will rearrange themselves into a different story. But take one warning to heart: do not open Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince until you have first found a secluded spot, safe from curious eyes, where you can tuck in for a good long read. Because once you start, you won't stop until you reach the very last page.
A darker book than any in the series thus far with a level of sophistication belying its genre, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince moves the series into murkier waters and marks the arrival of Rowling onto the adult literary scene. While she has long been praised for her cleverness and wit, the strength of Book 6 lies in her subtle development of key characters, as well as her carefully nuanced depiction of a community at war. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, no one and nothing is safe, including preconceived notions of good and evil and of right and wrong. With each book in her increasingly remarkable series, fans have nervously watched J.K. Rowling raise the stakes; gone are the simple delights of butterbeer and enchanted candy, and days when the worst ailment could be cured by a bite of chocolate. A series that began as a colorful lark full of magic and discovery has become a dark and deadly war zone. But this should not come as a shock to loyal readers. Rowling readied fans with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by killing off popular characters and engaging the young students in battle. Still, there is an unexpected bleakness from the start of Book 6 that casts a mean shadow over Quidditch games, silly flirtations, and mountains of homework. Ready or not, the tremendous ending of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will leave stunned fans wondering what great and terrible events await in Book 7 if this sinister darkness is meant to light the way.

Spinning a Thriller From the Louvre
By JANET MASLIN
The word for "The Da Vinci Code" is a rare invertible palindrome. Rotated 180 degrees on a horizontal axis so that it is upside down, it denotes the maternal essence that is sometimes linked to the sport of soccer. Read right side up, it concisely conveys the kind of extreme enthusiasm with which this riddle-filled, code-breaking, exhilaratingly brainy thriller can be recommended.
That word is wow.
The author is Dan Brown (a name you will want to remember). In this gleefully erudite suspense novel, Mr. Brown takes the format he has been developing through three earlier novels and fine-tunes it to blockbuster perfection. Not since the advent of Harry Potter has an author so flagrantly delighted in leading readers on a breathless chase and coaxing them through hoops.
The first book by this onetime teacher, the 1998 "Digital Fortress," had a foxy heroine named Susan Fletcher who was the National Security Agency's head cryptographer. The second, "Deception Point," involved NASA, a scientific ruse in the Arctic and Rachel Sexton, an intelligence analyst with a hairdo "long enough to be sexy, but short enough to remind you she was probably smarter than you."
With "Angels and Demons," Mr. Brown introduced Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of art history and religious symbology who is loaded with "what his female colleagues referred to as an `erudite' appeal." No wonder: the new book finds the enormously likable Langdon pondering antimatter, the big-bang theory, the cult of the Illuminati and a threat to the Vatican, among other things. Yet this is merely a warm-up for the mind-boggling trickery that "The Da Vinci Code" has in store.
Consider the new book's prologue, set in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre. (This is the kind of book that notices that this one gallery's length is three times that of the Washington Monument.) It embroils a Caravaggio, an albino monk and a curator in a fight to the death. That's a scene leaving little doubt that the author knows how to pique interest, as the curator, Jacques Saunière, fights for his life.
Desperately seizing the painting in order to activate the museum's alarm system, Saunière succeeds in buying some time. And he uses these stolen moments — which are his last — to take off his clothes, draw a circle and arrange himself like the figure in Leonardo's most famous drawing, "The Vitruvian Man." And to leave behind an anagram and Fibonacci's famous numerical series as clues.
Whatever this is about, it is enough to summon Langdon, who by now, he blushes to recall, has been described in an adoring magazine article as "Harrison Ford in Harris tweed." Langdon's latest manuscript, which "proposed some very unconventional interpretations of established religious iconography which would certainly be controversial," is definitely germane.
Also soon on the scene is the cryptologist Sophie Neveu, a chip off the author's earlier prototypes: "Unlike the waifish, cookie-cutter blondes that adorned Harvard dorm room walls, this woman was healthy with an unembellished beauty and genuineness that radiated a striking personal confidence." Even if he had not contrived this entire story as a hunt for the Lost Sacred Feminine essence, women in particular would love Mr. Brown.
With Leonardo as co-conspirator, since his life and work were so fraught with symbols and secrets, Mr. Brown is off to the races. Google away: you may want to investigate the same matters that Langdon and Agent Neveu pursue as they tap into a mother lode of religious conspiracy theory. The Priory of Sion, the Knights Templar and the controversial Vatican prelature called Opus Dei are all invoked, as is the pentacle, the Divine Proportion, the strange sex rites glimpsed in the film "Eyes Wide Shut" and the Holy Grail. If you think the Grail is a cup, then Mr. Brown — drawing upon earlier controversial Grail theories involving 19th-century discoveries by a real Saunière — would like you to think again.
As in his "Angels and Demons," this author is drawn to the place where empirical evidence and religious faith collide. And he creates a bracing exploration of this realm, one that is by no means sacrilegious, though it sharply challenges Vatican policy. As Langdon and Sophie follow clues planted by Leonardo, they arrive at some jaw-dropping suppositions, some of which bring "The Da Vinci Code" to the brink of overkill. But in the end Mr. Brown gracefully lays to rest all the questions he has raised.
The book moves at a breakneck pace, with the author seeming thoroughly to enjoy his contrivances. Virtually every chapter ends with a cliffhanger: not easy, considering the amount of plain old talking that gets done. And Sophie and Langdon are sent on the run, the better to churn up a thriller atmosphere. To their credit, they evade their pursuers as ingeniously as they do most everything else.
When being followed via a global positioning system, for instance, it is smart to send the sensor flying out a 40-foot window and lead pursuers to think you have done the same. Somehow the book manages to reconcile such derring-do with remarks like, "And did you know that if you divide the number of female bees by the number of male bees in any beehive in the world, you always get the same number?"
"The Da Vinci Code" is breezy enough even to make fun of its characters' own cleverness. At one point Langdon is asked by his host whether he has hidden a sought-after treasure carefully enough. "Actually," Langdon says, unable to hide his grin, "that depends on how often you dust under your couch."