another Alex Rider book is done and usually at this point i would be finished a series but not this one i still have another four books in this series to go until i finish it. Alex seemed to be coming around to MI6. I really thought he was warming to the idea of becoming a full-time operative-he was anxious about returning to school (a place he OBVIOUSLY doesn't belong). The author undoes this good work at the end of the book as he enjoys school once more. A couple of complaints more: This book ends with Alex needing to defuse a bomb AGAIN, as if that wasn't the climax of the last book too. Not very original. There is also a new audiobook narrator for the series, and I can't say I approve, I miss the sassiness the last one had. Alex is a rich kid from London, there is absolutely no way anyone would believe he was a poor refugee.)

Snakehead (novel) | Alex Rider Wiki | Fandom Snakehead (novel) | Alex Rider Wiki | Fandom

I also think that this one had some good commentary happening surrounding government and some other issues in relation with the government. I don't pretend to have any idea as to how spec ops operate, but: a delicate mission like this and they build a crew of the most experienced 20-yer-olds?? Knives only?? I mean, come on! Surely there are some crossbows, army-issued pneumatic guns, what not. sentence that described the scene a little, it didn't really tell us anything already stated or implied in the original sentence, except perhaps add a little ambiguity to certain things. I really enjoyed this novel. I was always on the edge of my seat, it was hard to put down. It was full of action and suspense, and I was never bored reading it. There was almost never a time when there was a dull moment, it was always interesting. I give it five out of five stars. There were also other parts of the book that seemed racist to me. The way Alex views places like Bangkok and Jakarta is not very flattering, obviously those cities are very different from what he's used to so I'm not saying he had to think they were great cities, but he sounds absolutely revolted. Anthony Horowitz also describes a Chinese character as a "chinaman" at one point, a term I thought we had kinda left behind at this point.The author tried to make it personal by bringing Ash into the mix but I don't think that really added anything-Horowitz needs to go in a new direction with Alex. There's a particular scene near the end that really grossed me out, but I won't say what because it's a spoiler. This poor kid. These government figures really mess around with him and play these mind games with him and THEY DON'T EVEN PAY HIM. We also learn in this one that Alex has a god father who was his fathers best friend and they are soon put on a mission together. I was really hoping things would look up for Alex and he would finally have a good family member who he could trust and actually have to be in his life boy was i wrong. Ash who like Alex was working with MI6 turns out to be a double agent and in fact working for scorpia. Just please can something go right for Alex? can we have someone come into his life who's not trying to kill him for once just once please. In Australia, Ethan Brooke, head of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), coerces Alex into helping him by pairing him with agent Ash, who was his godfather and once his father's best friend, to investigate the powerful Snakehead Ring under Winston Yu, after two failed attempts to infiltrate the organization. Alex then travels to Bangkok, Thailand where he meets Ash. He explains that he and Alex will take on the identities of Afghan refugees who have paid the Snakehead to smuggle them into Australia. Throughout their journey they are to identify key members of the Snakehead and find out their operations.

Snakehead by Anthony Horowitz | Goodreads Snakehead by Anthony Horowitz | Goodreads

I was a bit uncomfortable with some of the themes in this one (particularly where Alex dressed up as an Afghan refugee for a mission), but it really showcased the time when this book was published. This one was an exciting read and there were some seriously dark bits that made this even harder to put down.A miserably unhappy and overweight child, Anthony had nowhere to turn for solace. "Family meals," he recalls, "had calories running into the thousands…. I was an astoundingly large, round child…." At the age of eight he was sent off to boarding school, a standard practice of the times and class in which he was raised. While being away from home came as an enormous relief, the school itself, Orley Farm, was a grand guignol horror with a headmaster who flogged the boys till they bled. "Once the headmaster told me to stand up in assembly and in front of the whole school said, 'This boy is so stupid he will not be coming to Christmas games tomorrow.' I have never totally recovered." To relieve his misery and that of the other boys, he not unsurprisingly made up tales of astounding revenge and retribution. As usual, quite an unbelievable story. Wierd, hard to grab at places, obvious and childish at others. And setting mind to work, as always xD. I've been making a couple of comments throughout my re-reading of this series, calling out problematic aspects of the previous books, but for the most parts I've been thinking that there are moments in the series that just haven't aged well, not that anything has been . But this one just crossed a lot of lines for me. This book was amazing in my opinion. Anthony Horowitz does a great job of keeping this book series going strong, as well as keeping each book interesting while using many of the same elements in each book. The highly successful Alex Rider novels include Stormbreaker, Point Blank, Skeleton Key, and the recent Eagle Strike.