Russian Roulette by Anthony Horowitz

This was awesome!!! There are not many books that I have read that capture the quote below as well as this one did.

“There is no such thing as pure good or pure evil, least of all in people. In the best of us there are thoughts or deeds that are wicked, and in the worst of us, at least some virtue. An adversary is not one who does loathsome acts for their own sake. He always has a reason that to him is justification. My cat eats mice. Does that make him bad? I don't think so, and the cat doesn't think so, but I would bet the mice have a different opinion.”

Terry Goodkind - Wizard's First Rule

I have always enjoyed the Alex Rider series. I am not sure where they fit in on the age group scale, because, while they are definitely written for a younger audience, there was no point where I was bored or rolling my eyes in frustration. In fact, there are so many themes in these books that are mature: the complete loss of innocence, greed, revenge... And this book was no exception.

If you have not read any of the Alex Rider books, then I would stop reading this review about now. Although I am not going to spoil the plot of the book, there are elements about the characters of the earlier books that I will mention. I would hate to spoil anyone.

Yassen Gregorovich is an assassin. We know this. He is in quite a few of the earlier books. He is a character we feared - an excellent assassin with no conscience, the bad guy. One might ask the question: How did he get this way? Well, Anthony Horowitz answers that in this book - Gregorovich's memoir.

The story was an emotional rollercoaster. The reader knows the outcome before starting the story. As I once read in a book, 'Wizard's First Rule' by Terry Goodkind, no one goes to war believing God is on the opposite side. In other words, we feel we are justified in our actions. And Gregorovich is no exception. Even though I knew where the story was going to go, he climbed into my heart and I found myself routing for him the whole way, feeling his pain and his disappointment and his hopelessness. I loved everything about this. I now want to reread one particular book in the Alex Rider series, I think it is Eagle Strike... I need to double check. Oh, the pain that will be.

This is particularly ideal for boys. I managed to get an entire class reading on half an Alex Rider book. There is magic in this series - probably because it doesn't turn the teen spy into a remake of Cody Banks. Just, whatever you do, do NOT watch the movie until you have read the book. It will make you think this series is juvenile, whereas they are actually particularly dark.

I gave this book a 4 star rating on Goodreads. It probably deserved a 4.5. If I were younger, it would have got 5. (Anyone find that rating books is rather a fickle pastime?)

This is the 5th book completed for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading challenge! Woot!