Scorpia by Anthony Horowitz is a thrilling action book.

     The main character is Alex Rider. He is a teenage agent for a secret spy organisation called MI6. He is in Venice in search of secrets hidden in the past about his father. He operates on his own and has to relate to other characters with great caution.

    The plot is about a terrorist group called Scorpia who plan to kill a considerable number of people by using a satellite. Alex is also left with a choice of whether to stay with MI6, who have manipulated and betrayed him, or join Scorpia, find out whether his father was a ruthless assassin and take his revenge on MI6.

     The language used in this book is fairly simple and easy to understand. Even so, Anthony Horowitz has described what Alex is going through really well and used a good style to emphasize it. An example of this from the text is: “Alex lay on his back, his shoulders pressing against the railing of the platform. The first sword that had been thrown at him had sliced into the plastic floor, centimetres from his head and was still quivering just beside his neck.”

     Scorpia is the fifth of a series of seven. It was the winner of the 2003 Red House Children’s Book Award. Anthony Horowitz has written numerous other books such as The Greek Who Stole Christmas, Nightrise, and Necropolis.

     I thought this was a brilliant read, just like all the other books in the series. This is because the clarity of emotions and pain that Alex is going through really brings it to a level of reality. I would recommend this book and the others in the series. I would give it a five star rating