Kevin Lin's Book Review: Point Blank

The book I read this winter break is called Point Blank and is written by Anthony Horowitz for the Alex Rider series. The brief summary of this story is as followed. One day, Alex Rider is assigned by MI6 to investigate the death of two billionaires. Both of them had a son attending an academy in the French Alps called Point Blanc, which was ran by Dr. Hugo Grief, a South African scientist. Alex is send to attend the academy under the name of supermarket giant Sir David Friend's son. When Alex is on the way to Point Blank, he stays at a hotel operated by Point Blanc. When he has his dinner, he was secretly drugged and gets taken away to a secret laboratory. Every inch of his body was examined and photographed. After that, he was taken back to his hotel room like nothing had happened.

After arriving at Point Blanc, Alex meets James Sprintz and learns from him that there is something wrong about this academy. Some of the students here were really rebellious but after a while they would suddenly become quiet and obedient. After a while, this happened to James too. That night, Alex secretly explores around the house trying to figure what is wrong. He goes up onto the forbidden third floor and finds a complete replica of the floor he and the boys were staying on. He also finds that inside very room is a TV showing live feed of the corresponding room below. Feeling confused, Alex continues to look around. He goes into the basement and finds all the “real” boys locked up into steel cages. He tries to free the boys but suddenly a teacher, Mrs. Stellenbosch, appears and knocks Alex unconscious. Alex wakes up to see himself looking at Dr. Grief. Because Dr. Grief plans to kill Alex anyways, he decides to tell him every bit of his plan. In the 1980s, Dr. Grief cloned 16 copies of himself. Before the boys came to Point Blanc, they were all drugged and examined and photographed, just like Alex. Baxter, the plastic surgeon would change the cloned Griefs’ appearance to match the real boy’s. When the clones return back to their home and their parents dies, they would inherit all their assets. Because the clones are actually copies of Dr. Grief himself, he would eventually get all the money. Dr. Grief plans to be the most powerful man in the world and reinstate apartheid globally, which he deeply supported when he was in South Africa.

Alex gets locked up, but with the will to survive, he remembers the gadgets he was given by his field agent. Horowitz described: “He picked up the Discman and turned it on. The Beethoven CD spun, then slid forward, its diamond edge jutting out. Alex made a mental calculations, then began to cut” (Horowitz 220). He gets out of the school and uses a makeshift snowboard to ski off the French Alps. Unfortunately, he crashes and is taken to the hospital.

After a short recovery, MI6 sends a SAS group to assist Alex in freeing the children of Point Blanc. They storm in and Dr. Grief attempts to escape, feeling that his plan had failed. Alex catches up with a snowmobile and kills him in his helicopter. A while later after all conflicts seem to have been solved, Alex receives a call from the school and finds an exact copy of a clone of himself. The clone and Alex fights, but eventually they all fall to their death. At the end of the book, we were unsure of whether Alex survived or not.

I believe the main character of this book is believable. Despite the fact that he used a lot of extremely high tech equipments, his behavior was still very believable. He panicked in situations where normal people would panic and he skied his snowboard like any other person would. Horowitz noted: “The ironing board was shuddering and shaking crazily, and it took all his strength to make the turns. He was trying to follow the natural fall line of the mountain, but there were too many obstacles in the way. What he dreaded was melted snow. If the board landed on a patch of mud at this speed, he would be thrown and killed. And he knew that the farther down he went, the greater the danger would become“(Horowitz 225). In fact, in the story, unlike invincible heroes, Alex was actually knocked out unconscious. “Her arm shout out, the heel of her hand driving into his face. It was like being hit by a brick wall. Alex felt every bone in his body rattle. White light exploded behind his eyes. Then he was out” (Horowitz 198). In general, I believe that Alex is a very believable character.

I recommend this book to any teenagers or people above the age of 10 that enjoys reading adventure stories. The Alex Rider series is extremely adventurous and is a must read for lovers of suspense-packed books.