Alex Rider #9: Scorpia Rising by Anthony Horowitz

If I could feel emotions, I would be happy to help Scorpia settle the score with the British government and Alex Rider. Our contract to return Greek artifcats to their homeland is the perfect opportunity. I'm looking forward to continuing my experiments on torture by using the teenage MI6 agent as my subject. I have a foolproof way to blackmail the British government into returning these ancient treasures to Greece. The world will condemn MI6 and Britain when I reveal they've been using a teenage boy in dangerous missions. However, the evidence must be solid and irrefutable. I'm going to cast bait that MI6 can't ignore, and then I'll manipulate them into bringing Alex Rider back for another mission. I'm going to play them like a chess match that the British government cannot survive.

This book felt different from other books in the series, as Alex first appeared about a third of the way into the plot. The early chapters described Scorpia's plans to get revenge for past failures found in earlier books, and a character from Point Blanc returned in a key role. I continued to be amazed at how Alex could be coerced into becoming a spy again and how certain evidence could be ignored by experienced "intelligence" officers. Don't accept that a person is dead unless you recover the body! I've found Alex to be a very lonely character, as the MI6 missions left him distant and unable to tell anyone the truth. For the first time, Alex was accompanied on a mission by someone he actually knew, although it complicated things. This book brought the whole series to a close, so some secrets were revealed and old grudges were revisited. Scorpia's efforts have been a problem in many of the books, but this mission was the last straw. How many times could a criminal group be foiled by a teenager? I won't say the series had a happy ending, but it ended. Overall, I recommend to try the series if you enjoy spy stories with plenty of action and gadgets.