Here’s more zippy action and fast-moving drama starring Alex Rider, in the fourth installment of the teenage spy series. This time, 14-year-old Alex saves the world all on his own, without help from MI6, as he accidentally becomes involved with a paid assassin and an insane rock star who’s plotting nuclear evil. This episode has Alex thrust into a life-sized computer game in which he himself is the action hero, dodging real spears, and battling snakes and Aztec gods, in a chapter that certainly will appeal to adolescent boys. The final confrontation features Alex trapped inside a hijacked Air Force One with the nuclear warheads already launched. Can Alex destroy them in time? It’s all absurd fun that lives up to the excitement young readers have come to expect from Horowitz. (Fiction. 12+)
