This book read like a bad action movie. Alex Rider is only fourteen, nearly four years younger than I am, yet he's a total ass-kicking super spy. When reading a book like this you don't expect realism at all, so I didn't mind the spying part. However it was just... uninteresting. Alex Rider was hardly a developed character. The only thing I remember about him was that he liked soccer. Which isn't unusual for a teenage boy in England.

I've enjoyed the Gallagher Girls novels, which deal with teenage spies, but at least those novels have enjoyable characters. Well even if you don't like those characters you get a sense of who they are. I just spent three hours reading a book about a boy and can tell you one fact about him. That's not a good sign for a book.