Scorpia is an action adventure book by Anthony Horowitz. It mostly takes place in Italy, and London, during modern times. In the book, the protagonist Alex Rider is a fourteen year old spy who is in Italy with his friend. He is there because on his last mission, Yassen Gregorovich told him that his dad, who is now dead, worked as an assassin for Scorpia, and Alex should go and find Scorpia. With the help of his friend Tom Harris, Alex manages to find a member of Scorpia’s gang, Julia Rothman. He sneaks into a party at her mansion and while exploring her office, he finds a brochure on Consanto a medical company. Before he can read more of the magazine, he is discovered by a Scorpian assassin, Nile. Nile knocks him out and puts him into a water chamber, to drown. Alex, narrowly escapes, and tells his friend Tom everything about him being a spy while on a train to Tom’s brother’s house. Jerry, Tom’s brother a BASE jumper, helps Alex get into Consanto Enterprise, where once again, he gets caught by Nile, but this time is sent to see Julia Rothman. When Alex meets her, he is offered to join Scorpia, and is told a lot about his father. He also learns that Scorpia is a terrorist organization, and their next mission is to place nanoshells into the bloodstream of British schoolchildren. Then, via satellite, release cyanide into their blood which would immediately kill them. Alex, does not want to join the organization, but agrees, because he want revenge, when Mrs. Rothman tells Alex how his father was killed by MI6.

 Alex is then taken to a training camp, where he trains for a month and is then sent to prove his loyalty to Scorpia. His job is to kill Mrs. Jones- of MI6, and he reluctantly goes to her heavily guarded house, disguised as a pizza delivery boy. There, he gets past the guards, and goes into Mrs. Jones’ room to kill her. Alex fails, is arrested by MI6, and is sent to see Alan Blunt, the head of MI6. Their, Alan forces Alex to reveal what Scorpia plans to do, and decides to send Alex back to Scorpia so he can find out where the satellites that Scorpia plans to use, to kill the school children, are. Back with Scorpia, Alex discovers that he was also injected with a nanoshell, and will die when the satellites are activated. When Mrs. Rothman finds out that he is a traitor, she feels that Alex should witness the nanoshells taking their effect. She brings him to the church where the satellite is hidden in a hot air balloon, and Alex discovers that the balloon has to be 1000 feet high, to send out the signals that will release the cyanide. MI6, somehow get alerted and when they arrive, Alex escapes, and climbs onto the hot air balloon, to disassemble the satellite. Read the book, to find out if Alex saves the British Schoolchildren or does he die a death from cyanide!

 In the book Scorpia, my favorite scene was when Alex was sent to kill Mrs. Jones. When Alex reached the house that Mrs. Jones lived in, he was disguised as a Scottish Pizza delivery boy. He went through the front door, where there were two guards, Lloyd and Ramirez. When Alex saw them he realized at once that they were new security guards, and got past them easily. When they asked who he was, he told them that he was delivering a pizza for someone named Foster. Obviously, they searched his bag and saw that it had his pizza, a coke bottle, and a promotion card. They opened the pizza box and found nothing inside it, so they let Alex go. But before that, they made him go through a metal detector with all his stuff, which he did. When he was leaving, the two security guards noticed that he had forgotten his coke on the table. They gave it to him, without passing it through the metal detector, and Alex went onwards to the elevator. Mrs. Jones’ house was on the ninth floor, but Mrs. Foster, lived on the sixth floor, and the two security guards were closely watching what floor Alex went to. Thus, Alex took a sticker, with the number six illuminated, and stuck it onto the actual sign. This made it look like Alex was on the sixth floor. While he went up to the ninth floor, he changed into a ninja outfit. Then he took out a straw with a tranquilizer dart in it and got ready to shoot it at the security guard who would be waiting for him when he got off. When he got out, he shot, and the guard fell to the floor immediately. Now it was time, for Alex to kill Mrs. Jones. He went to her door, and took olives from the pizza and set them on the locks. They exploded silently, and the door opened. Before Alex went in, he twisted the bottle of coke. It opened, and inside was a gun, the same color of the coke. The reason Alex purposely left the coke on the desk was because he couldn’t have it go underneath the metal detector. He then went into the room and suddenly saw Mrs. Jones. As he talked to her, he felt nervous and thought that he could not do it. When he pulled out the gun, Mrs. Jones started apologizing in a mocking tone, for killing Alex’s father but Alex shot the gun. At the last millisecond, he shot widely, and the gun hit a bulletproof and invisible wall between the two of them.

 This scene was my favorite, since it was filled with a lot of suspense, because Alex was doing a very dangerous mission. It was particularly hard to put the book down, while reading this part, because I kept on thinking that Mrs. Jones was going to die. Also, Alex went through so many close calls, like when he left the coke on the security guards desk, that my heart started beating extremely fast. I felt scared that Alex would be caught by the guards, and his mission would have failed (even though it did in the end). This scene is important to the story because if Alex had not failed, he would not have joined MI6 so he could not have foiled the plot of Scorpia in the end. 

 The book Scorpia had many good features about it, as well as some bad features. It was good because of its action, suspense, and its winding twists. For example, many people double-crossed each other and there were a lot of parts that had fights. These parts, were what made the book so good, and what people like to read. The best thing about it was that it was very exciting, and kept me wanting to read it. When I was reading some parts, it was very hard to put down and once, I even stayed up to twelve o’ clock to read it. The book Scorpia could also have been better in some ways. It could have been a little longer, for it was only 312 pages and I read it in three nights (though part of that reason was that it was so hard to put down). Also, the book was very not as interesting in the beginning. The beginning was a little boring, but after a couple chapters, it became fine. Overall, when I read this book, it made me feel excited, and like I was the Alex Rider in the book. The way the author wrote it, made me feel exactly like Alex Rider was feeling and when he was on a mission, I imagined that I was doing the same thing. This was because the author used descriptive words and plots so that you couldn’t guess what was going to happen next. In some of the authors other books, you can tell what was going to happen next, but Scorpia is an exception. I would definitely recommend this book to everyone who enjoys reading books that have a lot of suspense and action in them. The book Scorpia is also part of a series, called the Alex Rider series. I have read all the books in that series, and I think that they are great, just like Scorpia. It has not been made into a movie, but if it will be, I imagine that it would be very exciting, and fun to watch. When I read this book, it reminded me of the other Alex Rider books, because they have the same types of suspense, and twists. The adventure that Alex Rider goes on, reminded me of the books Eragon and Eldest, by Christopher Paolini. In those books, the character goes on adventures to, but in ancient times. I would rate Scorpia 8.5 out of 10, because of its great suspense, and the excitement that it gave me, but also because of how it would be better if its length was longer, and if its beginning was not as boring.