Go to Venice Find Your Destiny, Find Scorpia

"Go to Venice find your destiny, find Scorpia"

Scorpia, the 5th installment of the swift-paced and best-selling 'Alex rider' series by Anthony Horowitz, does not disappoint in any manner. In some aspects I personally would consider it the best book of the series so far. The book, similar to the others in the series, is focused on Alex Rider and his life as a teenage spy, and how he deals with the issues sharing a double life.

Scorpia begins on a school excursion to Venice, whereby Alex Rider, former teenage spy for the MI6, has his life back normal again after the chaotic events a couple of weeks ago in Eagle Strike. However, soon enough, Alex's life dives back into world of espionage and betrayal as he gets distracted while he is in Venice and as he leaves the class to try and figure out the complex past of his father. In his search for answers, he gets involved with SCORPIA, the most corrupted criminal organization on the earth, oblivious as to what he is getting himself into and the consequences that follow.

Scorpia manages to create deeper and more emotional characters compared to the previous books, and is definitely darker, in that it relates to the main character Alex Rider and his past. Both storyline and character development within the book is deep, as many things are revealed about the background of the story and the characters.

The pacing is exhausting, yet cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter make it almost impossible to put down. It is truly action-packed, as with all books in the 'Alex Rider' series, with many thrills, twists and turns.

The amazing thing is that Horowitz takes seemingly impossible scenes and makes them believable. The book is backed up with knowledge about weaponry, scenery, technology and especially in this book, world politics.

I personally think this book is one of the superior ones in the Alex Rider series, with a much deeper plot and has much more of a general development when compared to the other books. It seems much more mature, but still keeps the exciting riveting pace of the book alive. However, a small criticism would be the amount of twists in the book can be extensive, and it does get confusing at one stage as to which side is which.

All in all, this is definitely an enjoyable read which should not be ignored and I definitely recommend it. The