First off, I'd like to say that this novel has a very misleading cover. I was expecting the main character to be in his early 20s, and then a few chapters in I'm told that he's THIRTEEN. Are you serious?The aunt and uncle are very stereotypical. I found myself wondering if this was another Harry Potter. And yes! It was. At first. To start with he's locked in a tiny room, while his aunt and uncle treat him like crap for no good reason. Just seemed too unbelievable.After the quite immature training montage, though, it turned into an okay book. The characters and scenarios were often a little too predictable and underdeveloped, however, but it was still a good read. the entire time i spent reading this, i couldn't help but compare it with Alex Rider, because, when you boil it down, it's pretty much the exact same thing. think of it :his parents are dead and he is living with uncle. he then gets singled out by a top secret british secret service thing because he fits a magical profile (which includes proficiency in any intellectual area, i.e. language, engineering ect as well as being unwanted by family and friendless.) the main idea behind this being 'they wont suspect kids of being spies' he is then blackmailed/threatened (sort of) to join them, and spends forever training to go on missions. he eventually goes on a mission to become the best friend of a drug lord's son (haven't seen that one before) and snoops around a bunch, gets caught, miraculously escapes, saves the day, stops the bad guy (who turned out to be the guy who murdered his family in the first place) and makes a life long enemy of his son.do you see where I'm coming from? it's not that i didn't like it, it's just that these are so overdone and aren't really that original anymore. it just seemed like a cheap remix of the Alex Rider series,( or even the Cherub series.)and of course, zak manages to completely piss me off by being flawless at abso-frickin-lutly everything! need you engine fixed? zak can do it! how about a radio transistor? no problem! languages? becomes fluent in 3 in 6 months! how about marksmanship? no problem, bull's-eye second try! and morse code? done in a day! yeah, so the kid was smart, but he can't be that freaking perfect at everything naturally. i mean come on, that's not exactly realistic. he's 13 and his only education has been grades 1-7 at a public school. he either already magically know everything he needs, or is unnaturally fast at learning (like, superpower fast). give me a break, unless he is some super evil genius mastermind like Artemis Fowl, that's not exactly likely that any of this could have happened ( and he's not Artemis Fowl or genius, so find this horribly frustrating. if in book two, it isn't revealed that he has magic do-everything-perfectly superpowers that help him learn so fast I'm going to be pissed)so yes, i do intend to read further, (despite the low rating i gave it, which by the way, is 2.5) but only because i have hopes that it will get better and become a little less cliché. i hope the next one improves upon the first.
Do You like book Agent 21 - Im Zeichen Des Todes (2012)?
Load of baloney, ridiculous story about a 14 year old "agent" do me a favour!
—Brady
I would happily read the next of this series! Well written and enjoyable. :)
—mannyessien
Dumped/unread following adverse comment from literary agent.
—benishere
