What’s impressive about Anthony Horowitz’s new book, ‘Russian Roulette’, is that, for me, the answer to all those questions is yes. Horowitz has created a powerful and original story in which the bad guy is not only the ‘hero’, but also someone you wish you could save. And he meets John Rider. And John, or Hunter, is like "you're not cut out for this life. You should use your new skills to hide from Scorpia and start a new life". Yassen very nearly does this. YASSEN ALMOST IS NOT AN ASSASSIN.

Believability: No complaints, except one: Yassen's narration is supposed to be his journal, and his journal is written in Russian; yet he defines Russian words several times. Why would he do that in his own private journal when Russian is his native language? I’ve always been a pretty big fan of Anthony Horowitz. This started with his Alex Rider series, of course, and so naturally, I couldn’t help myself when I found out that he’d written a short story about one of his side characters. I didn’t really have a lot of expectations for this, of course, since it has firstly been a great deal of time since I read the series but also because the character this story is about was never one that I was particularly attached to. Still, I was curious enough to feel that it was worth reading. Don't even gets me started on the actual 'Russian Roulette' game because I don't think I can talk about it. It was so awful.We are told the story of his life and how he became the assassin we first meet in Stormbreaker. Starting from his small town life in Russia, through various places around the world we see how different, yet how similar his life was/is to Alex's.

This book was everything and more! I absolutely love the Alex Rider series and although I can't really say it's because it was 'my childhood series' (because I started reading them at 13 years old and finished at 15 last year) they are as close as it gets to that. Therefore I have such a strong attachment to this series and these characters and strangely as this is a companion novel following a very minor character from the Alex Rider series, who definitely is not a hero within that series, I found myself so emotionally invested in this book and in his story. And the title. Russian Roulette. It's perfect. It makes me think as much as the complex moral and philosophical questions this book raised. This book is perhaps one of the finest YA prequels I have read. It has the neat, precise style of the other novels in the world of Alex Rider but turns everything around to focus on Yassen Gregorovich, the assassin whose mysterious past links in with Alex Rider's. Yassen is by far one of the more intriguing characters in the series - an assassin with an antihero complex who makes complex moral choices for a YA character. In fact I believe it is the moral choices made in these books that make them so fascinating to read as part of an overall series. They are far from perfect, but they are oh so fascinating.

The Story of an Assassin

The final book in the #1 bestselling Alex Rider series with over 6 million copies sold in the U.S. alone!