BlueRaptor05

the association between water and death in alex rider has always been so fascinating to me because…it’s water. you cannot live without it; on paper it is so much less threatening than a gun or a bomb or a deadly virus. and yet time and time again alex half-drowns. in the mine and the jellyfish tank in stormbreaker; destroying the gentleman’s boat and breaking into sarov’s compound in skeleton key; locked in the cellar in scorpia; diving in ark angel; the pleasures’ car crashing into the loch in crocodile tears; waterboarded by the CIA in scorpia rising. when alex meets yassen again in eagle strike, they are on a jetty by the sea. venice is a city slowly sinking into the water. to kill john they had to blow up a plane; to kill ian they had to wait until he was alone on a country lane to put two bullets in his skull; in another world the rider brothers might have avoided these things, but how do you avoid water. how do you avoid becoming your father’s son and your uncle’s nephew when you’ve never known anything else, never been given any other choice. the first time alex sees julia rothman in scorpia, ‘she was on the water; Alex was on the land’. it doesn’t last. he follows her without thinking.