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Alex Rider #7
Snakehead
Splashing down off the coast of Australia, Alex is soon working undercover – this time for ASIS, the Australian Secret Service – on a mission to infiltrate the criminal underworld of South-East Asia: the ruthless world of the Snakehead. Faced with an old enemy and troubled by his own past, Alex is caught between two secret services, with no one to trust – and this time he needs all his wits to survive...
414 pages, Paperback
First published October 31, 2007
999 people are currently reading
10827 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Horowitz
345 books21k followersAnthony Horowitz, OBE is ranked alongside Enid Blyton and Mark A. Cooper as "The most original and best spy-kids authors of the century." (New York Times). Anthony has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he is also the writer and creator of award winning detective series Foyle’s War, and more recently event drama Collision, among his other television works he has written episodes for Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. Anthony became patron to East Anglia Children’s Hospices in 2009.
On 19 January 2011, the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle announced that Horowitz was to be the writer of a new Sherlock Holmes novel, the first such effort to receive an official endorsement from them and to be entitled the House of Silk.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/anthon...
On 19 January 2011, the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle announced that Horowitz was to be the writer of a new Sherlock Holmes novel, the first such effort to receive an official endorsement from them and to be entitled the House of Silk.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/anthon...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,202 reviews
January 8, 2019
You weren’t in any real danger. We knew exactly where you were all the time.
another Alex Rider book is done and usually at this point i would be finished a series but not this one i still have another four books in this series to go until i finish it.
Plot: This one picks up right after the events of Ark Angel were Alex makes a crash landing back down to earth after destroying the hotel that was up in space. You would think that Alex would get a month break after every assignment to be a normal kid but nope he is thrown back into the spy world and thrust into another assignment. Alex is picked up by the Australian Secret Service and is asked by them to take down the criminal underworld that is in south east Asia.
We also learn in this one that Alex has a god father who was his fathers best friend and they are soon put on a mission together. I was really hoping things would look up for Alex and he would finally have a good family member who he could trust and actually have to be in his life boy was i wrong. Ash who like Alex was working with MI6 turns out to be a double agent and in fact working for scorpia. Just please can something go right for Alex? can we have someone come into his life who's not trying to kill him for once just once please.
Jack's and Alex's relationship in this book is really strained in this one because of everything MI6 has put Alex through over the course of a year. I would love to see these two just go away and spend time with each other away from this spy world because Jack's is the last good thing Alex has in his life and i don't want this relationship to be ruined.
I'm always surprised how much Alex has been through in a short amount of time and i always think huge amounts of time has passed during each book and its always mentioned hes a 14 year old boy and that still shocks me.
It was a nice surprised seeing Sabina return at the end of the book and i wasn't expecting it but it was really good for something good to happen to Alex for once.
another Alex Rider book is done and usually at this point i would be finished a series but not this one i still have another four books in this series to go until i finish it.
Plot: This one picks up right after the events of Ark Angel were Alex makes a crash landing back down to earth after destroying the hotel that was up in space. You would think that Alex would get a month break after every assignment to be a normal kid but nope he is thrown back into the spy world and thrust into another assignment. Alex is picked up by the Australian Secret Service and is asked by them to take down the criminal underworld that is in south east Asia.
We also learn in this one that Alex has a god father who was his fathers best friend and they are soon put on a mission together. I was really hoping things would look up for Alex and he would finally have a good family member who he could trust and actually have to be in his life boy was i wrong. Ash who like Alex was working with MI6 turns out to be a double agent and in fact working for scorpia. Just please can something go right for Alex? can we have someone come into his life who's not trying to kill him for once just once please.
Jack's and Alex's relationship in this book is really strained in this one because of everything MI6 has put Alex through over the course of a year. I would love to see these two just go away and spend time with each other away from this spy world because Jack's is the last good thing Alex has in his life and i don't want this relationship to be ruined.
I'm always surprised how much Alex has been through in a short amount of time and i always think huge amounts of time has passed during each book and its always mentioned hes a 14 year old boy and that still shocks me.
It was a nice surprised seeing Sabina return at the end of the book and i wasn't expecting it but it was really good for something good to happen to Alex for once.
November 15, 2020
Definitely the worst book in the series so far. This should have stayed in the drafts. Mostly because of how uncomfortably racist it is.
I've been making a couple of comments throughout my re-reading of this series, calling out problematic aspects of the previous books, but for the most parts I've been thinking that there are moments in the series that just haven't aged well, not that anything has been . But this one just crossed a lot of lines for me.
Snakehead follows Alex Rider has he tries to take down a human smuggling ring... disguised as an Afghan refugee child. Complete with painting his entire body and fake rotting teeth. So pretty early on you realize you're in for an uncomfortable reading experience.
That is the set-up of the book, but due to their plans constantly going wrong Alex actually spends VERY little time actively pretending to be a refugee (and thank god for that).
(Alex is a rich kid from London, there is absolutely no way anyone would believe he was a poor refugee.)
At the end of the book Anthony Horowitz goes through a list of people he has talked to to make the book as accurate as possible, and he does not mention talking to any refugees or any experts on refugees (which still wouldn't be as good as talking to people who has lived that experience, but it would have been something). And you know what... it shows. For a book about human smuggling there are almost no actual refugees in it, and that would probably for the better if it wasn't for the fact that the few that show up aren't really humanized at all, and the one refugee who does anything more than just stand there is quickly killed off, his death probably having the least impact on the plot. Alex goes on to say he "admires" Snakehead, the people smugglers, and it somehow even more disturbing to read in context.
There were also other parts of the book that seemed racist to me. The way Alex views places like Bangkok and Jakarta is not very flattering, obviously those cities are very different from what he's used to so I'm not saying he had to think they were great cities, but he sounds absolutely revolted. Anthony Horowitz also describes a Chinese character as a "chinaman" at one point, a term I thought we had kinda left behind at this point.
This is kinda a weird complaint to add on here, but they are told that they don't need to worry about the body paint (ugh) washing off unless they bathe (and obviously refugees never wash, at least not in the Alex Rider universe, so that's not a problem...), but they specifically end up soaking wet multiple times. Alex swims through a river, ends up drenched in rain, and I understand that it's not the same as scrubbing yourself with soap, but you would think that at some point he worries about it washing off and at least tries to look himself in a mirror? No, it's never brought up. It's just poor writing.
A couple of complaints more: This book ends with Alex needing to defuse a bomb AGAIN, as if that wasn't the climax of the last book too. Not very original. There is also a new audiobook narrator for the series, and I can't say I approve, I miss the sassiness the last one had.
One last thing, I'm obviously not trying to say that Anthony Horowitz is some raging racist. But I don't think this middle grade series about a teenage spy was the right place to try to write about human smuggling and refugees. The topic is too serious. He can write as much as he wants about "evil villains who wants to destroy the world", but some things are better left to other writers.
I've been making a couple of comments throughout my re-reading of this series, calling out problematic aspects of the previous books, but for the most parts I've been thinking that there are moments in the series that just haven't aged well, not that anything has been . But this one just crossed a lot of lines for me.
Snakehead follows Alex Rider has he tries to take down a human smuggling ring... disguised as an Afghan refugee child. Complete with painting his entire body and fake rotting teeth. So pretty early on you realize you're in for an uncomfortable reading experience.
That is the set-up of the book, but due to their plans constantly going wrong Alex actually spends VERY little time actively pretending to be a refugee (and thank god for that).
(Alex is a rich kid from London, there is absolutely no way anyone would believe he was a poor refugee.)
At the end of the book Anthony Horowitz goes through a list of people he has talked to to make the book as accurate as possible, and he does not mention talking to any refugees or any experts on refugees (which still wouldn't be as good as talking to people who has lived that experience, but it would have been something). And you know what... it shows. For a book about human smuggling there are almost no actual refugees in it, and that would probably for the better if it wasn't for the fact that the few that show up aren't really humanized at all, and the one refugee who does anything more than just stand there is quickly killed off, his death probably having the least impact on the plot. Alex goes on to say he "admires" Snakehead, the people smugglers, and it somehow even more disturbing to read in context.
There were also other parts of the book that seemed racist to me. The way Alex views places like Bangkok and Jakarta is not very flattering, obviously those cities are very different from what he's used to so I'm not saying he had to think they were great cities, but he sounds absolutely revolted. Anthony Horowitz also describes a Chinese character as a "chinaman" at one point, a term I thought we had kinda left behind at this point.
This is kinda a weird complaint to add on here, but they are told that they don't need to worry about the body paint (ugh) washing off unless they bathe (and obviously refugees never wash, at least not in the Alex Rider universe, so that's not a problem...), but they specifically end up soaking wet multiple times. Alex swims through a river, ends up drenched in rain, and I understand that it's not the same as scrubbing yourself with soap, but you would think that at some point he worries about it washing off and at least tries to look himself in a mirror? No, it's never brought up. It's just poor writing.
A couple of complaints more: This book ends with Alex needing to defuse a bomb AGAIN, as if that wasn't the climax of the last book too. Not very original. There is also a new audiobook narrator for the series, and I can't say I approve, I miss the sassiness the last one had.
One last thing, I'm obviously not trying to say that Anthony Horowitz is some raging racist. But I don't think this middle grade series about a teenage spy was the right place to try to write about human smuggling and refugees. The topic is too serious. He can write as much as he wants about "evil villains who wants to destroy the world", but some things are better left to other writers.
November 25, 2019
As usual, quite an unbelievable story. Wierd, hard to grab at places, obvious and childish at others. And setting mind to work, as always xD.
I don't pretend to have any idea as to how spec ops operate, but: a delicate mission like this and they build a crew of the most experienced 20-yer-olds?? Knives only?? I mean, come on! Surely there are some crossbows, army-issued pneumatic guns, what not.
Alex finally got his hands on a gun, which was refreshing. But..guess what? He missed, lol. Not that it sonds unlikely.
A power from the beacon,..that was something.
I don't pretend to have any idea as to how spec ops operate, but: a delicate mission like this and they build a crew of the most experienced 20-yer-olds?? Knives only?? I mean, come on! Surely there are some crossbows, army-issued pneumatic guns, what not.
Alex finally got his hands on a gun, which was refreshing. But..guess what? He missed, lol. Not that it sonds unlikely.
A power from the beacon,..that was something.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 26, 2017
3.5* rating. It seems Alex Rider never gets a chance to take a break....as soon as he finishes one job he gets dragged into another! This time he takes on the crime organisation Snakehead and meets his god father and learns a bit more about the history of his dead parents. As action packed as ever with dead defying stunts and yet again I had to keep reminding myself that Alex is just a 14 year old boy!
March 9, 2025
4.25 stars
August 3, 2023
Wie immer super unterhaltsam! Ärgere mich, dass ich nicht als Teenie schon die Reihe in Angriff genommen habe, da hätte sie mir noch besser gefallen.
February 4, 2008
Well... It was okay. I'm kinda getting sick of horowitz's methodical style of writing this series.
It seemed that everything was building up to 'Scorpia' and after its cataclysmic ending there just had to be a wrap-up book-but Snakehead... kinda boring.
The author tried to make it personal by bringing Ash into the mix but I don't think that really added anything-Horowitz needs to go in a new direction with Alex.
Bringing Sabina back at the end was as strained as their relationship has evidently become. If she were to appear in this book-she should've been in the meat of it, not the last two pages. By bringing her back horowitz ruins the tearjerking moment which MAKES the end of Eagle Strike what it is.
The eighth book is entitled 'Yassen' and revolves around the life of this esteemed assassin. Theories are that he's still alive-in my opinion that's the only twist that could make it worth reading, otherwise it would just be a history of his life-yawn.
Loved the fact that Scorpia came back into it but I thought it should be more about their revenge on Alex than this crappy plot about 8 stupid d-list celebrities. If horowitz wanted it to be personal that's the way to do it. The conclusion means that Scorpia probably won't interfere in his life again-disappointing.
Alex seemed to be coming around to MI6. I really thought he was warming to the idea of becoming a full-time operative-he was anxious about returning to school (a place he OBVIOUSLY doesn't belong). The author undoes this good work at the end of the book as he enjoys school once more.
Where is it going? Does Horowitz have a plan? This series needs some spice...
It seemed that everything was building up to 'Scorpia' and after its cataclysmic ending there just had to be a wrap-up book-but Snakehead... kinda boring.
The author tried to make it personal by bringing Ash into the mix but I don't think that really added anything-Horowitz needs to go in a new direction with Alex.
Bringing Sabina back at the end was as strained as their relationship has evidently become. If she were to appear in this book-she should've been in the meat of it, not the last two pages. By bringing her back horowitz ruins the tearjerking moment which MAKES the end of Eagle Strike what it is.
The eighth book is entitled 'Yassen' and revolves around the life of this esteemed assassin. Theories are that he's still alive-in my opinion that's the only twist that could make it worth reading, otherwise it would just be a history of his life-yawn.
Loved the fact that Scorpia came back into it but I thought it should be more about their revenge on Alex than this crappy plot about 8 stupid d-list celebrities. If horowitz wanted it to be personal that's the way to do it. The conclusion means that Scorpia probably won't interfere in his life again-disappointing.
Alex seemed to be coming around to MI6. I really thought he was warming to the idea of becoming a full-time operative-he was anxious about returning to school (a place he OBVIOUSLY doesn't belong). The author undoes this good work at the end of the book as he enjoys school once more.
Where is it going? Does Horowitz have a plan? This series needs some spice...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 20, 2015
Anthony Horowitz is without a doubt my favorite author of all time.
i'm sorry i can't tell you much about what happens because i read it ages ago and I LOVED IT!
MY TOP FAVOURITE ALEX RIDER NOVELS:
EAGLE STRIKE
CROCODILE TEARS
SNAKEHEAD
Of course I love all the other ones and i loved reading this one, i think mainly because the evil character in this one is so different and scary sounding and the way
Also, i am always a fan of the story lines and the breathtaking escapes Alex has to take.
A DEFINITE MUST READ if you're a fan of adventure/ thriller!
i'm sorry i can't tell you much about what happens because i read it ages ago and I LOVED IT!
MY TOP FAVOURITE ALEX RIDER NOVELS:
EAGLE STRIKE
CROCODILE TEARS
SNAKEHEAD
Of course I love all the other ones and i loved reading this one, i think mainly because the evil character in this one is so different and scary sounding and the way
Also, i am always a fan of the story lines and the breathtaking escapes Alex has to take.
A DEFINITE MUST READ if you're a fan of adventure/ thriller!
Read
October 20, 2020I had a black edition of this which had a snakeskin-feel to the cover, I remember that more than the plot.
February 21, 2025
okay the novelty factor has worn off, these books aren’t that good, this one actively pissed me off but i had nothing else on several hellish bus journeys, there’s only so many times he can be the most frightened he’s ever been
also plot hole in book 12 he said he’s never parachuted at night but in this book he parachutes at night onto a oil rig so explain that
i promise im reading other books too, not just alex rider
also plot hole in book 12 he said he’s never parachuted at night but in this book he parachutes at night onto a oil rig so explain that
i promise im reading other books too, not just alex rider
March 17, 2017
I really enjoyed most of this book. It was a little bit boring at a few parts, but other that, it was pretty interesting and exciting.
July 23, 2022
Overall Rating : B
"My dad was a spy. My uncle was a spy. And now it turns out I've got a godfather who's a spy. You have to admit, it runs in the family."
One of the more disturbing books in the series (Just thinking about those rats...😖) But had fun all around. And talk about an emotional twist that gets you right at the heart!
"My dad was a spy. My uncle was a spy. And now it turns out I've got a godfather who's a spy. You have to admit, it runs in the family."
One of the more disturbing books in the series (Just thinking about those rats...😖) But had fun all around. And talk about an emotional twist that gets you right at the heart!
January 19, 2020
this one was really boring ;/
December 1, 2020
This is a book about betrayal and action. Alex finds his Godfather (Ash) And finds out that Ash was behind the death of his parents (Ash dies seconds later) Major Yu then escapes and Alex stops the bomb!! And when Major Yu escapes he breaks his bones because they were very brittle and he broke them as he jumped onto his escape boat (he died minutes later) Thanks so much for reading my review if you want more you can follow me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 3, 2024
ANOTHER hot *evil* spy relative! AND loads of hot AUSTRALIAN spies! Sabina pleasure knows what she’s doing getting involved with this family I tell ya! PLUS Scouse spies & more Yassen lore! No notes, Mr Horowitz outdid himself once again bravo sir
Read
October 20, 2025I'm not sure who this book is for - it certainly doesn't read like a kids book, that's for sure.
It is more grown up, more interesting, more... dark?
the descriptions of Thailand were... interesting, having lived there I agree with his "two cities" description.
I saw some but not all of the twist coming.
It is more grown up, more interesting, more... dark?
the descriptions of Thailand were... interesting, having lived there I agree with his "two cities" description.
I saw some but not all of the twist coming.
May 26, 2024
OKAY. I last read these books in high school. Totally forgot about the British kid dyeing his skin to pretend to be a refugee from Afghanistan. YIKES. Will have to leave this one out of any future rereads.
September 3, 2015
I LOVED IT SO MUCH AND THE BETRAYAL AT THE END AND MY SHIP AND MY HEART AND *dies*
May 11, 2018
Another One!!
~DJ Khalid~
alright
where do I start from the beginning was good the middle portion was good and the ending was certainly the best
psdkjiodihdjdncu
~DJ Khalid~
alright
where do I start from the beginning was good the middle portion was good and the ending was certainly the best
psdkjiodihdjdncu
July 22, 2019
The seventh novel in the Alex Rider series begins just seconds after the end of book 6, Ark Angel. Alex soon finds himself in Australia and is given the option of working with the Australian Secret Service. Due to his previous outings with MI6 and the CIA, he is very much against the idea. But when he finds out he would be working with the man who was his father’s best friend and who was there at his death, the chance to learn the details of what happened is just too much for Alex to pass up.
Thus, despite assurances that he will be kept from harm, gets involved with an adventure that takes him to Bangkok, Jarkarta, and back to the coast of Australia. And SCORPIA, as it turns out, isn’t done with Alex just yet either.
Another good one in this exciting YA series that keeps me turning the pages. It was good to get the low down on even more of Alex’s past, especially concerning his father. And of course, watching Alex escape from impossible situations using courage and creative solutions is always fun.
On to the next!
Thus, despite assurances that he will be kept from harm, gets involved with an adventure that takes him to Bangkok, Jarkarta, and back to the coast of Australia. And SCORPIA, as it turns out, isn’t done with Alex just yet either.
Another good one in this exciting YA series that keeps me turning the pages. It was good to get the low down on even more of Alex’s past, especially concerning his father. And of course, watching Alex escape from impossible situations using courage and creative solutions is always fun.
On to the next!
November 2, 2024
In this one Alex really got to see life in someone else’s shoes. Specifically the life of a person seeking a better life through illegal immigration. I wanted to cry several times. It was really eye opening for me. People are treated so inhumanly! Even just having to live the life of a poor person in a third world country was eye-opening. It’s crazy all that I learned about different bombs, how smuggling works, and each country’s unique secret service. I also loved the additional background information we got on Alex’s parents. It’s a roller coaster of emotions with me if I am either furious at the special services for how they treat their agents or super grateful we have them for protecting our freedoms. I’m always grateful for them and all their sacrifice though! Seriously! There is so much evil in this world. This book travels through so many countries from Australia to the Middle East. Alex Rider is such a stud. I want to be him. The stunts he pulled in this book were EPIC. Ash was an interesting character to get to know too. I’m so grateful Alex has Jack and Smithers and the rest of his genuine friends that have his back.
SPOILERS and book notes:
Look what happens to your body when you return from space: “now his muscles were turning against him, reluctant to start pulling their own weight.” And he threw up. And they have him sleep on a special memory foam mattress that nasa developed to help give his muscles a chance to get used to being back in full gravity. He was picked up by USA USS kitty hawk boat off the coast of Australia. Scorpia is back! Aw! The head leader (even if they are all equal) is Zeljan Kurst and he would play classical music as he interrogated and tortured his victims. He is famous for his love of classical music. A G8 Summit is taking place on an island off the coast of Australia. (8 of the most influential or richest people in the world) they are planning to minimize poverty, cancel world debt, help with aids in Africa. And obviously some powerful evil rich people don’t want this so they are paying Scorpia to eliminate these 8 people. BUT they have to kill them with it looking like complete natural. ALL 8 natural causes. But how?? Eliminate the whole island somehow. The head of the secret intelligent in Australia (ASIS) named Ethan Brooke is blind! That is interesting… Marc Damon is his right hand man. He was out with the aussies special service when they left him alone in the jungle and he entered a mine field and stepped on a Pressure sensitive blast mine. Good thing he kept his foot down! Now someone needs to help him! He of course escapes the trap on his own! The ASIS is recruiting him to stop Snakehead. A criminal organization that specializes in people smuggling. (Helps illegal immigrants). “We have an agent in Bangkok now. We’ve set him up as a refugee from Afghanistan planning to be smuggled into Australia. He’ll meet with the snakehead and gather names, faces, phone numbers, addresses…anything he can. But he won’t be on his own. He’ll be traveling with his son.” “We’ll fly you to Bangkok,” Damon continued, speaking directly to Alex. “You’ll join our agent there, and the two of you will be passed down the pipeline back here. And here’s the deal. As soon as you’re back on Australian soil, we’ll send you first class direct to England. You won’t have to do anything, Alex. But you’ll provide perfect cover for our man. He’ll get the information we need, and maybe we’ll be able to break up Yu’s network once and for all.” And Ash will be his partner! He is Alex dad’s best friend and Alex godfather! He was the last person to see his parents alive (at the airport) and his dad saved his life one time!! Ash works for MI6 too. And Jack knows him bc he used to come around when Alex was really little to visit him. But she hasn’t seen him since. Ash and Jack!! Aww!! “I even went out with him a couple of times although he was quite a lot older than me. He was very good-looking. And there was something dangerous about him. He told me he was a deep-sea diver. He was fun to have around.” Ash ended up being the guy who helped him with the pressure plate mine! It was all a set up. It was a test to see if he would panic under pressure. Or how he would handle the situation. He is a cold hearted man. But this is what he said about Jack: “Then Ash smiled briefly. “How’s that housekeeper of yours?” he asked. “Jack What’s-her-name. Is she still with you?” “Yes. She said hello.” “She was an attractive girl. I liked her. I’m glad she stuck by you.”
And now he is going to turn Alex into poor afghan boy, refugee. It’s crazy the transformation of Alex with his disguise! They hacked and dyed his hair, dyed his skin, put fake teeth in, got dirty torn clothes. Snakehead forces Alex (who they think is a simpleton) into an illegal fighting match in Thailand. It’s a bunch of homeless skinny people they find on the street and force them to find (aka get the crap beat out of them) HORRIBLE. Alex has to face the champion. He knows karate but these people know: “Muay Thai, also known as the science of eight limbs, one of the most aggressive and dangerous martial arts in the world. Alex had learned karate, but he knew that it was a world apart from muay Thai, which permitted strikes by the fists, elbows, knees, and feet with no fewer than twenty-four targets—from the top of the head to the rear calf—on your opponent. And this was a dirty, illegal version. Neither of the fighters had hand wraps, shin pads, or abdomen protectors. The fight would continue until one of them was carried out unconscious…or worse.” But Alex barely lasted the first round get the crap beat out of him. So when they gave water to him for second round he held it in his mouth then spit it in the opponents face and then knocked him out. LESS GOOO but snakehead is mad now bc he has humiliated them by taking out their prize fighter… so they try and kill him but he escapes by jumping and hiding in the river under the building. But giant river rats start climbing all over him! AWW. But Alex escapes on a boat. But next chap we find that Scorpia knows Alex is there!! They just haven’t killed him yet bc they don’t want ASIS to know they have an informant traitor. Alex ran into Fox! Aka Ben Daniel’s (An agent He trained with him in book 1 with wolf) he is the one that helped Alex escape the fighting arena. The daisy cutter bomb used in Vietnam war: ““The Daisy Cutter, also known as BLU-82B or the Blue Boy, is the largest conventional bomb in existence. It’s the size of a car…” ““They used it in Vietnam to clear landing sites for helicopters,” Mrs. Jones went on. “Drop one on the jungle and you’d have no jungle for half a mile around. They called it the Daisy Cutter because that was the pattern the explosion made. It was used in Afghanistan to scare the Taliban…to show them what they were up against.” The snake head stole a second generation daisy cutter (called royal blue) from Britain and they tracked them here.“It was all beginning to make sense. MI6 Special Operations were chasing a missing bomb that had led them to the snakehead. Alex was investigating the snakehead and that had led him to MI6. It was as if they had met in the middle.” Daniel’s was going to go undercover in snake head to find royal blue. but now they found Alex, maybe just use him to help them find the bomb. Smithers is back with gadgets! A fan that turns into a weapon! Called “fan club” lol. Incense (bc people in Middle East burn a lot) that cause people to throw up. Local coins that are mini explosives, a broken watch that sends a destress signal. A belt with a knife hidden in the buckle and: “And if you slice open the belt, you’ll find matches, medicine, water-purifying tablets, and knockout pills that are guaranteed to work on eleven different varieties of snake.” And this made me lol: ““Oh—do be careful with that!” Smithers exclaimed. “That’s my Buddha hand grenade. Twist the head twice and throw it and anyone within ten yards can say their prayers.” Ash is finally telling Alex all about his parents! How they met and fell in love. And got married… she was a nurse at the hospital and took care of the dad. They had previously met at Oxford when she was studying medicine. She was expecting Alex the same time his dad got involved with undercover Scorpia. Ash never got married and he is glad for it and here is why: ““You can’t afford to get scared in our business. Fear’s the one thing that will kill you faster than anything, and although it’s true to say that all agents are fearless, generally what that means is that they’re not afraid for themselves. All that changes when you get married, and it’s even worse when you have kids. Alan Blunt didn’t want your dad to marry. He knew that in the end, he’d be losing his best man.” Yassan gregorivitch (from the very beginning, the one that killed Ian rider) was who stabbed ash in the stomach and almost killed him. He suffers from it till this day. Awwww: “and if it makes you feel any better, I never saw him happier than when he was holding you. He and your mother. It was like you made them real people again. You took them out of the shadows.” Now they are in Indonesia about to to be smuggled to Australia. The smugglers use a legit toy company as their cover of smuggling drugs, people, etc. bc they have airplanes and boats to transport the “toys” to different countries. Then the toy compony compound was infiltrated by: The Kopassus is an Indonesian Army special forces group. ““Indonesian SAS.” He was right. Kopassus is an abbreviation of Komando Pasukan Khusus, and it’s the name of one of the most ruthless fighting forces in the world. It is well known—indeed, it is expected—that at least one recruit will die during basic training.” So now Alex/ash operation is blown. The kopassus is against snakehead too so really they are on the same side but the soldiers don’t know that! To smuggle the immigrants from Indonesia to Australia they are hiding them in giant shipping containers. That are locked from the outside. It takes three or four DAYS. Alex is in one with twenty other immigrants! So inhuman and horrible. A chemical toilet and few rations. But of course Alex escapes but he and ash were in separate containers so he is on his own. Ooo Alex found the bomb! And while the villains were gone he made it so his fingerprints could override the system! Also he is discovered missing and now has to run and hid from soldiers on a ship! How can he?? Such cramped quarters. It’s like hide and seek. He hid under YU (head of snake heads) bed!! Bahahah so the crew never found him bc they don’t dare look there. Alex broke the reefers were refrigerated containers. He smashed the pipes that provided the cooling. This was his discretion. It might even burn the ship down. Alex escaped the ship by clinging onto one of the giant crates being lifted off the boat onto the dock. Snakehead is going to use the bomb to to blow up a fault line in the sea and create a tsunami that will hit the island and wipe it out! This Yu guy is a SICKO. He has a secret organ doner place in the middle of the Australia jungle!! He is harvesting all Alex organs one at a time and he will live through them all until they eventually get them all and he dies!!! The first customer is an American needing a pair of eyes. So they are operating on his eyeballs the next morning!! AWWWW the customer: “It was his selfishness, his complete lack of heart. Tomorrow Alex would be blind. This man would take his sight without thinking about it simply because it was what he wanted and he had the money to pay for it.” He escaped so epically. he made a kayak by blowing off a part of a sea plane that makes it float. And as he sailed away he had BLOWN UP THE HOSPITAL IN A RAIN STORM. How freaking epic is that!?!? Except a sniper in a helicopter found him and shot at him while he was going through deadly rapids in his makeshift kayaks!! How will he survive? He flipped his kayaks and hid underneath so they thought they got him. So they left but now he is going over a HUGE water fall. “Sharp rocks at the bottom?” “Yep” “bring it on” noooo Ben Daniel’s got gunned down by Yu when they tried to stop him from setting off the mob on the oil rig. But he survived. But guess who Ben dsmiels shot?? ASH. Bc HE WAS A TRAITOR AND WORKING FOR SCORPIA THE WHOLE TIME. He was working under cover for them. Feeding them info. He sabotaged Alex gadgets!! And HE was the one that put the bomb in the airplane that killed Alex parents!!! But he said he didn’t want to…. But HE STILL DID IT. And then he DIED. He said he switched sides bc mI6 treated him like crap. The team stopped the bomb! Once the spy world has you, it HAS YOU: ““That’s not what’s upsetting me, Alex,” she had replied. “Then what?” “It’s this world. MI6. What it did to him, to your parents. I suppose I’m scared about what it’ll do to you.” “I think I’ve finished with it, Jack.” “That’s what you said last time, Alex. But the question is—has it finished with you?” This next scene made me smile so big!!! A special guest surprise at his front door! SABINA!! “Alex threw open the door and stopped in complete surprise. A young, dark-haired, and very attractive girl was standing there. The car that had dropped her off was just moving away. Alex was so stunned that it took him a minute to recognize her. Even then, he didn’t believe who it was. “Sabina!” he exclaimed.” “That had been only a few months ago, but she looked completely different. She must be almost sixteen now. Her hair had grown longer, and her shape had changed. She looked wonderful in tight-fitting DKNY jeans and a soft cashmere jersey.” Awww he is so awkward but I love it!!! Haha “He stepped to one side to let her pass. She smiled a little nervously and stepped inside. But the doorway was narrow, and as she came in, he felt her briefly against him. Her hair brushed his cheek, and he smelled the perfume she was wearing. At that moment, he realized how glad he was to see her. It was as if everything was beginning all over again.” Aw!!! She better be in the next book!
SPOILERS and book notes:
Look what happens to your body when you return from space: “now his muscles were turning against him, reluctant to start pulling their own weight.” And he threw up. And they have him sleep on a special memory foam mattress that nasa developed to help give his muscles a chance to get used to being back in full gravity. He was picked up by USA USS kitty hawk boat off the coast of Australia. Scorpia is back! Aw! The head leader (even if they are all equal) is Zeljan Kurst and he would play classical music as he interrogated and tortured his victims. He is famous for his love of classical music. A G8 Summit is taking place on an island off the coast of Australia. (8 of the most influential or richest people in the world) they are planning to minimize poverty, cancel world debt, help with aids in Africa. And obviously some powerful evil rich people don’t want this so they are paying Scorpia to eliminate these 8 people. BUT they have to kill them with it looking like complete natural. ALL 8 natural causes. But how?? Eliminate the whole island somehow. The head of the secret intelligent in Australia (ASIS) named Ethan Brooke is blind! That is interesting… Marc Damon is his right hand man. He was out with the aussies special service when they left him alone in the jungle and he entered a mine field and stepped on a Pressure sensitive blast mine. Good thing he kept his foot down! Now someone needs to help him! He of course escapes the trap on his own! The ASIS is recruiting him to stop Snakehead. A criminal organization that specializes in people smuggling. (Helps illegal immigrants). “We have an agent in Bangkok now. We’ve set him up as a refugee from Afghanistan planning to be smuggled into Australia. He’ll meet with the snakehead and gather names, faces, phone numbers, addresses…anything he can. But he won’t be on his own. He’ll be traveling with his son.” “We’ll fly you to Bangkok,” Damon continued, speaking directly to Alex. “You’ll join our agent there, and the two of you will be passed down the pipeline back here. And here’s the deal. As soon as you’re back on Australian soil, we’ll send you first class direct to England. You won’t have to do anything, Alex. But you’ll provide perfect cover for our man. He’ll get the information we need, and maybe we’ll be able to break up Yu’s network once and for all.” And Ash will be his partner! He is Alex dad’s best friend and Alex godfather! He was the last person to see his parents alive (at the airport) and his dad saved his life one time!! Ash works for MI6 too. And Jack knows him bc he used to come around when Alex was really little to visit him. But she hasn’t seen him since. Ash and Jack!! Aww!! “I even went out with him a couple of times although he was quite a lot older than me. He was very good-looking. And there was something dangerous about him. He told me he was a deep-sea diver. He was fun to have around.” Ash ended up being the guy who helped him with the pressure plate mine! It was all a set up. It was a test to see if he would panic under pressure. Or how he would handle the situation. He is a cold hearted man. But this is what he said about Jack: “Then Ash smiled briefly. “How’s that housekeeper of yours?” he asked. “Jack What’s-her-name. Is she still with you?” “Yes. She said hello.” “She was an attractive girl. I liked her. I’m glad she stuck by you.”
And now he is going to turn Alex into poor afghan boy, refugee. It’s crazy the transformation of Alex with his disguise! They hacked and dyed his hair, dyed his skin, put fake teeth in, got dirty torn clothes. Snakehead forces Alex (who they think is a simpleton) into an illegal fighting match in Thailand. It’s a bunch of homeless skinny people they find on the street and force them to find (aka get the crap beat out of them) HORRIBLE. Alex has to face the champion. He knows karate but these people know: “Muay Thai, also known as the science of eight limbs, one of the most aggressive and dangerous martial arts in the world. Alex had learned karate, but he knew that it was a world apart from muay Thai, which permitted strikes by the fists, elbows, knees, and feet with no fewer than twenty-four targets—from the top of the head to the rear calf—on your opponent. And this was a dirty, illegal version. Neither of the fighters had hand wraps, shin pads, or abdomen protectors. The fight would continue until one of them was carried out unconscious…or worse.” But Alex barely lasted the first round get the crap beat out of him. So when they gave water to him for second round he held it in his mouth then spit it in the opponents face and then knocked him out. LESS GOOO but snakehead is mad now bc he has humiliated them by taking out their prize fighter… so they try and kill him but he escapes by jumping and hiding in the river under the building. But giant river rats start climbing all over him! AWW. But Alex escapes on a boat. But next chap we find that Scorpia knows Alex is there!! They just haven’t killed him yet bc they don’t want ASIS to know they have an informant traitor. Alex ran into Fox! Aka Ben Daniel’s (An agent He trained with him in book 1 with wolf) he is the one that helped Alex escape the fighting arena. The daisy cutter bomb used in Vietnam war: ““The Daisy Cutter, also known as BLU-82B or the Blue Boy, is the largest conventional bomb in existence. It’s the size of a car…” ““They used it in Vietnam to clear landing sites for helicopters,” Mrs. Jones went on. “Drop one on the jungle and you’d have no jungle for half a mile around. They called it the Daisy Cutter because that was the pattern the explosion made. It was used in Afghanistan to scare the Taliban…to show them what they were up against.” The snake head stole a second generation daisy cutter (called royal blue) from Britain and they tracked them here.“It was all beginning to make sense. MI6 Special Operations were chasing a missing bomb that had led them to the snakehead. Alex was investigating the snakehead and that had led him to MI6. It was as if they had met in the middle.” Daniel’s was going to go undercover in snake head to find royal blue. but now they found Alex, maybe just use him to help them find the bomb. Smithers is back with gadgets! A fan that turns into a weapon! Called “fan club” lol. Incense (bc people in Middle East burn a lot) that cause people to throw up. Local coins that are mini explosives, a broken watch that sends a destress signal. A belt with a knife hidden in the buckle and: “And if you slice open the belt, you’ll find matches, medicine, water-purifying tablets, and knockout pills that are guaranteed to work on eleven different varieties of snake.” And this made me lol: ““Oh—do be careful with that!” Smithers exclaimed. “That’s my Buddha hand grenade. Twist the head twice and throw it and anyone within ten yards can say their prayers.” Ash is finally telling Alex all about his parents! How they met and fell in love. And got married… she was a nurse at the hospital and took care of the dad. They had previously met at Oxford when she was studying medicine. She was expecting Alex the same time his dad got involved with undercover Scorpia. Ash never got married and he is glad for it and here is why: ““You can’t afford to get scared in our business. Fear’s the one thing that will kill you faster than anything, and although it’s true to say that all agents are fearless, generally what that means is that they’re not afraid for themselves. All that changes when you get married, and it’s even worse when you have kids. Alan Blunt didn’t want your dad to marry. He knew that in the end, he’d be losing his best man.” Yassan gregorivitch (from the very beginning, the one that killed Ian rider) was who stabbed ash in the stomach and almost killed him. He suffers from it till this day. Awwww: “and if it makes you feel any better, I never saw him happier than when he was holding you. He and your mother. It was like you made them real people again. You took them out of the shadows.” Now they are in Indonesia about to to be smuggled to Australia. The smugglers use a legit toy company as their cover of smuggling drugs, people, etc. bc they have airplanes and boats to transport the “toys” to different countries. Then the toy compony compound was infiltrated by: The Kopassus is an Indonesian Army special forces group. ““Indonesian SAS.” He was right. Kopassus is an abbreviation of Komando Pasukan Khusus, and it’s the name of one of the most ruthless fighting forces in the world. It is well known—indeed, it is expected—that at least one recruit will die during basic training.” So now Alex/ash operation is blown. The kopassus is against snakehead too so really they are on the same side but the soldiers don’t know that! To smuggle the immigrants from Indonesia to Australia they are hiding them in giant shipping containers. That are locked from the outside. It takes three or four DAYS. Alex is in one with twenty other immigrants! So inhuman and horrible. A chemical toilet and few rations. But of course Alex escapes but he and ash were in separate containers so he is on his own. Ooo Alex found the bomb! And while the villains were gone he made it so his fingerprints could override the system! Also he is discovered missing and now has to run and hid from soldiers on a ship! How can he?? Such cramped quarters. It’s like hide and seek. He hid under YU (head of snake heads) bed!! Bahahah so the crew never found him bc they don’t dare look there. Alex broke the reefers were refrigerated containers. He smashed the pipes that provided the cooling. This was his discretion. It might even burn the ship down. Alex escaped the ship by clinging onto one of the giant crates being lifted off the boat onto the dock. Snakehead is going to use the bomb to to blow up a fault line in the sea and create a tsunami that will hit the island and wipe it out! This Yu guy is a SICKO. He has a secret organ doner place in the middle of the Australia jungle!! He is harvesting all Alex organs one at a time and he will live through them all until they eventually get them all and he dies!!! The first customer is an American needing a pair of eyes. So they are operating on his eyeballs the next morning!! AWWWW the customer: “It was his selfishness, his complete lack of heart. Tomorrow Alex would be blind. This man would take his sight without thinking about it simply because it was what he wanted and he had the money to pay for it.” He escaped so epically. he made a kayak by blowing off a part of a sea plane that makes it float. And as he sailed away he had BLOWN UP THE HOSPITAL IN A RAIN STORM. How freaking epic is that!?!? Except a sniper in a helicopter found him and shot at him while he was going through deadly rapids in his makeshift kayaks!! How will he survive? He flipped his kayaks and hid underneath so they thought they got him. So they left but now he is going over a HUGE water fall. “Sharp rocks at the bottom?” “Yep” “bring it on” noooo Ben Daniel’s got gunned down by Yu when they tried to stop him from setting off the mob on the oil rig. But he survived. But guess who Ben dsmiels shot?? ASH. Bc HE WAS A TRAITOR AND WORKING FOR SCORPIA THE WHOLE TIME. He was working under cover for them. Feeding them info. He sabotaged Alex gadgets!! And HE was the one that put the bomb in the airplane that killed Alex parents!!! But he said he didn’t want to…. But HE STILL DID IT. And then he DIED. He said he switched sides bc mI6 treated him like crap. The team stopped the bomb! Once the spy world has you, it HAS YOU: ““That’s not what’s upsetting me, Alex,” she had replied. “Then what?” “It’s this world. MI6. What it did to him, to your parents. I suppose I’m scared about what it’ll do to you.” “I think I’ve finished with it, Jack.” “That’s what you said last time, Alex. But the question is—has it finished with you?” This next scene made me smile so big!!! A special guest surprise at his front door! SABINA!! “Alex threw open the door and stopped in complete surprise. A young, dark-haired, and very attractive girl was standing there. The car that had dropped her off was just moving away. Alex was so stunned that it took him a minute to recognize her. Even then, he didn’t believe who it was. “Sabina!” he exclaimed.” “That had been only a few months ago, but she looked completely different. She must be almost sixteen now. Her hair had grown longer, and her shape had changed. She looked wonderful in tight-fitting DKNY jeans and a soft cashmere jersey.” Awww he is so awkward but I love it!!! Haha “He stepped to one side to let her pass. She smiled a little nervously and stepped inside. But the doorway was narrow, and as she came in, he felt her briefly against him. Her hair brushed his cheek, and he smelled the perfume she was wearing. At that moment, he realized how glad he was to see her. It was as if everything was beginning all over again.” Aw!!! She better be in the next book!
May 3, 2024
Spannend, auch wenn die Teile nach und nach an Realismus verlieren. Aber was ist auch anderes zu erwarten bei einem 14 jährigen Geheimagenten
July 16, 2025
Not going to lie, I may have accidentally slept through a few chapters.
October 18, 2024
Possibly one of the more enjoyable Alex Rider books for me, mostly because of the lack of fantastical plot e.g. killing all UK schoolchildren, sending Alex into space etc. for possibly the first time the villains seemed much more threatening, the risk more genuine, and the whole organ harvesting hospital part creeped me out (but in a way that was enjoyable). As I’ve heard good things about Russian Roulette, I’m interested to find out whether the following book takes on a more mature teenage audience.
February 15, 2025
Amazing as always. When I start reading one of these books, I always think that I can't top the last one but then.....
November 11, 2014
In 7th grade, my friends were reading series of Alex Rider, so I felt that it was going to be an interesting series. This is the 7th book of the series and it is called Snakehead .
Character
The main character is Alex. He is an agent for MI6 and had missions throughout the series. In this mission he has to find more about the gang, Snakehead and defuse a bomb. This mission shows that he is compassionate and brave. In the text MI6 tells Alex about the bomb the text says,"Once again, Alex fell silent. But he had made up his mind. 'I'll have to tell Ash,' he said." (pg. 161). Alex cared about Ash, an agent he worked with. Alex didn't care about the dangers. His first thought was to warn Ash about Snakehead and their bomb that could have killed many people. This text shows that he is selfless and compassionate. In addition, Alex still wanted to defuse the bomb, even if he would have been in danger, it says, "And Alex knew he was right. He had already told them what he had done on board the Liberian Star : the bomb and the scanning equipment. 'I scanned my fingerprints into Royal Blue,' he said. 'I'm the only one who can deactivate it.' (pg. 345). Alex is brave enough to go back to dangers so that he can deactivate the bomb and save others' lives. In this series, Alex is compassionate and brave. Alex cares about others and accepts missions so that he can save others.
Character
The main character is Alex. He is an agent for MI6 and had missions throughout the series. In this mission he has to find more about the gang, Snakehead and defuse a bomb. This mission shows that he is compassionate and brave. In the text MI6 tells Alex about the bomb the text says,"Once again, Alex fell silent. But he had made up his mind. 'I'll have to tell Ash,' he said." (pg. 161). Alex cared about Ash, an agent he worked with. Alex didn't care about the dangers. His first thought was to warn Ash about Snakehead and their bomb that could have killed many people. This text shows that he is selfless and compassionate. In addition, Alex still wanted to defuse the bomb, even if he would have been in danger, it says, "And Alex knew he was right. He had already told them what he had done on board the Liberian Star : the bomb and the scanning equipment. 'I scanned my fingerprints into Royal Blue,' he said. 'I'm the only one who can deactivate it.' (pg. 345). Alex is brave enough to go back to dangers so that he can deactivate the bomb and save others' lives. In this series, Alex is compassionate and brave. Alex cares about others and accepts missions so that he can save others.
March 13, 2009
My thoughts about the Alex Rider series changed with every book I read. The first book, Stormbreaker, gave me shivers and totaly amazed me. The second book, Point Blanc, was interesting and I felt weird while I read it, although the end was very good. The third book, Skeleton Key, didn't have much action, but the end was a very cool part. The fourth book, Eagle Strike, was a favorite in the Alex Rider series, and I enjoyed how things played out through the end. The fifth book, Scorpia, was had lots of mystery in it and Alex did some things that were very stupid and I didn't like most of the beginning. But, in the end, it turned out to be a cool book. The sixth book, Arch Angel was alright, not one of the best ones. It was really cheesey and not one of the better ones.
Now, we come to what I think is the last Alex Rider book. Snakehead was really, really cool. It had lots of mystery and lots of parts that had importance in the end. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and was in suspence to the end. It was a great page turner that amazed me with its incredibleness. I am sad that the series is over and that I don't get to read on. Thank you Anthony Horowitz!
Now, we come to what I think is the last Alex Rider book. Snakehead was really, really cool. It had lots of mystery and lots of parts that had importance in the end. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and was in suspence to the end. It was a great page turner that amazed me with its incredibleness. I am sad that the series is over and that I don't get to read on. Thank you Anthony Horowitz!
August 18, 2015
Alex Rider has found himself in Australia working with the ASIS. They recruit him to help stop a illegal immigrant plot ran by a organization named the Snakeheads. They send Alex out into the field with his Godfather Ash as a father and son duo who are looking to come illegally into Australia through the Snakehead organization. During this Alex meets up with some old friend from MI6 who tell him that not only are the Snakeheads trying to bring people illegally into Australia but they also stole one of Britain's newest version of the Daisy Cutter bomb. They stole this bomb because they wanted to shift a tectonic plate and create a tsunami that will wipe out a whole island and damage the western part of Australia. Towards the end you find out that the Snakeheads knew about Alex's cover because his Godfather Ash actually worked for the Snakeheads instead of ASIS, and that Ash was only at the ASIS to get inside information from the government. The story is a action backed book that I really loved and I think that I am going to have to get the other books in the series.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 27, 2017
This one took a little while to get going with the 'straightforward' and 'minimal risk' part of the
mission taking up the majority of the book. I'd predicted the twist very early on.
It seems that Alex's luck level equals Tintin's as he is able to survive against impossible odds. Of course, being a James Bond inspired story does allow for this sort of thing, but I did find the waterfall scene perhaps a little bit of a stretch. The hospital scene was particularly dark for this series but did show the increased level of threat that the snakehead represented.
This edition had the bonus chapter 'Coda' telling us how 'it' happened. Although it did flesh out the
sentence that described the scene a little, it didn't really tell us anything already stated or implied in the original sentence, except perhaps add a little ambiguity to certain things.
This edition also featured an afterword by Anthony who revealed the origins and thoughts behind most of the names from the series. This was a nice touch.
mission taking up the majority of the book. I'd predicted the twist very early on.
It seems that Alex's luck level equals Tintin's as he is able to survive against impossible odds. Of course, being a James Bond inspired story does allow for this sort of thing, but I did find the waterfall scene perhaps a little bit of a stretch. The hospital scene was particularly dark for this series but did show the increased level of threat that the snakehead represented.
This edition had the bonus chapter 'Coda' telling us how 'it' happened. Although it did flesh out the
sentence that described the scene a little, it didn't really tell us anything already stated or implied in the original sentence, except perhaps add a little ambiguity to certain things.
This edition also featured an afterword by Anthony who revealed the origins and thoughts behind most of the names from the series. This was a nice touch.
January 6, 2022
This one was another one of the darker books in this series. The more I read of this series, the more I'm convinced this isn't actually a middle grade series.
I was a bit uncomfortable with some of the themes in this one (particularly where Alex dressed up as an Afghan refugee for a mission), but it really showcased the time when this book was published.
There's a particular scene near the end that really grossed me out, but I won't say what because it's a spoiler. This poor kid. These government figures really mess around with him and play these mind games with him and THEY DON'T EVEN PAY HIM.
I also think that this one had some good commentary happening surrounding government and some other issues in relation with the government.
This one was an exciting read and there were some seriously dark bits that made this even harder to put down.
Happy reading!
I was a bit uncomfortable with some of the themes in this one (particularly where Alex dressed up as an Afghan refugee for a mission), but it really showcased the time when this book was published.
There's a particular scene near the end that really grossed me out, but I won't say what because it's a spoiler. This poor kid. These government figures really mess around with him and play these mind games with him and THEY DON'T EVEN PAY HIM.
I also think that this one had some good commentary happening surrounding government and some other issues in relation with the government.
This one was an exciting read and there were some seriously dark bits that made this even harder to put down.
Happy reading!
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