I'm not going to lie, I didn't realise this was a prequel until I actually started reading it. Usually I intensively study a blurb before I read the actual book, but in this case I didn't bother since either way I was going to read it - it's Alex Rider so, obviously. So yeah, I was pretty surprised when it was suddenly in first person from the perspective of Yassen Gregorovich at age 14 - before Alex was even born.

Why should we adults be given rubbish written by Dan Brown, Jeffrey Archer etc. when children are given pearls like this? Horowitz's writing style is perfect for teenagers (and even for elderly readers like me). He is never patronising. He resists the temptation to which so many other writers for children (and even adults) give in to lecture and educate. He just tells a story beautifully and grippingly. I believe that Yassen was only doing a lot of his things to try and save people that he really cared about even though the way he did them wasn't really the right way i can see why and how he did things.

What makes us choose evil? Why did one boy choose to kill while another chose to risk his life to save others? In some ways, Alex Rider and Yassen Gregorovich are mirror images of each other. Yet the paths they traveled turned them into mortal enemies. I also really wish (and this is a spoiler for EAGLE STRIKE so if you haven't read that, then um... lol why did you read this one?) The Alex Rider novels have always fascinated me with their pulpy thriller writing. It's much like reading Matthew Reilly (without the expletives and really high-stakes escapes) and I definitely believe there is a place for this type of fiction in the market. Some may look at it and go: 'does it teach anything? Does it uplift at all?' Interestingly, this is a book that certainly for all the thrill and racing plot, does have a moral lesson. It is a book about good and evil being existent in the choices made by individuals. I enjoy Yassen's character greatly because of the human qualities we can see in him despite the brutality of his profession and the events he's suffered through in his life. He's a strong character because of the things he's dealt with, and he's a fascinating person to read about and consider. Much of this story is told in the format of a diary, and that made the reader-character relationship much more personable and gave a real sense of life and intimacy to the character and his story. I love the Alex Rider books, I think that they are a great series which is very exhilarating and enjoyable to read through and I love the characters and plots of each book. This book feels like a follow on rather than a prequel because it does recount things which happen within the Rider books, but it also feels like an older and more mature storyline than that of Alex.

And what if that 14 year-old boy was Alex Rider, one of the best-loved heroes of children's literature?The final book in the #1 bestselling Alex Rider series with over 6 million copies sold in the U.S. alone! And what if that 14 year-old boy was Alex Rider, one of the best-loved heroes of children’s literature? Conclusion: While everything that happens to Yassen leads to his becoming an assassin, it really isn't until the very end that we see what major event truly made him turn. And it is perhaps the most depressing moment in the whole book. It's also the most satisfying; the entire time, I really wanted Yassen to be able to get his revenge against Sharkovsky. We're not disappointed. I was thrilled with Russian Roulette. My favorite character finally got his own book! And it was amazing! It made me love his character more than ever, and it explained a lot about him and about John Rider. I wasn't expecting it to be so emotional, but it was, and it really couldn't have been any other way. 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. This is technically book 10 in the Alex Rider series, although it follows the story of Yassen Gregorovich - an assassin who works for Scorpia.

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. In fact, Malta is completely ignored in this book. I've made allowances in the past with the other books when a few small details don't match up between them, but this one I can't. Mdina is such an integral part of canon. Yassen and John are supposed to be partners, all the way until their assignment in Malta 'goes bad'. It's the motive behind Ash's actions in Snakehead, the motive in Eagle Strike for Yassen telling Alex about Scorpia in the first place. It makes the chapter 'Power Plus' in this book simply hard to accept. So, what do you do with this new perspective on Alex Rider’s nemesis? Go and re-read the series from the beginning, obviously. The interesting thing is that although we know what Yassen will become, we continue to root for him as he fights the intense external and internal pressures to kill. And the great irony is that the person who tries hardest to save Yassen from this cold heartless fate, is the one whose actions finally push Yassen to kill. All in all, the book was very good, giving us a very different picture of the seemingly bloodthirsty killer from "Strormbreaker" and "Eagle Strike". Yassen feels as though he was never given a chance to be anything but an assassin, and, in sympathetic understanding, tries to give Alex the shot for freedom he never had in a cool rewriting of the last scene in "Strombreaker," when Yassen kills Sayle.And the title. Russian Roulette. It's perfect. It makes me think as much as the complex moral and philosophical questions this book raised.