Stormbreaker

Stormbreaker, published in 2000, is the first novel in the Alex Rider series by British author Anthony Horowitz. It is a YA action-adventure novel that follows 14-year-old Alex Rider as he is recruited as a spy by MI6. The novel explores The Moral Complexities of Espionage, Perseverance in the Face of Difficulty, and The Interplay of Technology and Espionage. The book was adapted into the 2006 film Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker, although the movie made several changes to the novel and was poorly received by critics and audiences. The Alex Rider series was later adapted into a television program on Amazon Prime Video.

This study guide refers to the 2006 paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss gun violence and briefly mention suicide and childhood bullying. This guide also contains spoilers for sequels in the series.

Plot Summary

Fourteen-year-old Alex Rider learns that his uncle Ian, with whom he lives, was killed in a car accident. Ian was supposedly not wearing his seatbelt, which contradicts his careful personality. A man named Crawley from the bank where Ian worked, the Royal & General, assures Alex that he will take care of his uncle’s affairs. At Ian’s funeral, Alex meets the chairman of the bank, Alan Blunt. When Alex points out the contradiction regarding the seatbelt, Blunt and Crawley disregard it. However, Blunt’s driver accidentally reveals that he is carrying a gun, making Alex suspicious.

When Alex returns home, he sees a van leaving the house and finds that Ian’s office was emptied. The van has a company name on it, and Alex traces it to a junkyard. There, he finds Ian’s car with bullet holes in it and realizes Ian was murdered. Blunt’s driver appears, but when he approaches, Alex knocks him unconscious with a karate kick.

The next day, Alex goes to see Crawley to discuss Ian’s affairs. His office is next to Ian’s former office. When Crawley briefly leaves, Alex tries to enter Ian’s office, but it is locked. Alex jumps from a window ledge to a flagpole and then to Ian’s window. He enters and finds espionage documents, including a file named “Stormbreaker.” Crawley and the driver find Alex and drug him with a dart.

When he wakes up, Blunt and a woman named Mrs. Jones inform him that they run Special Operations for MI6 (the UK’s foreign intelligence service) and that Ian was a spy. Ian was investigating an Egyptian multimillionaire named Herod Sayle when he was killed. Sayle plans to donate computers called Stormbreakers to English schools, but MI6 does not trust his motives. Ian discovered something sinister but was killed before he could reveal it. Blunt and Mrs. Jones want Alex to go undercover to investigate Sayle. He will pose as Felix Lester, a schoolboy scheduled to test the prototype of the Stormbreaker computer. He will live at Sayle’s house in Port Tallon, Cornwall, where Ian had worked undercover as a security guard. Alex reluctantly agrees.

Alex undergoes a grueling training program with adult trainees. A technician named Smithers gives him gadgets to help him on his mission including a cream that can melt metal and a Game Boy that can detect surveillance bugs and communicate with MI6. Mrs. Jones tells Alex that Ian was probably killed by an assassin named Yassen Gregorovich and that if he appears in Port Tallon, they will terminate Alex’s mission.

Alex arrives at Sayle’s house. Sayle appears charming and relatively friendly. Alex uses the Game Boy to check for bugging devices, finding one in his room behind a painting. The next day, he notices a paper tucked in his bed canopy with a diagram and number in Ian’s handwriting. A woman named Nadia Vole takes Alex to Sayle Enterprises to use the Stormbreaker. Later, on the shoreline, Alex sees a submarine emerge. Yassen exits and then helps some guards and Mrs. Vole unload boxes from the submarine onto a truck. When a guard drops a box, Yassen shoots him.

The next day, Mrs. Vole sends Alex out for relaxation. He takes a path into the Cornish countryside, where two people on quads attack him. Alex fends off the attack and then rides back into the village and goes to the library. He learns that Ian was researching deadly viruses and Cornwall’s history. Alex discovers that the number on the paper from his bed canopy is the call number of a book on local history, and the diagram is a map of Block D at Sayle Enterprises. He breaks into the facility and learns that Sayle Enterprises is putting viruses in the Stormbreakers that could infect British schoolchildren. He escapes, but when he returns to Sayle’s house, he is knocked unconscious by Sayle’s servant, Mr. Grin.

Alex wakes up and is taken to Sayle’s office. Alex says that he knows Sayle’s plan. Sayle reveals that he was bullied as a child by the current prime minister and that he plans to kill England’s schoolchildren with a modified smallpox virus to punish him. Sayle leaves after instructing Mr. Grin to kill Alex. Mrs. Vole frees him but then betrays him and drops him into a jellyfish tank. He uses his metal-melting cream to destroy the tank and escapes. He then sees a plane taking off and boards it. Mr. Grin is piloting, and Alex forces him to fly to London at gunpoint. In London, Alex rushes to the Science Museum, where Sayle is unveiling the Stormbreaker. Alex shoots him, but in the confusion, Sayle escapes.

The following day, Blunt and Mrs. Jones congratulate Alex. They convey a thank you from the prime minister and tell him that the Stormbreakers have been recalled. They also inform him that they intend to find Sayle and Yassen. Blunt and Mrs. Jones tell him that he is valuable to MI6 and may be called on again. Alex leaves in a cab. However, the cab driver is Sayle, who kidnaps Alex. He prepares to kill Alex, but then Yassen appears and kills Sayle, telling Alex that he was instructed to do so by his handlers when the Stormbreaker failed. Alex tells Yassen that he knows he killed Ian and that he will kill him someday. Yassen tells Alex to return to his normal life because he is too young to be a killer. Alex watches him leave.