So who cares? Well, I don’t hate them enough to make this a Pit flame or anything. And I’ve somewhat masochistically read most or all of them just because I do have a nostalgic thing for YA fiction and gadgety adventure stories.
It’s not the suspension of disbelief that’s necessary to buy an adolescent being enlisted as a spy, sent into space on a suicide mission, etc. that bothers me. I’ve suspended plenty of disbelief for HP (though I have other gripes about Rowling, I’ve got no problem with the magic nor with the wish-fulfillment aspect of having a teenager save the world). I was likewise okay with the Hardy Boys being consulted by police authorities.
I guess two things bug me most about AR:
The villains are cartoonish (of course I guess this is always true in children’s fiction), despite Horowitz’s attemtpt to make them seem nuanced. They go to preposterously-elaborate lengths to destroy Alex.
And the other aspect that irritiates me (and this is also where Horowitz is aiming to be more “wordly” than typical kids’ fiction) is the glib cynicism with which Alex reacts, from the very first book, to his being employed by MI6. Is this Horowitz’s attempt at postmodern cool? I’d think, despite the tendency of teen boys to nihilistic posturing, that in the imponderable event that a top secret intelligence agency ever did entrust a crucial mission to one of them, his reaction would be that it was the coolest thing ever. And while I am no believer in government agencies as incorruptible paragons of justice (kind of the overdone paradigm you would have gotten in the Hardy Boys), I also think Horowitz goes overboard in having MI6’s motives be corrupt, selfish, and downright inimical to Alex in just about every instance. He’s obviously trying to seem hardbitten and edgy, but it’s a bit much.
Agreement? Dissent? I just wish some other, better, YA writer(s) had been the ones to get the vast loot Horowitz has scooped up.