"Life has no remote get up and change it yourself"

Edelweiss Pirates Operation Einstein by Mark A. Cooper

Fifteen year old James Bond, recently expelled from Eton, is on a temporary stop until his aunt gets back into the country. It's been arranged that he stay with a friend of his aunt at a school in England.

He goes with a school group going to Hollywood to survey a brother school started by a film mogul, just recently moving from silent pictures to the new sound format. The film company's zeppelin would be used for the ocean crossing, then across America.

There was trouble already as a film accidentally falls into the young people's hands showing torture and beatings, real stuff, that someone wants back bad enough that several murders have already happened.

It all follows Bond and friends across the waters in an adventure filled with blackmail and violence and a villain bent on control of the film industry in a brainwashing plan to run the world. 

I did like the original Young Bond Author Charlie Hinson, this was ok but lacked something I can;t quite describe.

Great book for teens who are high school and above it is set in the time of WW2 and is fun because Author Mark A. Copper mixes the reality of historic events with the incredible fiction and a bit of creative licensing with respect to the story line. There is enough truth however to be a mind expanding pleasant read for most teens male or female.

The characters are very well developed know their job within the story and all work in harmony to get that story told which with this detailed of a story line is difficult at best. Cooper pulls it off well and with irreverent sometimes wickedly funny runs on his prose.

I really think he has a great talent for dialoge that brings out the pathos of the characters while allowing us a glimpse at some of the nuances that make them more interesting then passive, perfect people.

The interesting part is that it is marked as Volume 1. I hope to read more of the series, the author left us hanging when a character mentions Fritz gets captured by the Nazi's.

It was nice to be aquatinted with Jason Steed again after a few years gap. I started with the first book; Fledgling Jason Steed when I was at middle school. I read up to book 4 and enjoyed all of them. I did not know they wrote another this being book 5.

Immediately I remember why I used to love the series, Jason Steed is a cool little dude, he is mischievous, cunning and adorable.

Unlike the other teen spys, such as Alex Rider, CHERUB and Young Bond, Jason Steed has his own appeal. He is not really the smartest kid, he has a violent temper that he can't control and has a weakness for all girls his age, but he has a large heart. The emotion pours out of the pages.

Face-Off puts Jason is great danger, at one point you feel he was actually killed, the author is quite clever how he set it up.

If it is possible to love a book character, like brotherly love, boyfriend, son Jason steed will bring that out of you. The author constantly reminds us of Jason's sapphire blue eyes, blond hair with long bangs that fail across his face with a wicked grin.

In Face-Off Jason goes undercover and has to learn Ballet, it has some hilarious moments when his fellow teen agents see him wearing his tight fitting ballet pants.

The teen spy novels were once all the rage with Alex Rider, CHERUB, Jason Steed and Young Bond, its nice to see one series is still going strong. Jason is coming up to his 14th birthday so I hope to read more.

This series improves with age.

Jason Steed goes undercover once more and old friend turns up in the wrong place. Jason is in danger and is moved to INFINITY an academy where says are trained. The place where Winston Churchill was trained as a boy.

The novel is fast paced, emotional, and very funny at parts. The series is a true winner.

It was a long time coming but worth the wait, Absolutely Nothing sums up why this is the best of the Teen Spy book series. 

The battle between Alex Rider & Jason Steed will continue, The scales just tipped towards Jason Steed with this novel.

It's typical Jason Steed, he goes on a mission and after he screws it up and upsets MI6 they call it off, so he did it alone to get back in the good books and solved it. However his ability to induce an adrenaline rush into his system to protect himself is causing more problems his temper is getting worse. Something that haunted him in books 1 & 2. 

Jason goes to the United States and attends the worlds top Military schools, he get involved in a few scrapes as we have come to expect with Jason. 

His father is captured along with several others working for the United Nations by the Vietnamese. (It's May 1975, just after the Vietnam war).

With the US and UK unable to send troops back into Vietnam because of public opinion, no one does anything to help the prisioners. With time running out towards a deadline, Jason Steed takes matters into his own hands and goes it alone.

While in Vietnam he uncovers a group of Amerasian (American fathered) children hunted by a Vietcong General. 

As the story unfolds the author displays his most impressive work todate. The descriptions in the Jungle really paint a picture it's like watching a movie. However this is Mark A. Coopers work and he as always brings on the tears when someone dies. It's not as emotional as Fledgling but still packs in action, emotion and humor.

Stuart Gibbs has slowly broken into the teen spy books scene. The first novel in the series was called Spy School, it was childish and un-believable. A guy out of nowhere turns up on the doorstep and takes away the 12 year old to go to a Private boarding school. Within an hour they leave. Yeah. 

Anyway I was not sure if I would even read Spy Camp, until I read reviews that compared it to the Alex Rider and Jason Steed series. 

This is much better, more action and plenty of adventure and more for tweens, great characters, good original story I enjoyed it. Stuart is a good writer, it good clean fun and interesting to read.

Revenge had a lot to live up to. Book 1 Fledgling Jason Steed is one of the greatest books written, so I was concerned when Revenge came out.

If anything the only fault I could find was it was too much action. Jason hardly had time to catch a breath, he works undercover and infiltrates the Traids and most of them are rounded up and put behind bars. 

The ring leader, a woman called Boudica escapes, she is a fantastic evil character who has a pet Leopard.

Boudica puts a price on Jason Steed's head and try to kidnap the 12 year old daughter of a Chinese Minister who freezes her assets. Both Jason and the daughter are taken to a safe house in Spain. However the details are given to the Triads by a corrupt MI6 agent.

Jason and the girl go on the run, chased by the Traids, Corrupt police and eventually when a trail of death and destruction follows them, even a corrupt top MI6 officer sends in a team to take Jason out.

Jason sees through it and takes them on, he travels to France and eventually Mount Blanc. A sweet cupid romance grows between the two children, in one very sweet and amusing scene they end up in a bubble bath together, it's very innocent and harmless. They are just 12 and do nothing more that splash soap suds. The author brings them together beautifully.

Jason Steed has to fight for his life and in one of the greatest fight scenes I have read pulls himself back from near death. 

A tear jerking ending when Jason says goodbye to Joanne (The girl he saved) and gets a letter from her. It took me two attempts to read that page because I am a soft and cry at sad movies and scenes like that. 

A great novel worthy of 5 stars. Good clean fun, action. The Alex Rider and Jason Steed novels are simply the best.

Here we have the story handed on a plate to Charlie Higson, "Please write the Young James Bond Novels"  So you would expect them to at the very least be as good as the Alex Rider / Jason Steed novels. Sadly the answer is no.

With a great name 'JAMES BOND' we would expect a great series, what we got was a boring account of a boy growing up in the 1930's and to help the story along and make us feel pity for the boy "lets make him an Orphan" that worked for Oliver Twist, Alex Rider, Harry Potter, Annie, Tom Sawyer, Superman, Batman, Jane Eyre, Mowgli from the Jungle book, Snow White, Huckleberry Finn and even Wolverine are all Orphans. 

Anyway, got that off my chest, the story was very slow, James goes to a rich public school and starts a group of spies. The story fell flat, the kids get spanked and bullied typical Tom Brown school days stuff. 

Overal I read it and the series, they seem to be just ok to read. But if you like teen spy books you have to read them, just don't expect to be drawn into it like you are in an Alex Rider or Jason Steed novel.

Every now and then a novel is written that is just perfect and here it is.

Fledgling is book 1 on the Jason Steed series, well named it starts off with Jason being born. 

Jason's mother dies giving birth, her devoted husband can't help himself, he blames the hospital for putting the life of a baby before the love of his life. The result is he buries himself in work as a British naval officer stationed in Hong Kong.

Jason is brought up by a succession of nannies, without any affection. He finally finds something to occupy himself when at age 5 he joins the local karate school. At age 10 he has mastered two disciplines at karate and Judo.

After Jason is caught 'playing on a military flight similator' he escapes by using his martial arts skills. Jason is wanted by the military police, so his father (After beating Jason) moves to the UK.

Jason starts a normal life he makes friends with Scott, a very funny character, here Jason joins the Sea Cadets. At age 11 while on a summer camp near Jakarta with the Sea Cadets, a secret mission by the Marines near by goes wrong, many of the cadets get caught up in the cross fire.

Jason is able to speak Chinese and helps a elite SAS team to translate, when the team are caught Jason is left alone on the Island and has no option than to try and complete the mission and rescue the SAS team.

I think that's enough of the plot, the story goes into top gear from here. The book is action packed, has some funny parts and some emotional scenes that will have your eyes watering.

Conclusion.

A Tean Spy adventure novel that is also coming of age, and has a real plot and introduction to a great series. Out of all the Teen spy books I have read this is still my favorite and the most original.

This is the ultimate teen spy book, and lets face it the most well known and with the highest sales no doubt. They even made a movie staring Alex Pettyfier and Mickey Rourke.

The story is a little sad, Alex Rider is an orphan (Yeah that's getting old, Most child characters are orphans, Oliver Twist, Harry Potter, Annie, Young James Bond, all the characters in the CHERUB series, Alex Rider and we could go on)

Anyway Alex lives with his uncle who says he works for a boring bank, but works for MI6 as a spy.

Alex sees his uncle every now and then and goes skiing, scuba diving, sword fencing and martial arts. Little does Alex know he's actually being trained to work as a spy.

Without giving the story away, it build from here, it's a good story, a few parts stolen from Ian Fleming's James Bond Characters, but kids don't know that so all is well.

A great novel that will have you wanting more of Alex, a great start to a fantastic series.