Silver Fin By: Charlie Higson

As you read from my previous blog post on our SSR books, there is an obvious preference that I have for action and adventure genre novels. I decided to shift from the adrenaline pumping Alex Rider series, to the Young Bond novels. I finished reading Silver Fin which was the first book out of the 5 of this series. The story begins when young James Bond arrives to his new boarding school in England, Eton and it is one of the best in the nation. At Eton, Bond makes new friends, one of them being his roommate Pritpal. Later on, he encounters another individual who is 2 years older named George Hellebore. Bond is new to the school and has not had a positive beginning, since George has already begun to bully young James. Bond finds out that George’s father is Lord Randolph Hellebore, an arms dealer who supplied nations with weapons after World War I. This results in James’ father knowing about Lord Hellebore because James’ father had a similar job. Later on, the story setting switches to Scotland where James meets up with his aunt, and on his way he assists a boy nicknamed Red, to find his cousin who has gone missing. Red and James learn that Lord Hellebore owns large areas of land next to Loch Silver Fin (which was filled with eels), and the boys decide to creep into his territory. Unfortunately, Bond is caught and captured. Bond is taken to Hellebore, and the Lord begins to explain certain events that had been unclear for James. Lord Randolph had been experimenting with humans in order to create stronger and better soldiers. In the attempt of creating the correct product, the substances were used on people, to see how it reacted. Red’s cousin was one of the humans they used the test on, and he died from the chemical response of the ingredient. Eventually, Bond is drugged with the Silver Fin serum and placed in a cell. James manages to escape the cell which then leads him to an underwater passage to Loch Silver Fin. Surprisingly, George the son of Randolph comes back into the story but on Bonds’ side and both work together to destroy Lord Randolph’s work. Lord Randolph becomes extremely upset and is going to kill both his son and Bond. However, Algar (Randolph’s brother) stops him and both fall into the loch and then are killed by the eels. If you are the type of reader that enjoys action packed moments, I truly recommend this book because the “never ending action” made me feel like reading the book in one sitting. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the books of this series.