Spy High Mission One (Spy High (Little Brown and Company)) [Paperback]

A. J. Butcher (Author)

Book Description

Series: Spy High (Little Brown and Company) | Publication Date: May 5, 2004

As students at a special high school that trains them to be secret agents, six teenagers struggle to complete the training exercises as a team before being sent out into the field to sink or swim.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up–The six members of Bond team are on a mission that may mean life or death for them or for thousands of innocent people. They are students at Spy High, an elite school that not only teaches them academics, but also instructs them on hand-to-hand combat, infiltrating evil-doer computer systems, and proper use of their shock suits. The book is set in the future, whengenetic mutation gas is the weapon of choice for the bad guys. The teenagers find it difficult to function as a unit; there is a struggle about who should lead and they are all filled with self-doubt. Only a tragedy of monumental proportions can force them to work together and realize their own strengths. While striving to create a James Bond story for teenagers, this book ends up being more of a cliché about the spy business than an intriguing adventure. The main characters are never fully developed and stereotypes abound. Readers may appreciate the nonstop action, but descriptions such as "The stench of the creature was in her nostrils, making her gag. Saliva drooled from its jagged mouth as razored teeth snapped at her throat" get old after awhile. Fans of adventure series may initially be attracted to this new offering, but they will tire quickly of the repetition.–Lynn Evarts, Sauk Prairie High School, Prairie du Sac, WI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Gr. 7-10. In the first pages of this breezy thriller set in the year 2060, readers meet the Bond Team, a group of first-year students at Deveraux Academy (aka "Spy High") whom recruiters expect to make the most indomitable secret agents ever assembled. Representing a PC range of ethnicities, synergistic strengths, and stock teen-fiction personalities (brooding bad boy, preppy jock, wisecracking clown, street-smart African American, and so on), the aspiring spies are trained in martial arts and futuristic gadgetry while dealing with typical high-school social issues. The latter are so disruptive to the team's cohesion that it takes a suspenseful trial by fire--a mission involving a real megalomaniac, not the virtual-reality facsimile that is part of their high-tech curriculum--to demonstrate their true potential. It's a formulaic but fun start to a series that will keep YAs well entertained, especially reluctant readers weaned on the fast pace and rampant one-liners of movies like Austin Powers and Charlie's Angels. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; 1 edition (May 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316737607
• ISBN-13: 978-0316737609
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 7.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #280,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Really awsome book, September 2, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Spy High Mission One (Spy High (Little Brown and Company)) (Paperback)

Spy High:Mission One is a really great spy book. In the book, 6 teenagers end up in a school that teaches them to be spys. Because this group of kids aren't doing to well together, the school sends them on a camping trip. They hope the kids will get to know each other more. Instead, the kids get involved with a mad scienctist who works with group of terrorists. This book has alot of action and suspence in it, and I'm glad the AJ Butcher had some imagination when he thought of spys. I recomend it to everyone who likes action, spys, and the like, although maybe not to younger kids because the ending might be to scary.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Gene gas? Applauding mummies? Eddie getting a girlfriend? Anything's possible in Spy High!, July 21, 2006

By 

Calamari "Carbon-based life form" (Somewhere in the universe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spy High Mission One (Spy High (Little Brown and Company)) (Paperback)

I picked up Spy High from the library because it looked like fun. It wasn't. It's 196 pages of bad banter, ludicrous villains, cardboard cut out characters, and a plot with holes big enough to ride a SkyBike through.

From the outside, Deveraux Academy looks like a normal boarding school. However, it's not. It's actually a cover for a school to train future secret agents. Deveraux's students call it Spy High.

Usually, Spy High students are flawless, but one of this year's teams, Bond Team, is falling short. The constant bickering between the elected leader, Ben, and Jake, a fellow team member, threatens to tear the team apart. When they fail an important test, their teacher decides they need a to take a camping trip so they can bond as one big happy family. Unfortunately, when giant mutant creatures attack the campers, all of Bond Team have to fight for their survival. This time, if they fail, they'll die.

Spy High is such a mess that it's hard to know where to begin. First, there's the characters. There are six teens on Bond Team, three girls and three boys, and they are all completely one-dimensional, unsympathetic, and unbelievably irritating. Their personalities are inconsistent from scene to scene, which makes them all names without any distinct personality traits.

Of course, since there are an equal number of boys and girls, everyone needs to be pairing up every minute. Ben and Lori. Cally and Jake. Never mind, Jake didn't really like Cally, so make that Jake and Jennifer. Now Cally's feelings are hurt. Pair-up Cally and Eddie. In my opinion, no one in their right mind would ever want to date Eddie, since he is useless, flirtatious to the point of gagging, and keeps up and endless stream of banter and bad jokes.

In fact, the entire book seems to be an endless stream of banter. For example, on page 118:

"I agree with Ben," said Jake... "And if you want my opinion, we carry on regardless. Those guys were jerks, and even if King Kong or the Frankenstein Monster or something else has taken up residence in the near vicinity, we're all secret agents in training, aren't we? We're Bond Team. We can handle them."

Or on page 7:

" 'Fraid you'll just have to put up with me," said Cally. "And as for motivation, if you don't get moving now I'm gong to be motivating you by squeezing somewhere that hurts."

Or on page 19:

"You're just a cliche, Stromfeld," groaned Ben... "You're just an entry in a textbook. A porker in a uniform."

Or on page 159:

"Names are unimportant," the anonymous face said. "Names are part of the ordered, rational society that we reject and despise. It is enough that we are agents of CHAOS and chaos we will bring to all the world."

It may not seem that annoying, but imagine 196 pages of endless banter. After a while, you just start wishing everyone would shut up and get on with the story.

The villains are equally annoying.

Let's imagine for a moment that you're a villain who wants to take over the world. You discover a group of kids trying to sabotage your nefarious plans. Do you:

a. Shoot them immediately.

or

b. Explain your evil plan for world domination to them in extreme detail, then think of the most convoluted way to execute them possible so they have a chance to escape and stop you and/or leave them in an unguarded room for them to escape from.

If you picked b., congratulations! You should be the next villain in the Spy High series! Unfortunately, if you're female, you probably won't be picked, because all of the villains are male. The author seems to think that girls can't be evil too.

There's also the problem of the villain's plan for world domination. The villain, who amazingly enough turns out to be descended from Dr. Frankenstein (isn't it funny how all evil crazy people turn out to be related?), has developed "gene gas" which can mutate people's DNA if they inhale it. I'm sorry, Mr. evil villain, that would not work in real life.

Another problem is the descriptions. They are overly long and overly dramatic. For example on page 118:

Cally felt that the night surrounding her was like a yawning black mouth that could close upon them and devour them at any time.

First of all, there's a grammatical inconsistency (the night surrounding HER... could close upon THEM and devour THEM), but there's also the fact that it's a waste of words. You could shorten it to:

Cally was scared of the dark.

Wow! I just cut eighteen words, and the description makes more sense!

There are more of these descriptions. On page 120:

Jennifer's voice crackled like the logs on the fire...flames writhed in her green eyes, caressed her skin as if they recognized one of their own.

Just wondering, how can someone's voice crackle like logs on a fire? And how can the flames be in her eyes and caressing her skin? Wouldn't she get burned? Is this supposed to be symbolic? Who knows?

Also on page 123:

Cally heard its leathery wings flapping, the sound like mummies applauding.

Well, first there's the fact that this sentence is also grammatically incorrect, but then there's also the applauding mummies. Let's suspend disbelief for a moment and say that, yes, mummies can applaud. I would love to know where the author was able to find applauding mummies that he could listen to. Also, did he compare the sound of applauding mummies to the sound of mutant bat wings flapping, or did he just suppose that they sound the same?

There's also the gigantic plot holes. For example, on page 109, Eddie says, "Camping?...As in tents and rucksacks? Didn't that go out with the ozone layer?"

If the ozone layer has disappeared, then there should be massive amounts of UV radiation. As anyone who has ever learned anything about UV radiation knows, it is not a good thing to be exposed to. However, the kids spend a lot of the book outside, and have no protection against UV radiation, even though, as Eddie said, the ozone layer is gone. You've gotten stuck in a plot hole!

The ending is also so unbelievable and ludicrous that I could spend several more paragraphs debunking it, but I won't just in case someone who reads this review wants to go out and read the book. I'd rather not spoil the ending for them. Suffice to say, it could never happen in real life, and it conflicts with "scientific evidence" from earlier chapters.

Needless to say, don't read Spy High, don't buy it, stay far away from it. Life is too short to waste reading wretched books.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This story is full of secrets, April 8, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Spy High Mission One (Spy High (Little Brown and Company)) (Paperback)

Have you ever had a chance to change your life completely? If you read Spy High Mission One , by A.J. Butcher you'll find out that six kids by the names of Ben Stanton, Jake Daly, Eddie Nelligan, Lori Angel, Jennifer Chen, and Cally Cross get that chance. Senior tutor, Elmore Grant, selects these six kids to attend Devoraux Academy (Spy High) and become spies. In order to pass the Stromfeld program in their 1st year the Bond team must learn the importance of teamwork and trust. If they fail they won't just fail, but they will also meet their fate. Their adventures continue in Spy High Mission Two. If you like mystery, action, and romance all in one book then this is the book for you!
Sometimes it is confusing because dialogue from characters that aren't even present at the time is intermixed with dialogue from the characters that are present. On the other hand Butcher uses good vocabulary so it is easy to visualize what is happening. I hope you get the chance to change your life completely.