H.I.V.E

Otto Malpense has been a strange child from day one of his life. Left by his real parents on an orphanage’s doorstep, Otto came with a note with his name on it, and unnaturally white-blonde hair. But the stranger characteristics came when he was three. Having nothing to do all day while the other orphans went to school, he taught himself to read. People thought he was just looking at the words, but he understood them too. Also, he would just seem to disappear for hours unnoticed while exploring the orphanage. When he was just five years old, he started taking apart broken things and fixing them. But he didn’t just fix them, he made them better. One time, while fixing the orphanage telephone, he ended up making their phone bill disappear for the next six months. But the real surprise came when Otto was thirteen and tricked the Prime Minister into giving the worst speech in his entire political career just for threatening to close down the orphanage. Needless to say, this got him on H.I.V.E.’s (Higher Institute of Villainous Education) radar. The next thing Otto knew, he was waking up on a helicopter that was flying to H.I.V.E. The only other passenger on board was a boy named Wing Fanchu of whom Otto will later become friends with. Once at H.I.V.E., the only thing the two friends want to do is escape. Will Otto and Wing escape? Who is running the H.I.V.E. program? Why is the program so secretive? Find out in the book.

H.I.V.E. was recommended to me by many people and now I see why. I rated this book 5 out of 5 stars because it had a great storyline, an intensely thickening plot, good imagery, interesting flashbacks, a varying array of characters, and some elements of mystery. This book was very hard to put down because of all the mystery, plot twists and action scenes, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought Mark Walden did a fantastic job outlining various insights including friendship and how important it is, the difference between good and evil, why it is bad to mess around with nature, and that no matter what rank you are in the social classes, fear can still control you. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a good adventure, science fiction, plot twists, books dealing with high tech machinery, and mysteries or wants to know how to survive a carnivorous plant attack, trick a prime minister, or even make some friends.