H.I.V.E.: Higher Institute of Villainous Education (1) - Hardcover

Walden, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416935711 ISBN 13: 9781416935711

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2007

Synopsis

HIGHER INSTITUTE OF VILLAINOUS EDUCATION

Otto Malpense may only be thirteen years old, but so far he has managed to run the orphanage where he lives, and he has come up with a plan clever enough to trick the most powerful man in the country. He is the perfect candidate to become the world's next supervillain.

That is why he ends up at H.I.V.E., handpicked to become a member of the incoming class. The students have been kidnapped and brought to a secluded island inside a seemingly active volcano, where the school has resided for decades. All the kids are elite; they are the most athletic, the most technically advanced, and the smartest in the country. Inside the cavernous marble rooms, floodlit hangars, and steel doors, the students are enrolled in Villainy Studies and Stealth and Evasion 101. But what Otto soon comes to realize is that this is a six-year program, and leaving is not an option.

With the help of his new friends: an athletic martial-arts expert; a world-famous, beautiful diamond thief; and a spunky computer genius -- the only other people who seem to want to leave -- can Otto achieve what has never been done before and break out of H.I.V.E.?

About this title

About the Author

Mark Walden spent a decade as a video game designer and producer before becoming a fulltime writer and father. He has a BA in English Literature and an MA in twentieth century literature, film, and television, both from Newcastle University. He is the author of the H.I.V.E. series and the Earthfall Trilogy and lives with his family in the United Kingdom.

From Booklist

Thirteen-year-old Otto and three of his new friends are kidnapped and taken to H.I.V.E., a super academy for world domination where the particular talents encouraged are craftiness and daring. Students come from all over the world, speak varying degrees of English, and are often the offspring of H.I.V.E. graduates. Otto, however, is an orphan. He has real brilliance and a photographic mind. Both qualities made him relatively independent before he was kidnapped, and they now provide somewhat of a challenge to his would-be keepers at H.I.V.E. Otto spearheads the group's effort to escape and return home, an escape that is foiled in the course of an evening that involves H.I.V.E.'s electronic overseer, an out-of-control flesh-eating plant, and other technothrills. H.I.V.E. comes across as the shadow side of Hogwarts, but Otto and his pals aren't so much bad wizards as they are bright kids realizing they may be out of their depth. The cliff-hanger ending leaves much to be tied together in a sequel. Francisca Goldsmith
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About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1416935711
• ISBN 13: 9781416935711
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320