Middle School

Charlie Thorne is a genius.
Charlie Thorne is a thief.
Charlie Thorne isn’t old enough to drive.
And now it’s up to her to save the world…
Decades ago, Albert Einstein devised an equation that could benefit all life on earth—or destroy it. Fearing what would happen if the equation fell into the wrong hands, he hid it.
But now, a diabolical group known as the Furies are closing in on its location. In desperation, a team of CIA agents drags Charlie into the hunt, needing her brilliance to find it first—even though this means placing her life in grave danger.
In a breakneck adventure that spans the globe, Charlie must crack a complex code created by Einstein himself, struggle to survive in a world where no one can be trusted, and fight to keep the last equation safe once and for all.

Stuart Gibbs has really outdone himself this time. This story stars the kick-butt genius female protagonist, Charlie Thorne. She kind of reminds me of Hiro from Disney’s Big Hero 6, a genius who wasted his genius on stupid stuff instead of using it to benefit mankind. I love how she uses her brain to get out of dangerous situations. I think it’s awesome when the main characters’ super power is being smart. There needs to be more books and TV shows about people saving the day by being super smart.

I think it’s realistic that if Albert Einstein did come up with an even more powerful equation that than E = MC², that he would hide it away, leaving behind clues that only someone as brilliant as him could solve, hoping that mankind would be ready for it by then. Unfortunately, mankind is not. Just look at our history. We tend to use any advances in science to hurt each other instead of for the greater good.

When it comes to Stuart Gibbs’s stories, you can always count on two things: outrageous action sequences and stupid people who make you question your faith in humanity. The stupid people in this story are the terrorists, and they are the dangerous type of stupid. The kind of dangerous stupid that believes that blowing up and killing people is going to solve their own problems or make things ‘better’. The main terrorist guy, Alexia Kolyenko, rants for a full chapter and there are so many things wrong with what he says that I can’t even put into words how wrong it is.

This story involves many advance and hard to understand subjects that might go over some people’s heads. They went over mine. Although it did include an in-depth and somewhat understandable explanation on special relativity a.k.a. E = MC², that I found fascinating and informative. Luckily, you don’t need to understand everything in this book to enjoy it.

I’m sorry if this review comes off a bit scatterbrained. In the immortal words of Albert Einstein:“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”And I clearly don’t understand everything going on in this story well enough to give a good review.So, I leave you with these Albert Einstein quotes:

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. (Very true)

The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.

And my personal favorite, which I have printed on a T-shirt: I never said half the crap people said I said.

This weeks’ Weird but True Fact about Albert Einstein and the C.I.A.

Portions of Albert Einstein’s brain are on display in a museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

At the Starbucks in CIA headquarters, in Virginia, U.S.A., workers aren’t allowed to write customers’ names on cups.