City News

Code of Honor by renowned author Alan Gratz is a touching and emotional story of a young Iranian teen realizing how cruel and unforgiving the world can be. Published by scholastic in 2015, Kamran, the character followed in the story, struggles to maintain his reputation when footage of his brother, a student at west camp, displays him attacking an United States embassy for Al Qaeda. Gratz uses hints of humor in his story to lighten the mood and potentially set up a devastating turn of events in the life of the young teen. In an unfortunate turn of events, Kamran is taken into custody by the U.S. government which prevents him from going after his task of proving his brother’s innocence.

Throughout the book, Gratz connects us to Kamran using his humor and helplessness. We begin realizing how quick his life turns from being a prom king with everything he wants, to a suspected terrorist being held in custody by the U.S. government. Determined to prove his brother’s innocence, he throws everything he’s got at the government hoping he would be able to escape. I couldn’t stop reading as every page was filled with a unique type of action, different from any other book I’ve read. Kamran demonstrates his traits as a strong individual person, while also exposing his true self to people he trusts. He bonds with an unexpected group of people who attempt to help him with his impossible task of proving the innocence of his brother. Gratz really allowed me to understand the dynamic between his brother and him with the flashbacks Kamran had about when they were young. I also was able to grasp and understand the ideas Kamran was having in his mind due to the way the book was written. Although Alan Gratz has never written a sequel, I think creating a second book about the same characters would be great since we could understand the aftermath of what Kamran had to go through. I was able to understand the hardships of being an immigrant, and the fact that Kamran was attacked by mobs although he didn’t do anything wrong. He was also forced to believe the government when they constantly instilled in his mind that his brother was a terrorist. The themes that the book gave us such as believing in family and persevering against all odds could be applied to the daily lives of many people. The main lesson I grasped from this is that not everything is how it seems. One of the only cons to this book is that sometimes the environment that Kamran is in isn’t described as thoroughly as it could be which leads the reader to get confused throughout the book. The other shortcoming of this book is that sometimes it felt like Kamran was jumping from place to place within the span of a few pages or less. Overall, I would rate this book a 9/10 because of the way the author filled the pages with action while also allowing the characters to develop in a natural way.