Matthew Reilly’s latest thriller, 7 DEADLY WONDERS, reads like a big-budget summer movie, a high-tech video game and a four-color comic book. Though just as mindless as any of them, it also is just as fun.
It begins in media res, as a nine-person team called The Nine (don’t get too attached to that number) infiltrates a mountain fortress hidden in the Sudanese swamps, booby-trapped with crocodiles, spikes, boulders – even deadly bacteria! With kick-ass code names like “Bloody Mary,” “Archer” and “Witch Doctor” and a trusty falcon at their beck and call (all the better to fend off diseased bats, of course), they comprise what amounts to an international Justice League of Indiana Joneses, seeking one of seven pieces of the capstone of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Legend has it that Alexander the Great spread the pieces around the globe, hiding them among the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World; with all of them together and in conjunction with a rare solar event, a millennium’s worth of power goes to the victorious country. With such high stakes, The Nine isn’t the only group on the treasure hunt. Seeking the booty for nefarious purposes are corrupt American military men and a European Union led by a rogue Jesuit priest. If all that doesn’t sound cool enough, consider this: The Nine’s leader, Aussie supersoldier Jack West, has a metal arm. Let me repeat that: a freakin’ metal arm!
West and his crew hop from continent to continent to embark on all seven missions, pausing only to free a Saudi terrorist from a Cuban prison. All the while, they’re pursued by those no-good Americans and equally distasteful Europeans, so don’t blame The Nine if they have to break out a pair of air-compressor flying wings to get the job done. Besides, considering the snakes, quicksand and volcanic mud they encounter in the various traps, don’t they deserve a little 007-style gadgetry?
As if you couldn’t tell, 7 DEADLY WONDERS is wall-to-wall (or cover-to-cover) action, much of it over-the-top. Reilly himself seems to know as much and revel in it, what with all the sentences in italics ending in exclamation points! But there’s nothing wrong with being larger than life if it results in a good time, and I had an absolute blast with this one. Admittedly, it’s so relentless that it can wear you down toward the end, but at least it’s an adventure that delivers and doesn’t pussyfoot around.
This is not a novel to be taken seriously, as evidenced by the dozens of illustrations. Many will knock Reilly for including finely detailed maps of each mine, cave and pyramid The Nine infiltrates, with each trap detailed, but I’m glad they’re there. Reilly writes visually, and the traps become increasingly complex, so it’s nice not to have to think. Thinking gets in the way of a pure joyride like this. –Rod Lott
Buy it at Amazon.
Related posts:
