21. Temple by Matthew Reilly

 Bought this book as it was recommended to me by a friend (Thanks Ashok) and also my past experiences with the author’s books were pleasant enough to trust him again.

As expected, I found this was a perfect plot for a Hollywood MI series movie. If you have never seen how a script or a screenplay for a movie would be, Reilly’s book might be the place to start.  This one definitely seems to have been written with Producers and Movie agents in mind.

Apart from all that, the book was indeed very good with a galore of action finding an unlikeliest hero in a university Professor for languages, William Race.

Race is called in to translate a 16^th century transcript written in Incan Language, a task which seems simple enough at beginning. But he gets pulled into all action which involves the Army and Navy of U.S and also some extreme terrorist organizations that are all behind an age old treasure.

Everyone reaches a very old temple in Peru, Southern America in search of Incan Treasure hidden in an ancient temple. Only when they try force opening the door of the temple they realize that "Some Doors are meant to remain unopened ". They are faced with some fantastic beasts which are guarding the temple treasure.

How the U.S team gets past them and the terrorists group who have already reached there and get hold of the treasure forms the main plot.

As if this wasn’t enough there are some locals who have been living there for centuries and also fiercely protecting their treasures.

All this action is pleasantly compensated with a few romantic scenes thrown in.

This entire Drama is unfolded in a brilliant way and told in a very gripping tale.

It’s definitely worth a read. Would rate it 8.5 out of 10

19 & 20. Ice Station and Area 7 by Matthew Reilly

Going to write only one review for both the books as I didn't find anything different in them even though the author tried really hard for that.

Ice station is based on a research centre in Antarctica.

Area 7 is based on a research centre in the deserts of Utah.

Other than that I found zilch.

Both has got a team of marines reconnaissance unit (The same unit as this is a second in the series) In both the books the main theme is that the good people(the marines) are trapped inside the centre with the bad people and are trying to save their asses.

And in both the books there's a time bomb ticking over their heads !

There's just too much of running around. Too much of description of the vehicles in which they are trying to escape and just too much of action going on.

In the midst of all this the main plot of the books just disappears because we are only thinking as to who would get killed next.

Both the books involve scientists who are on the verge of a huge discovery and become the reason to attract all this attention. The Marines unit are the one who try protect them and their discoveries and thus begins all this cat and mouse chases.

Oh! I found one more difference amongst the books. In Ice Station the hero of the book goes deep underwater in the frozen sea to escape briefly from his enemies and in Area 7 he actually goes into the space (yeah you read that right!!)

he actually gets into a space shuttle and it travels above the earth and he ends up in the outer space for a brief amount of time.

Whew !!

11, 12 & 13. Seven Ancient Wonders, The Six Sacred Stones and The Five Greatest Warriors by Matthew Reilly

These 3 books are in a series, so I am writing this blog as one.

The author has tried his hand to bring out a trilogy hoping to recreate the magic of Lord of The Rings(He says so himself in an interview). Well, it doesn't come anywhere close to the legendary take of LOTR by Tolkien but it it is surprisingly very captivating with lots of action packed scenes.

It is also a perfect script for an Indiana Jones movie as the story delves into ancient myths and lores, finding hidden treasures hidden by the ancient civilization (the humankind that existed before ours) and contains some pretty bad and ruthless villains.

The main theme of the book is to save the world from the eventual destruction (apocalypse) much like the movie 2012 and Knowing. But here the reason given for the Apocalypse is that at a particular date and time an equal and opposite energy to that of Sun will cross our Solar System and thus destroy everything.

The Ancient Civilization is supposed to have built a machine which when reconstructed would eventually negate this opposite force and thus save our whole solar system. This is what the team of 7-8 people lead by the hero Jack West Jr. set out to do. They start by trying to find the seven ancient wonders of the world in the first book and in the next 2 books they try finding six pillars which are essential to reconstructing this machine that is to save the world.

I know, reading these couple of line would sound very very absurd, even I thought so at first. But the way in which the author (Matthew Reilly) has written the whole thing is fantastic, to say the least.

The book takes you through many interesting and weird locations. The Great Pyramid of Giza, Stonehenge, Easter Island of Chile, Hanging gardens of Babylon, Cape of Good Hope, A Tribe from the Congo Republic in Africa. Well, its nothing short of a roller coaster journey.

In between you find many traces of the Dan Brown’s book Da Vinci Code. Again here, the author himself admits that this book is his favourite. The Author also compares many of the Egyptian Mythologies to Christianity. One particular thing that really caught me was that the Egyptian Sun God is referred to as Amun-Ra. The Amun here can also be pronounced as Amen (as every Christian prayer ends).

All in all, if you like Ancient Myths and legends, Action thrillers, Indiana Jones movies this would be a good recommendation.

I would rate this entire series as 8 out of 10.