Seven Ancient Wonders

To the person who wrote this PoC™ slightly not very good story: who the fish are you, and what have you done with the guy who wrote Ice Station?! You cannot be Matthew Reilly. That is just impossible. Because, seriously, this book here? It feels like it was written 30 years ago. By my 13-year-old niece. Who doesn't speak a word of English. Yep, that's right. This ain't no Pulitzer prize material, my Little Barnacles. Wait. Before I roll out my Deadly Arguments of Mass Book Destruction (DAoMBD™), I have a message for the lovely person who was hilarious enough to suggest I read this book: my dear Trish anonymous friend, I love you, but send me another rec similar to this one and you're dead meat. Then again, you might not like me a great deal after reading my DAoMBD™, so I guess I shouldn't worry too much about you contacting me. Ever. Again. Oh well. It was nice knowing you, anyway! (view spoiler)[ (hide spoiler)] Soooooo. Where were we? Oh yes, I-can't-believe-you're-Matthew-Reilly's high-quality writing. Such awesomeness there. It's bloody brilliant. I love it. Which loosely translates to mean: it's outdated. It's simplistic. It's repetitive. It's crappy. It's OTT. It's an insult to the Grammar Gods. It's slightly (if only a little bit) subpar. Kind of. Somewhat. And it makes me wonder if anyone bothered to edit the freaking book. I mean, what editor in their right mind would let an author get away with such a deadly onslaught of exclamation points? I'm telling you, my Little Barnacles, this is the stuff of legend. I'm a pretty open-minded girl (sometimes) and I've never had anything against these poor, innocent punctuation marks, but there is only so much forced excitement the little heart I don't have can take. And no matter how super uber tough and nefarious I am, I could barely survive some of the paragraphs in this book. I kid you not. Don't believe me? Very well. Read this and try not to choke (this is not for the faint of heart, people, so I'll use spoiler tags to spare the feeble and the weak): (view spoiler)[ ‘Pooh Bear! Get out of here!’ West called. ‘What about you!’ Pooh yelled back. West nodded back down his aqueduct tunnel. ‘No other option! I have to go this way!’ ‘Jack!’ Wizard called. ‘What!’ ‘Judah used a tunnel-boring vehicle to drill through the old filled-in excavation tunnel! They must be planning to take the Pieces out that way! Check your sketch! You may still be able to get a look at the Pieces! All may not be lost!’ ‘I’ll do my best!’ West nodded at the expanding mud pool. ‘Now get out of here! Call Sky Monster! Get to the Halicarnassus! I’ll catch up somehow!’ (hide spoiler)] Multiply this ↑↑↑ by the 544 pages in this book and you get mass punctuation-induced suicides. So tragic. Please, person-who-is-supposed-to-be-Matthew-Reilly, listen to Marky Mark here, the guy knows his stuff. It's high time for you to stop mistreating exclamation marks in such a shameful way. What did they ever do to you, anyway? And what about these poor italics? Did you really need to brutalize them like that? AND don't get me started about the italicized interjections with built-in exclamation points *shakes head in utter desperation* Whoosh! Whap! Boom! Ahhhh! Zing-smack! (my personal favourite) Whump! Such clever, resourceful writing. Come to think of it, reading this book kind of feels like reading a bad comic. Without the graphics. And that's pretty cool, if you ask me ← this might or might not be a slightly sarcastic comment on my part. And I may or may not have felt like this while reading this book: I ain't naught but a crappy, harebrained reviewer. Yes, I am sadly aware of that very unfortunate fact. And yet, I shall be so bold as to give you a friendly piece of crustacean advice, person-who-is-supposed-to-be-Matthew-Reilly: your readers are not stupid (well most of them, anyway). You DO NOT need to use freaking exclamation marks and freaking italics every two freaking seconds to make sure they get how they are supposed to feel. They might be nothing more than lowly barnacles, but they have one or two grey cells, and they WILL eventually get the point all by their little selves. So. Now that I've brilliantly established how delightfully written this book is, let me tell you about the fascinating story itself. Wait. Have I already told how fascinating this story is? I have? Oops, sorry about that. It's just that the exquisitely intricate plot made such a big impression on me that I need to rehash a bit to make sure you realize how awesome it was. I could use exclamation marks to get my point across, too! But I'm not like that! Oh no! Not me! You're so lucky, my Little Barnacles! No OD'ing on punctuation today! But I digress. This book? Let's see…Take the worst Indiana Jones rip-offs you've ever seen/read/whatever, throw in a bunch of slightly clichéd and a tinsy bit stereotyped military types, make them go through the very same quests/trials/adventures every other chapter (same shit, different location. It's all delightfully refreshing), add a dash of never-before-seen-and-oh-so-suspenseful scenes (think ceiling-coming-down-on-the-good-guys, rolling boulder booby traps and the like), a bunch of beautifully complex ☢ sarcasm alert ☢ characters, and you get this gem of a captivating story. It's all pretty glorious, if you ask me. And now for the icing on the cake! Presenting the one and only, the invincible, the mostest awesomest {cue drum roll} Jack West! He is pretty much perfect! He can do no wrong! He is superiorly clever (well not quite as Einsteinian as I am, but almost)! He has mysterious secrets! His all-encompassing knowledge about ancient stuff is seriously all-encompassing! And he kicks major ass, too! I'm telling you, my Little Barnacles, Superman and Spiderman combined are useless, brainless wimps compared to this guy. Damn. Why didn't I lock him up in my harem when I had the chance?! I should know a HOT, BADASS DUDE when I see one! I think I might be losing my legendary touch. Double damn. ➽ And the moral of this Most of my Friends Loved this Book They Must Therefore Be Slightly Insane Review (MomFLtBTMTBSIR™) is: death by exclamation point is horrific, slow and abominably painful. So stay away from the murderous punctuation marks, my Little Barnacles, for they are treacherous and up to no good.

My first Matthew Reilly book, and so begins the final run in towards the One Impossible Labyrinth. Maybe it's Jack West representing a modern day Indiana Jones, maybe it's the coalition of mice roaring against the large nations, the sense of family, or the archaeology within. The Jack West books are something special, and if people were a little more like him, the world would be a better place I think.