61 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Power drives men mad.", December 19, 2005
In Matthew Reilly's new adventure novel, "7 Deadly Wonders," teams from various countries are racing against time to find the Golden Capstone that once stood atop the Great Pyramid at Giza. Alexander the Great broke the Capstone into seven pieces and hid each piece in one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In 2006, a rare solar event called the Tartarus Rotation is scheduled to occur. Whoever assembles all seven pieces of the Capstone at this particular time and under certain specific conditions will gain absolute power for the next thousand years. The American faction, led by a ruthless soldier named Marshall Judah, has a strong army with unlimited firepower. Francisco de Piero, a fanatical Jesuit priest, guides the formidable European contingent. Trying to stop the Americans and Europeans is a small group known as the Nine, representing such countries as Australia, Ireland, and Israel. Seven are soldiers, one is an elderly professor, and the final member is a ten-year old girl named Lily. The leader of the Nine is an Aussie named Jack West, also known as Huntsman. He is Lily's guardian and, over the years, she has come to love and admire him.
"7 Deadly Wonders" is all plot, with scarcely any character development. The book is filled with evil spells, complex codes, numerous chase scenes, bloody confrontations, and a great deal of sophisticated hardware. As the various contenders vie to uncover pieces of the Capstone, they are beset by numerous obstacles, mostly in the form of traps that are reminiscent of the Indiana Jones movies. Spiked boulders rolling down inclines, molten lava, hungry crocodiles, quicksand, and descending ceilings are a few of the many impediments that stand between the seekers and their prize. Reilly includes drawings to clarify the elements of the search, but most readers will be confused by the multitude and complexity of the clues. At one time or another, a character in the book mentions "The Da Vinci Code." This is an apt reference, since "7 Deadly Wonders" may be an attempt to capitalize on the success of Dan Brown's huge bestseller.
Reilly's writing style is adrenaline-fueled. He overuses exclamation points, capital letters, and italics to indicate that something exciting is happening. The villains are one-dimensional and the good guys constantly escape from the most impossible situations with seconds to spare. I liked Reilly's nifty gizmos, including a specially outfitted 747 that enables the Nine to elude capture, and there are a few moments of sweet sentiment between Lily and her protectors. Overall, however, "7 Deadly Wonders" is a derivative and poorly written thriller that will disappoint all but the most hard-core action junkies.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Group of Archeologists Races to Save the World from Certain Destruction, January 24, 2007
The easiest way to describe 7 Deadly Wonders is to say that it is a book written for the music-video generation. With two-page chapters, multiple short sections and headings per chapter, and lots of illustrations and diagrams, this book is perfect for readers who have short attention spans and need constant action rather than any literary nuance or character development to get them through a nearly 400-page novel.
Matthew Reilly's success comes from his ability to write page-turning action suspense. This book is certainly exciting--almost overly so at times. In some ways the book reads more like a screenplay than a novel. Without question it will be made into a movie, and the screenwriters who adapt the script will have a very easy job. For that matter, even the set designers will have had most of their work done for them, since Reilly has peppered his book with so many visual cues rather than relying on the more traditional use of words to convey images.
7 Deadly Wonders is without question a good, fast read. It's fast-paced, not overly lengthy, has a decent plot, and keeps the reader's attention. The characters are shallower than a kiddy wading pool, so there's not much complexity to bog the reader down. Imagery and description are used sparingly, again because of the presence of so many illustrations and diagrams. The action is intense--which is generally a good thing, though by the end the unrelenting danger the characters face becomes a bit wearisome.
The book is about a small group of militant archeologists trying to save the world from destruction. Every five thousand years, a period of intense heat and drought is brought about when the rotation of the sun brings the earth directly in line with the Tartarus Sunspot. When this happens, most of the world's population will die. Fortunately, the ancient Egyptians were aware of this problem, and they devised a means of preventing it. They fashioned a gold and crystal capstone to sit atop the Great Pyramid at Giza that could absorb most of the excess energy coming from the sun. Curiously, this capstone also endowed its user with absolute power over the entire earth for a thousand years.
The problem is, the Tartarus Sunspot is only days away from wreaking its havoc on the earth, and no one knows where the capstone is. Delegations from America and Europe are frantically searching for it, using ancient texts and clues buried at the sites of the seven wonders of the ancient world. But a number of smaller nations aren't sure they trust America or Europe to use their absolute power properly if they should find the capstone in time. So they compile their own delegation to locate the ancient relic. And the race is on.
The book's action and cursory examination of all seven of the ancient wonders of the world almost make up for its lack of depth. There's no sexual content at all, and profanity is kept to a minimum. Even so, there is some objectionable content deriving from the author's proclivity toward meeting modern readers' demand for conspiracies involving the Catholic Church. The church, according to the book, is nothing more than the modern equivalent of the ancient Egyptian cult of Amun-Ra and is put on the same level as the American "cult" of Freemasons.
The book has other problems as well. It contains more loose ends than a frayed sweater and has more dangling plot threads than metaphors. Few of the fantastic story elements (fantastic meaning "fantasy-like," not "great") are supported by explanation (such as a ten-year-old girl's ability to read ancient dead languages simply because she is the child of an "oracle"). The amazingly intricate (and lethal) booby-traps the team discovers during their archeological quests are right out of the Indiana Jones movies, but with one exception, no means is supplied for the reader to imagine how they might actually work three thousand years after their creation. And American readers might raise eyebrows at the author's portrayal of the Americans in the story as greedy criminals who want nothing more than to mistreat the Australian hero (Reilly is Australian).
But for all its problems, it book is still highly enjoyable. The conspiracy theory it presents isn't as compelling as the one Dan Brown presented in The Da Vinci Code, but the chase scenes and archeology are fun to read and make the book difficult to put down. The ending is satisfying, if far-fetched. The characters are likeable, though shallow. The villains are very evil (and American), and the heros are very heroic. It's not for readers who prefer "serious" literary works, but like I said, it's perfect for the music-video generation.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Where the heck was the editor?, March 7, 2006
I'm all for suspending disbelief and I enjoy a good little mindless adventure. It was a lot of fun reading through a book with non stop, albeit slightly silly adventures, sort of allows ones brain take a little holiday. That being said, though, I spent the larger portion of this book wondering where the heck the editor went. I mean wow! This book makes a bigger use of exclamation points than I've ever seen! It's sort of like having a conversation with an excited 11 year old girl! Lets not forget the liberal use of italics! Just in case the exclamation points didn't get the point across well enough! Let's hear it for enthusiastic writers! It was similar to reading a story written by my eleven year old daughter! Actually, I was a little disappointed in the book! I usually really enjoy Reilly's books, but the editing of this one drove me...well..crazy!! Okay, I'll stop with the punctuation now...! (Sorry had to do just one more..)
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