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Read Seven Deadly Wonders (2006)

Seven Deadly Wonders (2006)

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Genre
Series
Rating
4.06 of 5 Votes: 4
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ISBN
1416505067 (ISBN13: 9781416505068)
Language
English
Publisher
pocket books

Seven Deadly Wonders (2006) - Plot & Excerpts

Ahhh...Finally it's over. I am undecided on how many stars I am going to give. After making my review I will decide.So, what have we got here... A action-slash-adventure thriller book sure reads like a movie script.First of all I nearly gave up after reading 78 pages and after my second, third and each attempt I read but I don't want to leave any unfinish book.I have so many critics that I don't know how to begin. I know this is FICTION novel but at the same time I know this is not fantasy and neither SF so there are some things that I sure accept as "writer's liberty".First of all are the characters. The main character is a uber character near invicible. No matter how many times they try to kill him he will escape. No harm can befall him. So I didn't care about him. Second his partners in adventure are what they are. Muslism are muslims, israelites are what you expect from one of them. And so on.Third The Enemies. Oh my god! The story goes like this... The europeans task force is something something invicible awesome but then a couple chapters after they die like a vietnamese in a Rambo movie. Then come the americans. They are the best of the best and bang come the vietnamese. Then come the isralites... oh no, they are the best of the best of the best and vietnamese become... They sure look like Stormtroopers in a Stars Wars movies. They are the best of all galaxy but sure don't hit a damn thing in all movies.In this case change bond's villains to West's villains. It's the same thing.Four How in the name of Amun-Ra they could make all their travels in under 7 days? How in name of God could they find all those hidden wonders in such short time. You know Iraq is sure big enough and the Tunisian's Coast to cover in just couple of hours.Five If only was that easy to take someone from the Guantanamo bay.Six Oh my god... the hawk. I want it. I really want it because he is a smart as a person and can fly. Seven Then you've got all those traps with crocodiles... What the heck do they eat inside a mountain closed for 4 thousand years? Maybe they are cannibals... Really man.. I am going to type here this sentence"He leapt from the walkay onto the stepping-stone -- and immediately heard a rush of water from up inside the wall-hole, accompained by a low crocodilian growl ---at which point he jammed his titanium X-bar into the wall-hole and hit a switchon the bar.Thwack!The x-shaped bar expanded with a powerful springloaded motion, so that suddenly it was wedhed tightly in the mouth of the circular wall-hole.Not a second too soon.An instant later, a burst of water gushed out of the wall-hole, immedately followed by the jaws of a massive crocodile that slammed at tremendous speed into the X-Bar!The croc roared angrily but its jaws were caught against the X-bar unable to get past. The rush of water sprayed all around Fuzzy, but didn't knock him over."So the water fall followed by a crocodile.... Where was this crocodile? It was there awaiting patiently for 4000 years to the trap sprang? Talk about epic fail... both of the croc and the writer.Just to finish. This main character twist the neck of a crocodile. AWESOME!!!Eight The ending. (view spoiler)[ So the Australians are invicible now. Ok, good. So the next two books Jack West is even more amazing than this one right? I like the part when Jack and Wizard talk about not saying anything to the Australians. So Australia will rule. How? Militaristic of economic? What will happen when one australian tries to kill another? Their weapon will fail as Judah did? What?? Sorry. Weak Ending. (hide spoiler)]

Most of Matthew Reilly's novels remind me of treatments for comic books. There is little characterization and more attention is given to details about the setting. There is no doubt that Matthew Reilly has thought out his ancient temples, caves and death traps down to the smallest detail. And just about anything his wild imagination can come up with is added with the giggling glee of an eight year old writing for the first time. Super jets? Of course! Robot arms? Why not? A big sunspot that occurs every 4,000 years and unleashes hell on Earth? Makes perfect sense! None of this is a bad thing if you're a fan of those summer blockbusters that force you to leave your brain at the door and just sit back and enjoy the ride. That is exactly what Seven Deadly Wonders and the rest of this series is but in book form. The plot is vaguely similar to The Fifth Element with a catastrophic force from space threatening to destroy Earth and can only be stopped by the placing of artifacts in a certain way by a certain time. These artifacts are pieces of the golden capstone from the great pyramid at Giza and have been scattered all over the world at the sites of the seven wonders. Three teams are in hot pursuit of these pieces- the catholic church, the freemasons working for the President of the United States, and a group made up of smaller nations. It is this third group lead by Jack West Jr. that we follow. Theses groups race to be the ones to place the capstone in time because the winning nation can either have power over the rest of the world for 1,000 years or grant world peace. Or something like that... As mentioned above, this is a summer blockbuster in book form and not meant to be realistic or logical at all. And that's the fun of it. It reminds me of those cartoons I used to watch on Saturday mornings or the comic books I read when I should have been doing school work. Matthew Reilly isn't setting out to write great literature or win awards for characterization or prose. His aim is to entertain and he does that with Seven Deadly Wonders. The Six Sacred Stones and Five Greatest Warriors continue this theme of ancient artifacts being used to diffuse a disastrous event. Matthew Reilly has stated in interviews he wished to write the series all the way down to the One Something Something.

What do You think about Seven Deadly Wonders (2006)?

This is not a novel , it might look like a novel with stunning cover page, complete with 472 pages and priced like a real novel but it’s not a novel at all. It’s a collection of notes, pictures, and some ‘Indiana Jones’ kind of action sequences in which our protagonist and his team member’s try to avoid the trap of ancient buildings etc,. There is no STORY at all, not a real plot only a grand tour of so-called seven ancient wonder’s of world.This is bad, very bad, head aching bad, jaw dropping bad, very bad. The description is even bad and lazy like ‘boom boom goes that, boom boom boom goes this, splash, thawak, WHUMP, crack and many more. Those description will make you think that you are not reading a novel instead you are reading a comic book.Story opens with every one is on the run and on the run we get their mission, we get the names of team member (code name’s also) and we get some villeins as usual trying to destroy the world. every one good guys & bad guys are in race to collect the seven parts of the cape stone of the Giza’s pyramid which are hidden by Alexander in seven pieces in so-called seven ancient wonder’s of the world. they need to collect all the seven pieces and assemble them & place them on Giza pyramid before the solar event else world will end!The bottom line is don’t waste your money and time on this nonsense book, highly highly not recommended to anyone.
—Sayed Khadri

Seven Deadly Wonders introduces a new character by Matthew Reilly to me, Jack West Jr. It's very hard to follow in the footsteps of Shane 'Scarecrow' Schofield, because, well, he's the man! But I have to say I really do like Jack. What's not to like about him? He's a fun character. Honorable, intelligent, athletic, dedicated, daring, and lethal to the bad guys. And being a girl who grew up on Indiana Jones, and wanted to be her own version of the adventurer, Jack has an Indiana Jones in a modern setting appeal. I thought this story was a clever idea. I had watched a documentary on The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and they inspired a great awe in this history buff. To read a story in which our intrepid heroes track down these wonders, not for selfish reasons, but to save the world, was both interesting and exciting. This is one of those books I could not read quietly, which makes me happy I wasn't trying to read it in mixed company. It is full of scenes where I gasped out loud regularly, verbally and under my breath yelled insults at the bad guys, cheered and laughed. This is the brilliance of Matt Reilly. He is one of those writers that engages you and gives you a fun read that takes you out of your regular world and into danger and adventure. It's not always without loss or risk, because sometimes you lose characters you grew fond of along the way. In the end though, I know that good will win out. If it didn't in these books, I wouldn't be a Matt Reilly fan anymore.I liked the found family that I met with Jack and his team. I am a tremendous sucker for a father figure hero. Even though Jack isn't the touchy-feely type, you can tell he loves young Lily like crazy, not as a mere means to an end or a mission. (view spoiler)[ I almost cried when she called him Daddy and it shocked him in a good way. Yes, I am a sap, which you probably know already! (hide spoiler)]
— Danielle The Book Huntress (Self-Proclaimed Book Ninja)

If you took all the action scenes from the Indiana Jones movies and edited them together, skipping all those pesky talkie parts, you would have something akin to this Matthew Reilly book: a thrilling thriller thrilled by its own exuberance. It’s a book that literally flies along—kind of the way it flew off the used book table at the church flea market and into my hands, which in turn forced me to part with fifty cents.I tend to judge books in the Cussler/Rollins/Preston genre by the number of times I tear my eyes from the page so I can roll them. This made me dizzy. So preposterous is the plot (and I use the work expeditiously so you won’t think there is one) I gave up on trying to figure out if there was anything even slightly believable and simply went for the sheer bravura of it all. Once you do that—a good time will be had by all.The first 127 pages are pure action--one sequence after another. There are three factions searching a lost tomb built by Imhotep V (how many more where there?). The tomb is carved inside a mountain and loaded with traps: crocodiles (how did they live underground for four hundred years?), pits with poisonous spears (if the spears don’t get you the poison…), rivers of flaming oil (apparently ok for crocodiles to live in), massive boulders crashing towards the ever-inventive raiders (does anyone know, or care, Spielberg borrowed the rolling boulder in the first Indy movie from a 1960’s adventure film staring Pat Boone?), and on and on. There are high tech gadgets galore, creative pitfalls and imaginative escapes.Somewhere in the midst of chaos, the reader is allowed to glean a couple clues as to what the hell is going on: Kufu’s pyramid had a gold capstone. Alexander the Great carved it into seven pieces and hid them in the Seven Ancient Wonders—even though two were built after the time of Alexander and only one still exists (that we know of). Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter. If they can’t be found and reassembled on top of the pyramid, the world of 2006 will come to an end . . . or, something like that.Along the way the band of merry raiders knock over the Winged Victory of Samothrace (in the Louvre) climb the Paris Obelisk at the Place de la Concorde, free a prisoner from Guantanamo Bay, destroy the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and pretty much demolish every artifact they come in contact with. Again, no matter . . . it’s all for the testosterone high. The average chapter length is two or three pages. There is no sexy female protagonist gushing over the Dirk Pitt type alpha male which is a good thing—avoiding at least one cliché. The situations are inventive—and, of course, preposterous—and when the author includes copious diagrams because his descriptions are inadequate, or at least way too confusing, you know the world just might have collapsed in 2006. We just weren’t told.
—Patrick Gibson

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