Temple

Rating:
Summary: Check reality at the door...
Review: before reading Temple and enjoy the ride! And oh, what a ride it is!WOW! Temple was my first M.R. thriller and it won't be my last, not by a longshot!Pick up a copy soon and lose yourself for a few nights!psalso check out 'a tourist in the yucatan' asap, it's very good!

Rating:
Summary: Wow! How unrealistic / totally improbable can you get?!
Review: I must admit that reviewing Temple isn't easy for me.

My usual reviewing style is to pan a book for minor inconsistencies in the plot or for unrealistic characters or for a lack of accuracy in information presented as being historically correct. By these standards Temple deserves one star (at most).

But here I am giving Temple four stars despite it being the most blatantly unrealistic and totally improbable book I've ever read!

The operative words here are BLATANTLY unrealistic. And FUN.

Reading a book by Matthew Reilly is like going to a liars convention, where the person who tells the most outlandish, unbelievable, crazy, entertaining story is the winner.

William Race, the hero of Temple, spends approximately 750 pages in constant action, fighting for his life, running for his life, dodging bullets and surviving one disaster after another, always at the very last "nanosecond" (one of Mr. Reilly's favorite words). William Race does things that are not just improbable but totally impossible. He cheats death every 10th page and spends the next nine pages getting into a situation that has only one possible outcome: certain death!

Several other reviewers have characterized Matthew Reilly's books as "comic books in words". Exactly! They can also be compared to the old Batman TV shows, where the screen explodes with a "POW" when one of the characters punches another character.

Here's an example of Matthew Reilly's prose (page 434 in the paperback edition I read):

"Race hit him again, and again, and again - yelling with each punch as the Nazi staggered backwards.
'Get -'
Punch.
'- off -'
Punch.
'- my -'
Punch.
'- boat!'"

In conclusion, totally unrealistic, totally improbable and 100% entertaining!

At the end of the paperback edition I read there's an 11-page interview with Matthew Reilly that I found quite interesting. Mr. Reilly is very up-front about writing books that attempt to pack as much action as possible between the covers, and he also describes how he became an author:

"What led you to self-publish Contest (Matthew Reilly's first book)?"

"Simple. I offered it to every major publisher in Sydney and they all rejected it!"

Sounds like something so improbable that it could be straight out of a Matthew Reilly book. :-)

Rennie Petersen

Rating:
Summary: Wow! How unrealistic / totally improbable can you get?!
Review: I must admit that reviewing Temple isn't easy for me.

My usual reviewing style is to pan a book for minor inconsistencies in the plot or for unrealistic characters or for a lack of accuracy in information presented as being historically correct. By these standards Temple deserves one star (at most).

But here I am giving Temple four stars despite it being the most blatantly unrealistic and totally improbable book I've ever read!

The operative words here are BLATANTLY unrealistic. And FUN.

Reading a book by Matthew Reilly is like going to a liars convention, where the person who tells the most outlandish, unbelievable, crazy, entertaining story is the winner.

William Race, the hero of Temple, spends approximately 750 pages in constant action, fighting for his life, running for his life, dodging bullets and surviving one disaster after another, always at the very last "nanosecond" (one of Mr. Reilly's favorite words). William Race does things that are not just improbable but totally impossible. He cheats death every 10th page and spends the next nine pages getting into a situation that has only one possible outcome: certain death!

Several other reviewers have characterized Matthew Reilly's books as "comic books in words". Exactly! They can also be compared to the old Batman TV shows, where the screen explodes with a "POW" when one of the characters punches another character.

Here's an example of Matthew Reilly's prose (page 434 in the paperback edition I read):

"Race hit him again, and again, and again - yelling with each punch as the Nazi staggered backwards.
'Get -'
Punch.
'- off -'
Punch.
'- my -'
Punch.
'- boat!'"

In conclusion, totally unrealistic, totally improbable and 100% entertaining!

At the end of the paperback edition I read there's an 11-page interview with Matthew Reilly that I found quite interesting. Mr. Reilly is very up-front about writing books that attempt to pack as much action as possible between the covers, and he also describes how he became an author:

"What led you to self-publish Contest (Matthew Reilly's first book)?

Simple. I offered it to every major publisher in Sydney and they all rejected it!"

Sounds like something so improbable that it could be straight out of a Matthew Reilly book. :-)

Rating:
Summary: Completely preposterous, but a wild ride!
Review: I picked up "Temple" during a Clive Cussler hiatus, and I was not disappointed. The story was completely and thoroughly unrealistic, but it was a fun and quick read. The action is constant and often preposterously improbable. How many times in one day can an ordinary guy face (and defeat) death? I felt like I was reading a movie script for a mindless but entertaining summer blockbuster. The imagery is vivid. Reilly did a good job of making me feel like I was actually in the jungle and at the temple.

Rating:
Summary: Uh?????
Review: If this is a Story involving the Incas, Why is the front cover displaying the pyramid El Castillo from Chi chen itza? That is a Mayan Pyramid thousands of miles away on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

Rating:
Summary: Ride the ReillyCoaster
Review: Ignore KiwiAl, he has unfortunately fallen into the century old war between NZ and Australia. A bitter feud where one side questions the others familiarity with livestock. These books are good at what they were intended for. If you want a literary classic dont look here. This is pure and simple action. This is not credible, it is incredible. No time for looking deeply into the soul of the characters, the pace is just too fast. Thats what this is about. The Ride. From Neo-nazis, covert military groups struggling for survival, mythic feline monsters chasing us in the present to maddened conquistadors, the giant cats and Incan warriors chasing us in the past. It doesnt stop. The book is a rush. Far from perfect but just the same a damn good read. If ever an action movie fell straight from the screen into a book then it would be like this. If you like action and plenty of it.....read this. And KiwiAl......BAAAAA!!

Rating:
Summary: Texans and Rappas and Bombs! Oh my!
Review: Ladies and gentlemen, we're about to go supersonic. With a plot that moves at the speed of light and enough over the top action sequences to make Arnold Schwartzenager do a double take, Reilly's third novel is testestosterone central.
Anyone framiliar with Matt's writing style will be plesed to see that he has once again made excellent use of his formula: Fast, plot driven, 2-D characters.

The story goes something like this: William Race, nerdy collage professor and cookie cutter "good-guy", is asked to help the US army find an ancient Incan idol in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Why? Because it's made of a material that, when placed in a special bomb called a Supernova, can destroy the Earth. And it seems that just about every terrorist in the world has a Supernova, minus this crucial ingredient. And they're all willing to kill to get it. To put things lightly, all Hell breaks loose. In the course of 24 hours, Race and friends deal with Nazis, suicidal Texans, traitors, traitors who're betraying the original traitors, vicious jungle cats, crocodiles....... starting to get the gist of it?
And in between all that, there is a parallel plot. Every once in a while, our hero reads some of an ancient Incan manuscript, which tells the story of Santiago and Renco, the two fellows who hid the idol so many years ago. The manuscript as as action-packed as the main plot, culminating in an amazing battle sequence between our heroes and Fransisco Pizzaro. Good stuff.

So, as per usual, Temple is a rollicking roller-coaster ride, an action packed good time delivered by a man whose fans expect no less.

Oh, yeah, by the way "blah blah blah bad character developement blah blah blah who cares its a blah-ing action thriller."

Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: This book has you at the edge of your seat. It's non-stop action. After every page and action the fun just gets better and better.

Rating:
Summary: I can only suspend belief for so long
Review: This book, what can I say but that this book was total junk. I didn't go into it thinking "Oh look another Pulitzer Winner." I went into thinking that I like Crichton books, I'll like this one the summary seemed to support my theory. But alas, was I ever friggin wrong. Really we only needed about half of this book, the rest was just a rant gone bad.
Really only one scene where the hero miracously stops the exploding bomb or doomsday device 5 seconds before it detonates is needed, defintely just the once, not twice. And come on could there have been enough villians in this book, Nazis, Militia groups, rogue Army officers, ex-girlfriends who become whoring sister in-laws, giant jungle cats, and man eating caimans. Furthermore there was way too many tremendous feats achieved by a language prof. Yeah, yeah, yeah you can tell me the whole line about the courage of the everyday man, but come on. Oh and I don't know, but I guess that Mr. Reilly must have forgot that he had one of the pontoons on the seaplane shot off. But the charactors continue to fly and land the thing throughout the rest of the book. I thought that it'd be kind of hard to land a seaplane with just one pontoon WITHOUT IT CRASHING!!!
I will say this, the initial idea for the story was good, but not much else. In fact I think this book sucked. The only reason I gave it a star was because I finished it. Why I don't know, but I did, guess I just figured I had too much time invested to just give up.

Rating:
Summary: Needs to be a Movie
Review: This is probably the best actual story by Matt Reilly. It is a totally fun read. That is all it's meant to be. It's not "War and Peace", it's not even "A Seperate Peace" It is an action movie that hasn't been made yet. The hero is good the bad guys are evil, the monsters are scary, the chases are exciting...
This is a vacation book, an airport book, a coffee break book. It won't change the way you think, but it will give you a break from thinking. Enjoy the escapism!