Rating: 
Summary: Beyond rationality
Review: This book is totally absurd. Yeah, it's got a lot of action, but if it's not supposed to be science fiction, then it should touch base with reality occasionally, and it doesn't. However, if utterly ridiculous plots, hair-raising, unbelievable, nick-of-time escapes from death and destruction, and burning incense to feminism are your thing, then by all means get this book. But if you like your action stories to be semi-believable and rational, then avoid this book like....like....like....the Sinovirus......
Rating:
Summary: Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the library
Review: Mr. Reilly requires only one thing of a reader...the ability to ignore fact and absolutely suspend belief. If you can accomplish that, his books will in fact keep you involved. If, however, you require even a modicum of reality in your stories, this will be as disappointing as 'Ice Station', if no more so. It will probably appeal to the PS2 and X-box crowd, but if you seek a military style techno-thriller that you can read without stopping every two pages to wonder at the inaccuracies, try Tom Clancy or Harold Coyle.
Rating: 
Summary: Overblown follow-up to Ice Station
Review: Reilly followed up a fairly decent action tale called Ice Station with this way overdone tale involving Shane Schofield, Libby Gant and Mother from the first book and adding a few new characters. It seems like the author is trying to outdo the makers of the Die Hard movies. It just seems that wherever Schofield goes he is caught in the midst of corrupt military and competing corrupt foreign powers. He escapes from one impossible situation after another, some of which are insults to the reader. I would have rated this book lower but the three main characters are highly likable and the reader hopes that something may develop between Schofield and Gant.
Rating: 
Summary: I want more
Review: As I'm used by now, the books by this author would almost define as a movie script. Alot of action and stunts and in overall pretty entertaining to read if you're not going tho think through and accept whats going on. And in responce of another review, never had issue's with bad italic's use, must be left out in the translation I guess.
Rating: 
Summary: No more... <I>stop</I>!
Review: Like Chinese water <I>torture</I>, as the book wore <I>on</I> my nerves became increasingly frayed by the constant use of <I>italics</I>, often in the most inappropriate <I>places</I>...
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: This book is one worth staying up all night reading for. And even if you don't think you it is worth that, it is just what you will do when you think, "I'll just start this book off..." you will end up finishing it in the proccess. Matthew Reilly, who is also a excellent public speaker is one of the best authors I have had the pleasure of reading his books. I look forward to his next book Scarecrow and hope and am sure that it will keep up with the pattern of getting more exciting with each page. Scarecrow is the perfect hero, and the continuence of his presence in this book continued from Ice Station makes us even more in awe of Reilly's ability to bring someone to life, through words.
Rating:
Summary: Matthew Reilly Rocks!!!!
Review: It's clear from reading so many one-star reviews of this book that a lot of people just don't get Matthew Reilly. He is about one thing and one thing only: Action. And what glorious action it is -- inasane, unbelievable, wildly over-the-top action that doesn't quit for a single page. This book has more shootouts, fistfights, explosions and general all-around mayhem and destruction than a dozen ordinary action books combined! This is probably the fastest paced book I have ever read and I have read a lot. In short, this book ROCKS!!! With that said, if you're looking for well developed characters or deep meaning, you won't find it here. This is just pure escapist fun at its absolute best. Everyone who has complained about the lack of realism or character development needs to lighten up and just enjoy this book for what it is: pure, unadulterated FUN! And if you like this book, check out his other novels. They all ROCK just as much. I can't wait for his next book, Scarecrow, due out soon. LONG LIVE MATTHEW REILLY!!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: If there's such a thing as a pure action novel . . .
Review: . . . Matthew Reilly owns the franchise. I may end up sounding just a bit schizophrenic here; after all, I'm a guy who used the term "gratuitous action" (the first time I am aware of its use) to describe Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Yet I like Matthew Reilly--who throws a ton more action sequences into his fiction than even Jerry Bruckheimer--and didn't like Temple of Doom. Why? First of all, Indiana Jones was never JUST about action--the Harrison Ford Character was a cool, noirish thirties dude, nothing like Shane "Scarecrow" Schofield, Reilly's hero--in the way that a Matthew Reilly novel IS just about action. When they turned the Indiana Jones series that direction with the second installment, a delicate balance between character, sensibility, and action was upset (and never fully recovered, although The Last Crusade was a good corrective). Second, Reilly really is a master of the action thriller in a way that those who made Temple of Doom aren't. Third--and this seems a little counter-intuitive, but I think it's right--pure action works better in a book than on the screen, for two reasons, I think: In a book, you can describe and depict things that would probably be impossible to pull off, or at least would come off seeming implausible or contrived on the screen. Second, if one were to make a film of Area 7, it would either be so frenetically paced as to be unwatchable, or would be substantially altered to make it play on the screen. Overall, I'm a Reilly fan. I like his singlemindedness. I like Scarecrow Schofield. I (generally) like the way he sets up his scenes and pulls them off. I like the amount of jeopardy he packs into his books. And I like his high concept. I would've given this book five stars, except, for me, two things drag it down. I thought the racial angle was a cliche, and I thought he went over the top with the release of the condemned killers and the animals from their cells. I do generally like the way he manufactures mayhem, but these two things just didn't work for me. As for other criticisms noted at this site, I don't read this kind of fiction for rounded characters, for emotional realism, or even for plausibility. There is a cartoonish aspect to any Reilly thriller, but I at least don't expect or ask for anything else. So long as he pulls it off. Which I think he does. 4 and 1/2 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Read one Matthew Reilly book, you've read them all.
Review: Reading a Matthew Reilly book is like grading the homework essay of a bright, precocious child. His vivid imagination is cute at first but his shortcomings quickly get annoying. Matthew Reilly has written the same book four times now, only varying the location and sometimes the characters, if you can call those zero-dimensional stick figures "characters". The basic element is the same - a fight to the death with high tech weaponry in an enclosed area. The McGuffin is never original - the basic idea in "Contest" originated in a classic science fiction story called "Arena" and has since been done to death by everything from Star Trek downwards. Similarly, the alien spaceship trapped in polar ice is ripped straight out of "The Thing from Another World". But the most annoying this about Reilly is his juvenile writing style. He can't seem to go more than a few paragraphs without: "And then - SHOCKINGLY - the man's head exploded". He freely invents weapons and gadgets that defy every law of physics, and thinks he can make them sound plausible just by stringing random numbers and letters in front of them: "A type-240 quasi-nuclear plasma bomb", "an MH-12 Maghook" which turns the hero Shane Schofield into the poor man's Spiderman, etc. If you just want to switch off your brain and wallow in totally mindless escapism, you might enjoy this book. But if you're looking for an intelligent, well-crafted thriller, keep looking.
Rating:
Summary: brain-freezing novel (not a good sign)
Review: Area-7 - an underground fortress in SW America - is one of the most secure military installations in the world. It's home to tons of high-tech, most of it involving bio-warfare. Using rightly-condemned criminals as guinea pigs, Area-7 scientists develop cures for diseases engineered by America's enemies. unfortunately, "Ceasar" Russel, a disgraced and supposedly executed former USAF general, seizes control of Area-7 and everybody inside - including the President and his loyal marine contingent. Ceasar, we learn, has implanted a microscopic transmitter on the president's heart connecting the unwitting chief to nuclear warheads placed in all the major northern cities. Each will explode should Ceasar's troops locate and kill the president. Also, the "football" - the special nuclear-war trigger carried everywhere by the president - will trigger the warheads unless the president keys in his palm print every 90 minutes. With his special shocktroops - vanguards of a righht-wing military junta - Ceasar can just kill the President, but he needs the Chief to die in the humiliation deserved by all politicians - bureaucrats who make others die for their decisions. Unbeknownst to either our heroes or the rogue general, Area-7's South African chief bio-chemist has his own plans for the base now that he's used its resources to develope a cure to a devestating Chinese bio-engineered disease. Unknown to him, some of Ceasar's own men have gone into business themselves - with the Chinese. Unexpected by them is the role to be played by Area-7's residents - the vilest criminals in America. And a nasty shock to them all is "Scarecrow" Schofield - the world's toughest Marine and the novel's hero. A blurb on the jacket recommends Reilly's "Ice Station" for those who like "brain freezing action". If you prefer action novels over ice cream for an eskimo migraine, then "Area 7" is your book. Reilly doesn't waste time on character development - all the players are walking dossiers rather than characters, and they never buck their trend (the book starts off with Schofield's nominal superior being described as a weasel who ascension through the Marine corps has less to do with combat achievement than careerism; a civilian presidential aide comes off as one of those connected, vapid and craven morons you see in failed sitcoms. By the climactic end of "Area 7", Schofield's superior is still a martinet, while the civilian struggles feverishly to get through to his stockbroker - time to sell dollars!!!). Neither does he give much effort to an original plot. The book is mostly action, and the action won't come as a surprise to anybody who's watched late-night cable or straight-to-video movies or played computer games like "Half-Life". (Underground fortress; hide around corners, watch-out for the special troops, kill, steal their ammo, rinse and repeat.) Reilly's idea of using a heart as a fail-safe isn't new (read Nance's "Medusa's Child"; see the movie "Spawn") while Ceasar Russel looks like any of the disgruntled post-Cold War hawks in denial that populated the novels and movies of the early 1990's. Despite non-stop action - little of it will get a rise out of you, less will come off as plausibly imaginable, and almost nothing will string together to form a coherent story. Reilly crams so much action in so small a space, it's almost laughable - as if his books were oversized screenplays in search of a producer, but I can't even imagine Steven Segal giving "Area 7" a serious look. In the space of a few pages, our heroes stowaway aboard a rogue space shuttle, blast into orbit, down a Chinese space shuttle, land intact and escape from their spaceship before it's destroyed by Ceasar's gunships. "Area-7" is less of a story for a book than some high-powered 3D computer game - obviously inspired by the "Half-Life" franchise. That would be okay if the book came with the gorgeous graphics and sound and characters empowered with an engenious brand of AI. Instead, the narrative falls back on Reilly's prose which are both action-packed and an action-suckage loaded down with over-blown verbiage and technical detail. Nobody just carries a semiautomatic pistol or assault rifle - we get the make and model of just aboute every gun in the book (Reilly otherwise has these different guns performing with equal effectiveness. Reilly's brand name-dropping likely stems from the need to add substance to the hardware used in "Area-7" that he'd otherwise have to work into the prose). Reilly not only notes the model and nationality of some of his guns and, where applicable, whether the weapon is nickel-plated - but the rate of fire as well, a detail he places in such importance, you might be tempted to give him the Armalite version of the "Pepsi Challenge" (Okay Mr. Reilly, once your blindfold is on, I'm gonna cut loose with assault-rifle "A", and you tell me whether that was the MP-10 with flash suppressor, or the P-90 with a rounded handguard). Reilly needs to be very specific with names because he doesn't know how to write their varied performances into the prose. Unless he can somehow incorporate the nickel-plating of Scarecrow Schofield's sidearm into the story, Reilly won't be able to us with sentences that begin "what many people don't realize is that...." The enemy characters have less AI than you'd get in a video game - especially in there choice of weapons, rooted in a love of high-tech rather than common sense (having trapped our heroes inside of a hangared AWACS jet, Ceasar's commandos assault it with a guided-missile armed HumVee, even though its missiles can't be trusted against the plane's electronics; simply shooting the tires and its engines doesn't occur to the evil troopers). Our heroes seem to be expert at just about anything they come across (with the marines capable of flying helicopters and navigating the electronics and cockpits of the E-3 Sentry) and always seem to come out on top. By the end, I wished I had that sundae instead.
|
