The three secret cities by matthew reilley - book review

Not sure when was the last time I read a 400 page book in 5 hours’ time. This is one author, I couldn’t resist, just for the kind of locations and premises he comes up with in this series. What started as a casual airport read, when I stumbled on “Seven ancient wonders” had progressed onto “Six sacred stones”, “Five greatest warriors”, “Four legendary kingdoms” and has now settled onto this one. It’s not just with numerals on title, that this author carry the similarity with Chetan Baghat but also on the almost B-grade-ish way in which he lets his hero, Jack West solve the impossible problems. If the quest involves finding the lost tomb of Jesus, call up Jack. Is it related to identifying Atlantis- the lost city, El Dorado or Thule, call up Jack. He would even find all three of them in one shot on the same day itself. And even better, just give him a couple of ancient scrolls and books and some random imagery, he can save the earth from catastrophe, which the super villains in the series, with all their wealth and power, would fail to achieve. Throw him from an inverted pyramid (don’t ask why and how he climbed down one), bury him alive in concrete mix, chop off his limbs or simple, shoot him straight, he would survive each and everything and would come up alive and kicking.

Story wise, it’s an ongoing series, where our ancients have created a machine to protect earth from planetary alignments and risks from outer space. It involves almost every known monument and of historical importance and the quest takes the hero, his entourage and the readers across the globe. On the way, there are some interesting tit bits of history, alongside really crude drawings of how the places look like, where the major events takes place. Every time, some or other major character is fatally wounded only to be resurrected towards the end. If at all there are any characters that get killed, you can be for sure that they would be of literally no importance to the storyline, but for the emotional connect within the characters. And the punishments and fights get gruesome with every book in the series. There is an Indian connection as well, with Alagh – the scrapyard of the world, being described as Hell or underworld – literally. Despite all its crudeness and flaws, one has to doff the hat for the electric pace with which he moves the story. There is never a minute of rest, neither for the characters, nor for the readers and the sequence moves at break neck speed.

Gils verdict – it may not be your top of the shelf classic literature. But for adrenaline junkies who thrive on pulp fiction material with ample doses of history and myth thrown in, its unputdownable.