Two lost mountains by Mathew reilly – Book review

The series finale is fast approaching, as fast as the end of the universe, as predicted and chased about from book 1 !!

Mathew reilly’s  Jack West jr series, was introduced to me, about 11 years back, at Mumbai airport by boredom. I stumbled on book 2, “Six sacred stones”, as the first read of this series, without knowing anything about the context or how it would evolve into so many books. I thought it was a standalone one and the summary page on the back cover set my curiosity running. The theme involved two of my favorite genres – history and thriller. The story was super-fast racy and the book got over before I knew it. I wanted to check out other books by the same author and then landed on “7 ancient wonders”. Again, having no clue that this is going to create a craze, relished reading the book, which was even quicker paced than the second one. Having read the second part first, the cliffhanger (literally and figuratively) ending of first part was a spoiler even before I started the book. I went through all other available books by the same author and could find the sense of mayhem and racy scripts across all the stories. It always involved armies, military gadgets, high voltage action, mega cruel villains, monstrous vehicles, unimaginable premises even for a fantasy script and overall super racy representation. But my firm favorite of his heroes were Jack west jr primarily followed by Scarecrow. I have read through the subsequent sequels in “Five great warriors”, “4 legendary kingdoms”,  with “Three secret cities” being the previous installment. 

You can be assured of the story line right from the summary page itself. There would be terrible villains, some of whom would kidnap close friends or relatives of jack west jr, to deter him from being a threat for their quest. It would only fuel his vigor to ensure the very same happens. And in the end, with all the R&D work done by the villains across decades, whatever they manage to find and use for their quest, he would figure them out in a matter of few conversations and would’ve every available and convenient mode of commute available for him with appropriate weapon system as and when he needs them. Jack is like superman without a kryptonite threat across the series. He could never be killed across these 6 books and might possibly die in the final one. Lily his adopted daughter, last member of the oracle clan, his wife and couple of friends form his entourage. Rest of the cast, gets added or deleted (read killed/dead) across the series. 

I happened to get the latest installment of this supposedly 7 part series, yesterday and couldn’t keep it down without finishing as always. The plot, if at all one exists, is to find the key to the Omega event, an universe threatening phenomenon which would reverse the big bang and cause the universe to contract. The “key” is hidden on a secret labyrinth accessible only by finishing a quest across 5 hidden/lost mountains across continents. Even though the title says 2 lost mounts, actually there are 5 of them, with 3 known directly to the teams involved for title justification. As always, there are some members of Jack’s troupe getting killed horribly, some thought to be dead for major part of the book magically reappearing at the exact moment needed by Jack as always, gun fights, battles destroying Kremlin, Vatican, Giza, Jerusalem and every other famous landmark known to general public. If you had gone through the previous five, none of these would surprise you in this edition. In a way this series is like reading the script of “Expendables” movie. Everyone keeps rushing to all corners of the globe and somehow always converge at same place and exact same time. All said and done, eagerly waiting for the last part of the series to confirm if it is Lily or Jack who adorns the throne to avert the doomsday.