One impossible Labyrinth by Matthew Reilley – book review

Finally the series comes to an end which started with “7 deadly wonders”. Like Chetan Baghat novels, which always have a numeral in its name, the Jack West Jr series of Reilley make it easier for the readers with the chronological arrangement by their naming conventions. I actually started with “Six sacred stones” the second book of the series and has been following this series since last 10 plus years. On the way to Mumbai from Chennai had stumbled upon this book on a HigginBothams and the 2.5 hour flight went faster than usual with its company. I was given the “Five great warriors” as a birthday gift by G3 (I guess), a blog mate who is no longer in the blogspace. The entire series can actually split into 2 quests with 7th, 6th and 5th of the series dedicated to saving the earth from Dark sun, while from 4th onwards till the last one, it is about saving the entire universe from an Omega event, by activating a machine, spread across several cities and the entire world. Almost 90% of each novel involves chase sequences, dare devil stunts, destruction of ancient sites and historical monuments, logic defying sequences and extremely long shot of deductions resulting in resolution of centuries old riddles. You’ve to give rest to that part of your brain hemisphere that deals in logic and indulge the pleasure seeking one. Adrenaline rush is guaranteed across each of the books and as admitted by the author himself, from 4 to one, the series is actually a single book chopped into 4 pieces. You get a feel of continuous chapters being read, even though each of them are almost a year later in publication. 

One impossible labyrinth, literally takes off from the last line of the previous book “2 lost mountains”, where Jack and his team are about to enter the labyrinth as the 4th team with all 3 villain groups ahead them by almost 24 hours, aided by the skull skin map of Imhotep, the master engineer of pharaohs of Egypt. At the early stages in the maze, Jack loses his wife Zoe to one of the traps. How he manages to reach the summit, the throne of Death, with support from his team at impossible situations and scenarios form the rest of the story. Jack and possibly most of the characters in the book are Rajinikanth plus Salman khan in strength. Not even nuclear blast can destroy them. They can’t be shot, buried, stabbed, blasted or even thrown away from moving plane or off a cliff. Somehow and everyhow possible, they will survive. As confessed by the author, he doesn’t like killing his favorite characters and that includes the villain ones as well. Even in the last book, with his face almost blown off, the villain makes a sudden dash at the legs of the hero, trying to pull him down a cliff only for the hero to kick him back into oblivion. These kind of repeated stunts apart, the series is for those who wouldn’t mind masala movies filled with action scenes from scene one. The ending of this book is kind of  philosophical and quite different from the usual pattern that leads up to it. For all of the chases across 4 books, the ending was kind of dull and makes one wonder was it really worth it. The Omega event is supposed to trigger a violent pullback at cosmic level that would suck in the universe. For an event of such a big shape and scope, the amount of trouble the team has to endure and the end result was timid at best. It does resemble some of the early works by the same author as stand alone novels, especially the “Tournament” where species or beings from different planets are brought to compete against each other to decide the ultimate winner. As with his other novels, this one does involve some weird locations that would never be possible logically for the scale and size being described in the book. There is an entire city under red sea where the event takes place with an oil rig and aircraft carrier falling down on either side of it. Pictorially, the entire city is made to look like a building, while the ship and rig are depicted to be as big as the city in itself!! When imagination runs wild, it is difficult to match it in real time!! 

Matthew Reilley has been one author I’ve read almost all of his novels published so far, despite cribbing about every single one of them. It had been an interesting journey following up on Jack west Jr. and his escapades across the last dozen years and the last one I finished overnight. Bang at 4 AM I finished the book, exactly 10 minutes prior to the Omega event as mentioned on the book. An assured page turner, that would put Kolly/Bolly/Tollywood masala movies to shame.