So, where are our intrepid children's characters, little girl and bird going to? I do hope that Matthew Reilly describes the land, which we never see again, in order to give it more character than the actual main characters.
The mountain they were approaching was the last in a long spur of peaks that ended near the Sudanese-Ethiopian border. Down through these mountains, flowing out of Ethiopia and into the Sudan, pured into the Angareb River. Its waters paused briefly in this swamp before continuing on into the Sudan where they would ultimately join the Nile.
I just have this great image of the water walking, then stopping for a rest and to take in the view, before continuing its journey.
The chief resident of the swamp was Crocodylus niloticus, the notorious Nile crocodile.
What, only one? I reckon these 9 guys can take it.
Reaching sizes of up to 6 metres, the Nile crocodile is known for its great size, its brazen cunning and the ferocity of its attack.
Twenty quid says that no main character dies at the jaws of a crocodile.
It is the most man-eating crocodilian in the world, killing upwards of 300 people every year.
While the Nine were approaching the mountain from the south, their EU rivals had set up a base of operations on the northern side, a base that looked like a veritable floating city.
Command boats, mess boats, barracks-boats and gun boats, the fleet was connected by a small network of floating bridges and all were facing the focal point of their operation: the massive coffer dam that they had built against the northern flank of the mountain.
First of all, take 2 shots for repetition of the boats and the dam. Then marvel once again at the ingenuity of these German engineers. Now, unless the group plan to be here for the thing they are looking for as well as set up an international centre of study for this great temple where you believe the head of the Colossus of Rhodes now lies, why set up a floating city? That's an awful lot of effort. I mean, I'd like to see it as a sit-com where the world's great thinkers (played by John Goodman, Kat Dennings, Dominique Pinon and Jamie Pressly) must put up with each other's bad habits and the foibles of a floating city. Shenanigans ensue.
It was, one had to admit, an engineering masterpiece:
TOO FUCKING RIGHT!
a 100 metre-long, 40 foot-high curved retaining dam that held back the waters of the swamp to reveal a square stone doorway carved into the base of the mountain 40 feet below the waterline.
That's... what.
The artistry on the stone doorway was extraordinary.
No, don't go on about the artistry now that you've left that fact hanging over us like a bad smell!
Egyptian hieroglyphs covered every square inch of its frame -but taking pride of place of the lintel stone that surmounted the doorway was a glyph often found in pharonic tombs in Egypt:
Just going to forget about that doorway, then? Alright. Now, there's a picture (take a shot) here, which you don't need to worry about because he describes it anyway, but I'd like to draw attention to the fact that Matthew Reilly has used the word "surmounted" here, which is oddly eloquent for him.
Two figures, bound to a staff bearing the jackal-head of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the Underworld.
Hmm, he actually got Anubis correct. No complaints here. So we have figured out that he has the capacity to research something.
This was what the afterlife had in store for grave robbers -eternal bondage to Anubis. Not a nice way to spend eternity. The message was clear: Do not enter.
I don't know. There are worse ways. I could make an easy Matthew Reilly joke here, but I'll let you use your imagination, which will have been stunted by the book thus far.
The structure inside the mountain was an ancient mine delved during the time during Ptolemy I, around the year 300BC. During the great age of Egypt, the Sudan was known as "Nubia", a word derived from the Egyptian word for gold: nub.
Okay, I can't find that. I've looked, and "nebu" is apparently the Egyptian symbol for gold. And whilst it is nice for Matthew to once again pad out his book with sparse detail, he is still telling us absolutely nothing. It's a credit to his writing style that he can pepper his work with supposed detail, yet still leave us completely in the dark about what this place is. It's like a Government Minister. Oh, wait, this next sentence is important, it's on a separate line.
Nubia: the land of gold.
Thanks again, I'd never have gotten why they called it "Nubia."
And indeed it was.
Take a shot. If you're not giggling at that stupid sentence.
It was from Nubia that the Egyptians sourced the gold for their many temples and treasures. Records unearthed in Alexandria revealed that this mine had run out of gold 70 years after its founding, after which it had gained a second life as a quarry for the rare hardstone: diorite. Once it was exhausted of diorite -around the year 226 BC- Pharaoh Ptolemy III decided to use the quarry for a very special purpose. To this end, he dispatched his best architect -Imhotep V- and force of 2000 men.
They would work on the project in absolute secrecy for three years.
Matt, we don't need cliff hangers UPON cliff hangers. We've enough trouble with this haphazard approach as it stands, without you jumping back in time to add "tension" to the mystery of this temple (though, funnily enough, the book "Temple" is way, way, way worse for it, and we thankfully have no flashbacks for another 30 pages yet...)
So, three chapters in and what have we learned? Nine dudes we know absolutely nothing about, save that one is old, one is a woman and one is a little girl, are running through a swamp.
Three chapters.
I would say it gets better from here, but that would be a lie.
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