This chapter/segment is titled:
"A Previous Mission. The Volcano"
So you know that this is going to be something special. On that front, it does not disappoint...
Ten years earlier in the exotic locale of "North Eastern Uganda", we are introduced to Jack West. Oh, wait, I'm sorry, we are introduced to a drawing done on a computer of "The Birthing Chamber". In a first for this blog (surprising actually) I have attempted to recreate that drawing/diagram in Microsoft Paint. I have changed almost nothing from the original source, right down to the labels. The one in the book had about nine minutes more effort put into it than mine:
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| This took me a minute. It is only slightly less accurate. |
Look at that.
That, or some variant of it, is the first thing in this chapter, before anything else. That right there is the reason that I love Matthew Reilly. You can look at that and immediately know how this goes down, right?
Oh you poor, sweet, innocent reader...
Oh you poor, sweet, innocent reader...
I am tempted to end this entry right now, and leave you with that beautiful image. But much like the rabbit hole, this volcano goes deeper, a lot deeper...
We establish with our first line (after the usual stamps denoting time and location like an episode of 24) that this is in West's dreams. He is running towards the sound of booming drums with Wizard (the first recorded case of the hero running INTO the supervillain's death fortress accompanied by the actual supervillain) and we must immediately take two more shots for:
"It's hot."
"Hot as hell."
Those sentences are right after each other. I would call out Reilly on this being superfluous, ludicrous writing, were it not a beautiful use of symbolism and metaphor. Much like "The Divine Comedy", in many regards... Such restraint and subtlety (as much as one can expect) from Reilly) in this chapter. Maybe it all goes up from here?
"And since it's inside a volcano, it even looks like Hell."
The immediate next line.
I know that I said I wasn't going to go line by line anymore, but I had to for that part. You were doing SO well Matthew, you were SO close!
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| Come on Reilly, you can do it! |
In the next few lines we learn that West is 27 here (set in 1996, the bulk of the novel is in 2006, making West 37 at the time of the present day adventure. Hey, it's not much information, but I will take what I can get) and he and Wizard go running down this corridor. In a single paragraph they deactivate some unspecified traps, have Horus swoop form his shoulders to tear into some crazy bats (a sequence given more detail than the booby traps, by which I mean it is given two lines rather than one) and reach a pipe which West is ready to slide down.
I love Horus.
He makes it down the pipe and enters what can only be described as a Doc Savage movie. There are priests arranged in a circle around the altar including the line, I shit you not:
"Six of the priests pound on huge lion skin drums"
Come on Matthew.
I know you're going for an aesthetic and theme here, and I don't want to be the leftist libtard sackless cuck that I am often called on Doctor Who forums when I acknowledge the existence of Jodie Whitaker, but isn't this a LITTLE close to the bone?
I'm not trying to be that guy here, I want to be along for the ride, but we are then dropped this gem:
"Incongruously, surrounding the circle of robed priests, all facing outwards, are sixteen paratroopers in full battle-dress uniforms. They are French, all brandishing FN-MAG assault rifles, and their eyes are deadly."
The jarring contrast between chanting robed priests and armed French troopers in modern day gear is something interesting, which of course is never dwelt upon. Who are these guys? Why the French? I know that the French were the villains of "Ice Station" (his first Shane "Scarecrow" Schofield novel, which was an entirely different salad of mixed nuts and batshit) but why are they in Nigeria? Do they work for the Commonwealth nations mentioned in the previous chapter? If so, why aren't there a shed-load of German engineers?
And do you have to call their guns ugly, Matthew? That is just mean, and a rather low blow. We all know that these guys are going to get murdered like a Jean Reno movie post 2001, so why insult and belittle them before that?
Let us end these unrealistic assault rifle beauty standards and have a world where all rifles are judged on their merits! Fight the Assault Rifle Patriarchy!
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| This is what came up on Google. Any experts feel free to correct me. I have no idea what you are talking about Matthew: I'd buy that thing a dinner any day of the week. Of course, it's French so it'll call the main "pedestrian" and "derivative", but it's the thought that counts, right? |
"Their eyes are deadly" is also the title of my forthcoming experimental New Retro Wave Album.
The woman is basically tied to this table in the middle with a ray of light shining down and ready to give birth. We know this because of the following lines:
"And one other thing:
The woman is pregnant.
More than that.
More than that.
She is in the process of giving birth...
It's obviously painful, but not the only reason for her screams."
I am glad that Matthew Reilly is not a doctor. For many reasons, but that last line is one of them. And no, she is not screaming in existential dread or at the turmoil of being unable to find a good reason why she is locked in a volcano with a group of Nigerians and French Paratroopers, but because they are about to take her baby.
The lead priest is revealed to be Del Piero, who takes the baby (take another three shots for three sentences under four words long) which happens to be a boy, then he leaves the chamber WITH the troopers, and stamps on another stone for good measure.
Okay, I did not see that coming.
West mentions how he was to be there for the woman and failing (yes, I don't trust West with a fruit knife, let alone bodyguard duty) as Wizard ponders on "the Vatican and the French joining forces", which is an actual line which an actual human being has written, and then swings across the chamber with his grappling hook gun to rescue this woman, about whom we know nothing.
Much like the previous part, all of the details are not revealed to us. This is not a complex, Ellery Queen-esque mystery whereby the pieces are there for us to ponder and feel glad that we have uncovered a glorious puzzle; but rather more akin to watching an episode of "Sherlock" backwards in a wind tunnel with the sound muted as you try to come down from a crippling addiction to Benadryl, and somebody occasionally splices footage from Jean Claude Van Damme movies into the middle of it.
Lava pours in and the ceiling drops like my interest in the book, when suddenly daring Jack West reaches the woman (named Malena, apparently), apologizes to her for being dead, and realizes that there is a second baby inside of her. He calls over Wizard to help him deliver this kid.
"the two men perform a Caesarean delivery on the dead woman's body using West's Leatherman knife."
I'm glad that we know it's a Leatherman, otherwise all of this wouldn't make sense.
The tow of them worry about how to escape the ceiling dropping, lava filling chamber without dying and with this little girl still intact, when we get what I have eagerly been awaiting this entire chapter.
West, I shit you not, notices a hole behind the lava. Wizard senses what this moron is about to do and advises him against it; but Jack only says:
"Can you build me a new arm, Max?"
Wizard basically agrees, promising him a better arm as if he were speaking to a child or a Matthew Reilly character, and West subsequently plunges his arm into the hole to find a lever, which turns off the lava flow.
He
Puts
His
Arm
Into
The
Hole
And
Turns
Off
The Lava
Flow
If that image is not stupidly, ridiculously awesome enough for you, here it is retold vie the medium of Jean Claude Van Damme
I love this book so much
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