Read-Along: Seven Ancient Wonders Part 28

This flashback within a flashback is more of a flash forward than a flashback, but is still set in 1997 and thus a flashback. That had more flashes than the Grandmaster himself... The chapter states that this part is in Count Kerry, Ireland at a place entitled, I kid you not, O'Shea Farm. Say what you like about Reilly, he does just roll with it.

Gathered are a group of "delegates" from seven different "minnows" of world affairs, waiting on an eighth. Now, these are the countries introduced earlier, in the form of our team, but then their nations of origin were irrelevant and actually didn't come up without Matthew explicitly stating it, even as he tried to raise the stakes in that ridiculously long opening sequence. I prefer this chapter, as even though it is exposition, it's a slower one, it has a little more going on in it as a result, and you can imagine it being done well in a movie. You can picture the camera panning around, showing each of the nations, introducing our characters properly with little touches, like in "Armageddon", but with unfortunately far less Buscemi.

The hero we need, and the one we deserve

You can really see it working. Unfortunately we only really get an introduction to one of the delegates at this point, the others are just nameless figures in the background, and that one is this guy:
"Their leader, a wily old Sheik from the United Arab Emirates named Anzar al-Abbas,"
Oh Matthew. I do appreciate once again that he is going all out with his cards here. His misspelling of Sheikh is rather annoying to me though. Al Abbas is the closest thing to a true supporting character for the majority of this book, everybody else (even Wizard) is an actual part of the mission, so there's nothing really bogging down the rest of the narrative, be that investigations, emotion, common sense, a comprehensible plot... The Sheikh is a minor character, all things considered, but I'm glad that we know he is wily and old, that will be important somehow, probably, when we are shown this rather than told it.
The Canadians are described as "typically, sat there calmly and patiently" as we await the arrival of their guy and the last delegate. It is nice of them to mirror the views and attitudes of Reilly's editor.
Of course, the last delegate is Jack West, accompanied by Canada's Professor Max T Epper. In the interim we're dropped some information about the capstone and some information about a bullshit prophecy. The Capstone is made of seven pieces of a diamond. When it's put together, there's a shaft running down the middle of it, with branching paths into the rest of it, a crystal at the end of each. Don't ask me how.
"This is a crucial point"
We know it is, Matthew, that's why we've picked up on it. Jesus Matthew. What makes you think I'm this stupid?
Oh, right, I'm reading "Seven Ancient Wonders" and writing a blog about it.
The book throws out some quasi-intellectual nonsense about theories regarding the Capstone, all nonsense we can safely ignore.
Wizard comes in, and there is furtive whispering. We get the line "The ones who found the Scrolls of the Museion" dropped as a whisper by one of the Arabs. I could be a dick and chalk this up as a case of Reilly giving us another, more interesting adventure, but I actually am going to be honest here: I like it. It's one of the few times we get a glimpse of actual character from these two fuck-bags. Scrolls from the legendary Library of Alexandria, long thought lost, tracked down and recovered by an old man and a burly Australian? We learn from that that Epper is some kind of classical-orientated genius, and he and West are good friends, whose reputations precede them. There's more character and creativity in that one line than we've had in ten action sequences. I now care a little bit about them.
Of course, this novel is still about a one-armed Australian and a Canadian Wizard carrying Scrolls from the Library of Alexandria on a quest to rescue a magic diamond from the Vatican, so I won't give this too much credit.
Oh, and Wizard and West are among the least ridiculous characters.
We learn that Wizard has a beard, as white as it will be in ten years (important that) and that West has lost his arm, meaning he's not yet gotten his replacement. This could be a prelude to an adventure and epic quest to find the knowledge and resources to give West an artificial arm, or perhaps that adventure retrieving the head of the Colossus of Rhodes was the prelude to the grand finale and the group had to go through hell to get him an arm in time for fun times at the end?

It's not

Then we get this bizarre line, whispered by another character:
"Epper is Professor of Archaeology at Trinity College in Dublin, a brilliant fellow, but he also has doctorates in physics and electromagnetics..."
There's a lot to unpack there. Trinity College in Dublin is a big place, I'd hope that they have more than one Professor of Archaeology, otherwise students are going to get short-changed. Is Epper THE professor, A professor or the Head of the Department? These distinctions are kind of important. Also, I see he graduated from the school of Hollywood science, where he has enough to keep the plot moving. Yes, there probably are experts in archaeology AND those other two things, but I've yet ot learn of them, and there's probably a preference form the two.
I know that they go delving into ancient tombs and underground places, technically archaeology I suppose, but the knowledge Epper spouts throughout the novel regarding the ancient civilisations they encounter and the prophecies they wrote down are far closer to things a Professor of Classics would know.
So whilst we have been given an introduction to Epper, it is inaccurate.
He and West graduate from the Indiana Jones school of Archaeology.
OH!
One more thing, Wizard speaks several languages over the course of the novel.  I'm not talking the usual stuff like French, German and the like, but Latin, Greek, Sumerian and things like that, FLUENTLY.
Not only is Epper an inventor, archaeologist, Head of Department, professor at Trinity College (I am presuming he has tenure, because OF COURSE HE WILL) adventurer, expert on ancient cultures, doctor in physics and electromagnetism (I am presuming that is what a doctorate in electromagnetics is, because my spell-checker keeps flagging it up) but he is a multi-linguist too.
This makes Epper a:

I am sure that Epper is somebody's player character from a role-playing game manifested as a character in this novel, and I'm not even mad! I love this man, he's utterly ridiculous. The rest of the team are there for representation and combat skills (except for Noddy, he's there for... well) but Wizard is just the best character, can he be the hero of this Doc Savage-esque adventure?

We are dropped hints about West's past with the American army in Iraq in 1991, then he sits down. Reilly then makes a big point that HE is the entire delegation of his nation, who have sent no other representatives when the other nations have sent diplomats and soldiers?
"That nation: Australia."
I am surprised at the restraint in Reilly for going six novels (Contest, Temple, Ice Station, Area 7, Scarecrow and Hover Car Racer, which is a whole different kettle of Speed-Racer, I mean fish!) and a novella (Hell Island, a personal favourite of mine, which actually is important to this series for reasons we shall go into one day) without making a single character, let along protagonist, Australian. Then, when he finally gives us a lead character who isn't Shane fucking Schofield or the guys from the other books, he gives us the most Australian Australian who ever Australias in Australia. The pride this man has in his nation is incredibly endearing. I wish everybody loved each other a tenth as much as Matthew loves Jack West Jr and Australia, or a hundredth as much as I love Matthew Reilly novels.
Epper, unlike Reilly, gets to the point (his actual words on one line) about why they're there:
They tracked down the wife of the new Oracle of Delphi, a woman named Malena Okombo, after she fled her abusive husband (the spoilt man) and West promised to protect her. She was kidnapped literally the day after he said this (I am serious, he says as much in the paragraph) and we get the line about "the incident in the volcano", which is a remarkably low-key way of putting it.
How wonderfully Australian.
And that single paragraph of around six lines is all we ever get of the Oracle and his wife, and her connection to Jack. Nobody forms attachments to women as quickly as Jack West Junior! The Oracle is mentioned in a single line again later in the book, but that's it for the two of them in so far as plot goes.
General Colin O'Hara is named as the head of the delegation.
Enjoy that name.
He may as well be called Brendan Seamus Dermot O'Flaherty.

The plot setting is then spouted off by Epper over the next . I'll give you the key points.
This Capstone is not only capitalised, but hunted by major sides and civilisations throughout history.
Jason and the Argonauts was a tale of searching for the Capstone.
Napolean sent dudes after it.
Caesar sent dudes after it.
Even Hitler sent a few charming gentlemen after it.
Now it's being hunted by America and "Old Europe" (the two major sides in the conflict, as established in the book's opening scene) consisting of Germany, France, Italy and the Vatican. The two sides are at each other's throats.
China and other glorious nations do not register into this debate.
The key piece of information on the Capstone is The Callamichus Text, its eponymous author having personally known the only man to possess all seven pieces of it: Alexander the Great. The ruler broke it (the Capstone, not the text) up into seven pieces and stashed them at every wonder of the world with his old friend Ptolemy I, so that the power would not be used by others.
Legend has it that he or she who manages to assemble it in time for the glorious event known as "The Tartarus Rotation" would have immense power.

And that's the plot in a nutshell.
I know that I have skimmed over a lot of this, but we'll get to the meat of the book soon, as I have rambled on for long enough.

Read-Along: Seven Ancient Wonders Part 27

From this point on the book goes into overdrive.

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:

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...

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!

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!

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.

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

Read-Along: Seven Ancient Wonders Part 26

Time to get eased back into the joys of Reilly after too long away...
This chapter begins, I kid you not, with the team leaving the chamber, "two minutes later" to meet Noddy. Noddy then immediately gets his head blown off. Putting it more accurately:
"Noddy's head exploded, bursting like a smashed pumpkin, hit by a high speed .50 caliber sniper round."

Jesus Christ Matthew. I know that we have had guys eaten by crocodiles (thanks Wizard...) and Frenchmen plummeting to their deaths after getting blasted with rubber bullets, but wow, that's really something. It's not quite Shaun Hutson levels of gruesome, but for a character we have learned is a part of the heroes and is Spanish (granted, not the most well developed character, but better than those of a Joss Whedon production) it's a pretty nasty way to go. This is the norm for the novels of this universe, unfortunately.
Somewhere, Fuzzy is letting out a sigh of relief that Noddy took the first bullet.

What follows is then West ducking the same sniper's bullet, calling out to Stretch to:
"Give me some sniping, Stretch, enough to get us out of here!"
And our Israeli friend doing just that. He immediately crouches, raises the rifle and blasts the guy out of the air.
"And two hundred meters away, the American sniper was hurled clear off his speeding swampboat, his head snapping backwards in a puff of red."
Stretch is a ludicrous character. Unprompted, in the dark, with no spotter, he did the following: unshouldered his rifle, found a target on the back of a swampboat, fired, not only hit, but hit him in the face. That is incredible, putting it mildly. But I am not mad.
What we have here is something actually good in a Reilly novel: an establishing character moment. Granted, it is a rather stupid one, but it is still something better than what we have had so far. Our team, as we know it now, consist of:
A metal armed Crocodile-wrestling Australian
His pet falcon
A confused elderly supervillain
A clumsy Irish idiot
A woman
An Arabian version of "The Flash"
A sniper able to crouch down, arm, prepare, track, and headshot a moving target in the dark from 200 meters in the space of a second
And an annoying shit
If that is not already piquing one's interest, then I don't know what else to say. In the hands of a great writer, these guys would fight crime and have zany adventures.

Unfortunately this is Matthew Reilly, so they do something boring.
They make their way to a bunch of camouflaged boats of their own, only to be encountered by more of "CIEF", led by a man named...
Cal Kallis.
The names only get better from here. Even his minor characters are amazing.
Kallis has two roles in this story: to be a minor henchman for the heroes to have a fight with halfway through, and to give us exposition straight from Kung Fury:
"Well, would you look at that. If it isn't Jack West... I still haven't seen you since Iraq in '91. You know, West, my superiors still don't know how you got away from that SCUD base outside Basra. There musta been three hundred Republican Guards at that facility and yet you got away - and managed to destroy all those missile launchers."
Can we have a book about that?
Let's just get this chapter out of the way, because we have to get to something big...

A lot of things happen over the course of these next few pages, so I'll run through them very quickly:
1. Kallis takes Princess Zoe hostage, preparing us for her role in this book
2. West hands over "The Capstone"
3. Kallis attaches it to its helicopter, which flies away with it. Another helicopter is then shot down by the Europeans, giving West and the UN Avengers time to flee.
4. Kallis is told to let them go, as West and the girl are needed alive, resulting in a swamp chase.
5. Mortars get let off, like a firework display of boredom.
6. West calls for evacuation from somebody called "Sky Monster", one of those codenames which sounds an awful lot better in your head as a 13 year old

The swamp chase does not evoke any sort of reaction from me, for reasons described in previous posts about character and pacing. Nor does this happen:

That this was the fifth image when I Googled "Hard Target Jean Claude Van Damme" is a sign that the universe loves me.

There we go.
Now we are at the important part of the book: Sky Monster.
West informs Sky Monster that they are to evacuate on (in the words of Sky Monster):
"That really tiny potholed piece of shit road? Big enough to fit two mini-Coopers side by side?"
This evacuation will be done on "The Halicarnassus".
The Halicarnassus is a Boeing 747.
This should be a great, powerful, climactic moment after some intense action. But since the chase sequence has been a muddy dirge of drudgery, with no sense of real escalation or momentum due to our "in media reas" storytelling (which leaves the viewer confused and unable to relate to the people involved, reducing the stakes to those found on my last camping trip), this climax doesn't feel earned.
I do appreciate the image of a Boeing 747 piloted by a man named "Sky Monster" landing on a country road in Africa to pick up a team of multi-national psychopaths, however.

More next time!

Read-Along: Seven Ancient Wonders - Part 25

Being the last person in a retreating formation sucks. You're covering the rear, the bad guys are right on your ass, and no matter how loyal your team is, there's always the risk of being left behind.
No, not the inner monologue of a character, but how we start this latest segment of Reilly's epic saga. If there's one thing Reilly loves more than any other in the box of action movie plot devices, it's the chase sequence. He could write them until the day he dies. Whether on foot, up mountains, in hovercraft, on a plane, on a bus (you shall see), with killer whales, with ancient man-hunting Incan panthers in the jungle, or simply with crocodiles and the German army, there is no escaping them in his books. One memorable segment of Scarecrow involves our hero (Shane "Scarecrow" Schofield) and his newfound chum "Aloysius Knight" simultaneously pursuing and evading bounty hunters along the cliffs of Italy in a sports car and a Black Hawk helicopter respectively, writing off a few dozen other luxury model sports cars in the process, for no actual benefit other than it looking pretty cool. The Slipway segment is the pinnacle of this prologue (cyborg on crocodile combat notwithstanding) in that it lasts the longest and involves the most movement, as daft as it sounds, which is saying something in a novel all about people running everywhere. It also marks the last time I will be doing this play-by-play, as I mentioned in my previous post, due simply to its sheer length and how long I have been doing this on and off. After this huge point of no return, I shall be reviewing each "bit" as it were, giving you the highlights reel now that you hopefully have an understanding as to Matthew Reilly's style of writing and how this madman's mind functions.
But before we delve into this, I would like to give you some quotes from the back of my copy of the book:

"Reilly's talent for coming up with ingenious new twists on every page is awesome. So are his characters."
The Guardian

"Reilly doesn't believe in waiting for tomorrow... adventure unlimited - cutting-edge, high-tech."
Northern Echo

"Breathless action... Explosive stuff."
Mirror

I shall ignore those last two for the moment in favour of the quote from The Guardian, of all places. The hyperbole and Reilly-speak of that quote has led me to believe that it is either from Reilly himself or a newly-sentient computer trapped in Plymouth whose only escape and recourse is to publish glowing reviews of Matthew Reilly novels in the hope that it proves itself to be insane and is thus terminated out of mercy, so as to also escape its banal and terrifying existence in a world of emptiness and horror. I am inclined to lean towards the former, for humor's sake.

By the time the tall and lanky Stretch had landed in the ante-chamber beneath the manhole, the others were already entering the slipway at the far end.
"Stretch! Move it!" West called from the slanted doorway "Zoe's gone ahead to trigger another sliding stone to run interference for us!"
As if to confirm that, a familiar whump echoed out from the upper regions of the slipway, followed by the rumble of a new sliding stone grinding down the slope.
Stretch bolted down the slipway - as a dozen wraith-like figures rained down the manhole behind him, entering the ante-chamber. 
Gunfire.
Rapid-fire.
Freed from the effects of the Warblers, the Europeans were now gladly employing live ammunition.
Stretch was done for.
He was still five steps away from the safety of the slipway when the first few Germans behind him went down in a hail of withering fire.
For just as they had fired, so too had someone else, someone standing guard in the doorway to the slipway.
Pooh Bear.
Holding a Steyr-Aug assault rifle.

Who actually thought that he was dead?
By "he", I mean Stretch, We all knew that Pooh Bear (remember him? Of course you don't, this is not a visual medium, and thus you've had no real reason to keep this guy in your head for so long, especially after his fake death earlier) would be alive and kicking due not just to the dramatic incompetence of killing him off, but because those traps have still not quite been adequately explained enough (despite the large number of pages devoted to them) for us to have any idea if they are permanent or inescapable. They clearly are, by the virtue of Pooh Bear being here.
And would Reilly have given us the facts we know about Stretch (that he is Israeli and tall) if he was to kill him off so early? Of course not. His continued survival in media reas is a given. Whilst we have no reason to care about any of these characters and what they are doing (except Horus, we love her dearly) the fact that we know something about Stretch is reason enough for him to be kept alive, even if it is solely for that big "reveal" about Pooh Bear.
It does clean up the use of Warblers and how they work, however.
Oh wait, no it doesn't
I'm sorry, but I just can't accept these Warbler things.
It's really quite jarring for the narrative, what little of it there is. Whilst this is supposed to be something we just accept and enjoy as part of the rip-roaring adventure these men and women are a part of, to showcase brilliance and creativity on the part of Wizard, it's such a transparent plot device and situational leveler that its use (or, in later instances, lack of use) always comes as a surprise and out of nowhere.
At least he gave us the all-important detail of what kind of gun Pooh Bear was holding.

This is a Steyr-Aug, if anybody was wondering, according to Google.

The heavy-bearded Arab - who had last been seen getting cut off behind the previous sliding stone - waved Stretch on.
"Come on, Israeli!" Pooh Bear growled. "Or I'll gladly leave you behind!"
Stretch staggered the last few steps into the slipway and past Pooh Bear just as  a dozen bullet-sparks exploded out all around the stone doorway.
"I thought you were dead," Stretch said, panting.
"Please! It'll take more than a rock to kill Zahir al Anzar al Abbas," Pooh Bear said in his deep gruff voice. "My legs may be stout, but they can still run with some speed. I simply outran the rock and took cover in that spiked pit, and let it pass over me. Now move!"

I have several questions
Whilst it is nice that Pooh Bear survived the trap and all, his explanation is a little simple, almost like it's the most obvious thing to do and anybody with sense would have done it. My first question is this:
how did he get here?
The team have been running through this maze pursued by the entire French paratroop division and German army, and a Jesuit, and then through the puzzle chamber with all of the water and once more past all of the crocodiles and burning oil pits. Did Pooh Bear chase behind the German army, gun most of them down with rubber bullets and crossbows, fight his way through and somehow outrun everybody to get here? Or did he loop round, fighting through the several ambushes and other troopers who would inevitably be here, simply to make a racist remark and save the Israeli sniper who surely would have seen him coming from that direction and... ah fuck it.
How fit is Pooh Bear?
He outran the boulder, got out of that pit, ran to where West's team were, avoided crocodiles and the two armies on the team's tail, reached the slipway entrance before Stretch, and is described as being "stout" and fat.
This guy is a fucking machine!

Pictured: Pooh Bear's exercise routine.

Why is he described as having a "deep voice"? He's called "Pooh Bear" for crying out loud, that kind of character cannot seem like one to growl or sound cool.

Down the slipway the Eight ran, dancing around the edge of the small spiked pit - the air filled with the rumble of the new sliding stone - then over the diorite pit that was the Second Gate. The cracked and broken remains of the first sliding stone from before lay strewn around its base.
The Eight swung over the diorite pit, hanging from the steel handholds they'd drilled into the ceiling earlier.
"Noddy!" West called into his radio mike when he landed safely on the other side. "Do you copy?"
There was no answer from Noddy, their man guarding the swamp entrance.
"It's not the Warblers!" Wizard called. "There must be someone jamming us-"
He was cut off by six Germans who raced into the slipway and opened fire-
-not a moment before the large spike-riddled sliding stone loomed up behind them, rumbling over the doorway to the ante-chamber!

Wizard is awfully protective of the Warblers he uses. The fact that he has had to point out to Jack and friends that these things specifically do not jam their communications devices implies that they did not know about this beforehand. Way to go Wizard, you dumbass.
This one's on West actually, for bringing this mad, probably senile old man with mad scientist inventions on a quest to fight the world and steal a giant diamond in an old Indiana Jones set-piece. Fuck you Jack.

The six Germans ran down the slipway, chased by the sliding stone.
When they came to the spiked pit, one lost his balance and fell in, chest first - impaling himself on the vicious spikes sticking up from the stone pit..
The others got to the larger diorite pit of the Second Gate too late.
Two managed to grip West's steel handholds for a couple of swings before all five of the remaining German troops were either impaled on the spikes on the leading edge of the sliding stone or jumped into the diorite pit to avoid those spikes just as - whoosh! - a blast of churning white water shot across the pit, sweeping them away, screaming

West's team raced ahead now. The sliding stone had given them the lead they needed. Having been blocked off momentarily behind it, and not having experienced the slipway before, the remainder of the German team were more cautious.
West's team increased their lead.
They swept down the tight vertical shaft to the spike-hole where-
Gay porn count: 29
West had correctly chosen the key of life, the ceiling of the water chamber having reset itself...
Still no radio contact with Noddy.
Across the stepping chamber, its stepping stones still submerged beneath the algae covered pool...
Still no radio contact.
Crouch-running down the length of the low tunnel, leaping over its cross-shafts.
And finally they came to the croc-filled atrium with its hand rungs in the ceiling and its vertical entry shaft at the far end.
Gay porn count: 30. He has to be doing this on purpose now.
I like how he's placed the repetition of Noddy not being able to answer on this page so close to each other. It really adds to the tension and drama, which would certainly not be better done by spreading out the lack of radio communication over multiple chapters, as opposed to merely writing about it once before, many chapters ago, so that we forget about it in the midst of all of this ridiculousness. Who thinks that Noddy is dead?

R.I.P

"Noddy, are you out there?" West called into his radio. "I repeat, Noddy, can you hear me-"
Finally he got a reply,
"Huntsman! Hurry!" Noddy's Spanish accented voice replied suddenly in his ear piece, loud and hard. "Get out! Get out now! The Americans are here!"

And that is where this chapter ends. We have one final chase sequence to come, but that's not too long in comparison to the rest of this segment. Is Noddy able to get through their jamming device? Has finally managed to turn his radio on and figure out how to work it?
This book is weird.

Read Long: Seven Ancient Wonders - Part 24

So, when we last left our intrepid adventurers (for discussions of Purge sequels and Stephen King expanded universes, more on those in the future) our hero's kidnapped child prodigy was falling thirty feet to her inevitable death.

Into the oily water near the base of the ladder, not far from the walkway that hugged the right-hand wall of the cavern.
By chance she had landed in both a croc-free and a fire-free space.
This book just keeps getting better and better. Whilst it would have been fine to have her land in the fire or the crocodile's lair and be injured or in some kind of realistic peril, this book has cranked up the madness for so long that I'm legitimately curious to see where this goes, or at least I would be if I hadn't already read this book years ago and knew the chaos which was about to unfold.
But not for long.
Take a shot.
The crocs weren't far away, and no sooner had her splash subsided than a large one saw her and charged straight for her.
Good thing it was a large crocodile, otherwise I'd be thinking that she'd be able to escape a smaller crocodile and thus there would be no tension here.
Big Ears was dangling over the edge of Level 1 directly above her, helpless. "I can't get to her!"
I gathered as much when he stated that Big Ears was helpless. Below is an artist's rendition of a helpless Big Ears:

Does this look like the face of mercy?

I wonder who among our intrepid band of explorers and treasure thieves will be in a position to rescue Lily from the crocodiles?
"I can," another voice called.
West.
He never missed a step.
Colour me sixty shades of shocked. You may also take some shots.
Running full tilt, he just leapt off the edge of Level 1 and sailed in a high-curving arc through the air toward the croc-lake below.
I'll admit, that's a pretty cool image to picture, in all of its ridiculousness. I can also safely say that "croc lake" is a perfect description of this book so far.

The big bull-croc that was charging at Lily never saw him coming. West landed square on its back, a mere foot away from Lily, and the two of them -man and croc- went under the black water's surface with a great splash.
They surfaced a second later, with the frenzied croc bucking like a bronco and West on its back, gripping it in a fierce headlock. The croc growled and roared before -crrrack- West brutally twisted its neck, breaking it. The croc went limp. West jumped clear, whisking Lily out of the water and onto the walkway flanking the lake not a moment before six crocs attacked the carcass of the dead one.
"Th... thanks," Lily gasped, wiping oil from her face and still shaking.
"Anytime, kiddo. Anytime."

I left that entire segment free of commentary so that you may truly appreciate what just happened. This will happen a lot in future editions of this novel.
Jack West Junior leapt into a lake of crocodiles, pulled one under the water (a "bull croc", no less, which sounds like a terrifying Fursona of Matthew Reilly's devillish creation) and wrestled with it for all of two seconds before snapping its neck with his robot arm.
That may be the most Australian thing ever conceived and put down on paper.
I'm willing to ignore the "kiddo" line, and the shots one must take if there is still anybody who remembers the drinking game rules for this novel without looking them up on my previous posts, just to reread that segment again.
This entire prologue has been worth it just for that.
It is all going to hurtle downhill from here.

Ground Level

The rest of the team joined them on the walkway.
Now Fuzzy and Big Ears were injured. But they were still mobile, helped along by Zoe and Wizard, while West and Lily were covered by Stretch.
They all hopscotched over the stepping-stone and its wall-hole - inside which the trapped croc still writhed behind Fuzzy's X-bar, and dashed for their manhole, just as the German engineers brought the final piece of their temporary bridge into place.
Forty armed German troops waited for the bridge to be completed. Some fired wayward crossbow bolts at the Seven, while others jammed newly found rubber-bullets into their MP7 sub-machine guns and started firing.
West and Lily came to the manhole. In they went. The others followed, while Stretch covered them. Big Ears went in... then Fuzzy... Wizard... Zoe and...
... the final piece of the bridge fell into place...
... as Stretch jumped into the manhole and the Germans charged over the bridge and the chase through the slipway system began.

That was quite a handful there, there were more "ands" than in a child's wishlist as they sit on Santa's lap. Once again I must praise the German engineering here, as well as the Pagan Germanic Gods which allowed them to conjure rubber bullets from the rubber dimension. Let's see how this "slipway chase" develops, for this is the end of the current section. If memory serves, there's a chase sequence, some hovercraft above ground, a new villain introduced, and then this segment is over and I may start reviewing this book properly, not sentence by sentence, which shall save us all a lot of time.
One final note:
This is what came up for "bull croc" in Google.

A Very Purging Christmas: A Purge Movie Outline

I love "The Purge" series.
I know that the first film is a bit of wasted potential, but it has some high points to it (Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, the dinner table scene), in particular it has the absolutely fantastic central concept of crime being legal for one night a year. Whereas the first was a simple home-invasion movie, the second, "The Purge: Anarchy" was where the series hit its stride, becoming what the first movie should have been: The Warriors, with no rules and thrice the chaos.

Though without, unfortunately, the magnificence of the Baseball Furies.

It had a sense of humour about it, it toyed with the concept, became something of a snarling, vicious look at America's underbelly. It took social commentary, horror, humanity's darkest depravity, and mixed in a few jokes, a sprinkling of chaos, the chase movie and, most importantly:

It had Frank Grillo.
Frank Grillo is as tough as a Brillo.
Add him to a movie for the extra Thrill-o.

Anyway, they're great movies. There's always a sense of fun with them and they have tiny budgets (comparatively speaking) when compared to other movies, so they are pretty much destined to forever make a profit, which is no bad thing in my book. Whilst creating franchises rather than good films is often the death knell for creativity, The Purge is one of the few series which has gotten better with each passing sequel.
But they could use something different. They could use a little extra spice in them.

Thus I would like to propose this:
A Purge Christmas movie, done as a heist.
I know, I know, the Purge is never set at Christmas time, (They are set on March 31st, if you wish to know) but still, you could release it AT Christmas, make a little bitterness for the annual festive cheer. Keep the setting, keep the director, keep the set up and keep the crazy, almost playful sense of delight and wonder in addition to the grim unmasking of human nastiness (intentional in a movie where so many wear masks) and, importantly, keep the social commentary.
It's less a social commentary and more of a vindictive drunken rant.

Here's the set up:
You set it at a supermarket/shopping mall, big on excess, branding, forced cheeriness, profits, targets, you know the kind.

It's the perfect one-stop shop for all of your needs. Our main character (though, like the best Purge movies, this will inevitably be an ensemble piece, so bear with me) would be Paul, a middle manager of the day shift here.
Paul is an average, likable guy (being white in the Purge Universe means you last longer, though thankfully this was intentional on the part of the film makers. They know that America would enact ethnic cleansing in this scenario) who has fallen on hard times. He used to have a high flying job in the city, but this is now one of the few jobs he can get. He lives with his wife, Sally, and cares for his sick mother, Beryl.

I imagine him being played by Jim True-Frost, both to fit the sort of actors these movies lure in (Ethan Hawke was something of an anomaly) and because he just looks so lovable and endearing. Who wouldn't want him to succeed? 

It's a job, and he gets by, but he finds it harder and harder each month, especially when it comes to paying rent and buying his mother's medication. He's a softly spoken guy, and he keeps to himself, he is just trying to do right.
He even owes money to a friend of his, a guy he knew from school, we shall call him Joey. Joey is a lot like Paul... in that he is white. That is where the similarities end. Joey always seems to have cash, but he's shady and a little bit of a cheeky chappie. I'm not talking about the lovable robot kin who hangs out with Die Antwoord.

I imagine him as James Ransone. Whipping his dick out is optional. Since Michael K Williams was in "Anarchy", why not make this a reunion of "The Wire"?

Joey needs the money back from Paul, as he is hoping to skip town. But he likes Paul, so he's not going to break his legs or anything like that. Instead he makes a proposition: They embark upon an enormous score on Purge Night, hitting up Paul's supermarket. Since Paul knows it well, he can not only get them in, but help them access the stock, evade the brand spanking new security system and get them out of there unharmed.
To sweeten the deal, he even gives Paul another offer: he can get Sally and Beryl on one of the buses out of town on Purge night, rumoured to take people to safe places. It's normally done by lottery for a charity/goodwill drive by the NFFA, but Joey has managed to snag some tickets.
Paul is sold, warily and tentatively, and meets the rest of those participating in the heist. There's Julie, a young lady who has just discovered she is pregnant and needs the money to get an abortion, career criminal (and Joey's brother) Charlie, who wants to make a big score and set up a business; and Kat, a woman who is actually known to Paul and got sacked a few weeks back in their huge period of lay-offs, now wanting revenge on these bastards.

Clifton Collins is so underrated... He also looks quite a bit like James Ransone. Any excuse to cast Clifton Collins Jr in something. Remember one of the generic henchmen in "Parker" or the technician in "Pacific Rim"? Both him.

And so our film begins.
Sally and Beryl get on the bus, whilst Paul promises to be back after "taking care of himself", not telling them about the heist. Yet the bus is all too convenient, Sally feels that there has to be something up here...
The gang pull up at the place and prepare. Paul is nervous, understandably, but sits in the car with Julie, the two of them bonding as the more "normal" members of the crew and doing the awkward white people shtick. They also witness some of the Purgers out for their shits and giggles good times, whilst Charlie, Kat and Joey begin to scout the place, ready to signal the pair when it's safe to go in.

To paraphrase: shit ain't right.
The store has been transformed into the perverted playground of The Manager and Security Guard, the former being a perverted parody of the American Dream, wondering why success and joy and respect have not come to him after all this time and effort and why people don't respect his power, and the latter being a power junkie on a trip, dressing as "The Sheriff" and erecting gallows, offering to release women if they perform sexual favours for him. Together the pair work with a Purge Gang, bringing people in and turning the place into an arena/hunting ground of total, utter carnage, their own personal perverted playground. It's also something of a haven for the Purge Gangs due to its security systems, protecting them from the growing Anti-Purge movement and vigilantes now roaming the streets and fighting back. In this place, with the lights down, there is only one option:

Now, the gang have clearly made an enormous mistake, but that is not the half of it. They can try to leave, but the place is in lock-down, and making matters worse: The Manager has already got a lot of innocent people in there. Joey may be leading a gang of shit-bags, but they can't just leave these people in there...

Capcom had the right idea.

Meanwhile, Sally was right about the bus. The thing is diverted and stops in a field, where more maniacs seem to pour out of the woodwork. They are here for two things: Shits and giggles. I like to imagine them led by James Remar, one of the coolest actors going, and it remains a mystery as to why he has not been in a Purge movie.

Honestly, he could just play it as Ajax again and I'd be delighted.

Thus two movies begin to unfold: A tale of redemption and heist/rescue/escape movie with out gang of misfits (later aided by mysterious anti-Purge vigilante Katee Sackhoff, who turns up dressed as Robert Ginty from "The Exterminator" and begins taking names) trying to do some good in the world and maybe grab some meds and valuables whilst they're at it; and a rip-roaring slasher movie with James Remar pursuing an elderly woman, her daughter in law and some other poor saps in the American Mid-West.

I'd pay to see that.

Stephen King

I'd like to take a break from the horrors of Temple to talk about a good author, Stephen King specifically. With news that the man has two adaptations of his work on the way ("It" and "The Dark Tower"), and a roller-coaster history of adaptations of his work, one wonders one thing:
Why isn't Hollywood doing the Stephen King expanded universe?

There are now forced efforts by studios to emulate the success of the Marvel Studios movies, notably by the Warner Brothers DC Cinematic Universe and the roster of movies flying out, but also in smaller, unusual targets such as the reboot of "The Mummy" which plans to include other classic horror film monsters (I believe that Russell Crowe will be playing Dr Jekyll and not, unfortunately, Mr. Knife from "Man with the Iron Fists")

But you can call him Jack...

Or the upcoming Robin Hood movie done by Guy Ritchie, which is rumoured to be setting the scene for a series of spin offs involving the various Merry Men. Whilst this is a terrible idea in theory, playing catch-up with Marvel and attempting to squeeze more money out of things, you could have a laugh with it: Maybe make a romantic comedy called "Red Letter Day", where Will Scarlet tries to win over a lady of high society by pretending to be a nobleman, with John Cussack as Will Scarlet.

Pictured: Actual scene

Or maybe the buddy cop adventures of Much the Miller's Son and Alan-a-Dale as they try to find fame and fortune in the big city whilst solving crimes, becoming a well-regarded detective agency but always struggling to make ends meet and hating having to be room mates. Working title:
"Much a-Dale about Nothing."

There are also further Star Wars movie spin offs on the horizon, such as the Han Solo movie, the upcoming "Rogue One" and a rumoured Boba Fett movie.
There are also rumours of a crossover between "Sinister" and "Insidious" (Insinister?) despite "Sinister 2" being worse than rabies on the scrotum and previous horror film crossovers ("Freddie Versus Jason" and "Alien Versus Predator") being both awful and not too successful.

But whilst these cynical attempts at expanded universes are bound to fail, why not actually do something with the latter idea? It's a problem of movies, but particularly horror films, that studios are not looking for good films, but the next big franchise. They want the next toy, the big monster they can plaster over things to "scare people" or the next superhero.
Since studios want a big poster/franchise monster, why not Stephen King's monsters?
He has been doing the expanded universe thing for a long, long time now. It's pretty well known that most of his novels have been set in Derry, Maine, which must be the unluckiest town since Swindon. Though there was a distinct ending to the town's chaos and depravity (more on that soon), almost all of his novels set there could feasibly happen in the same universe, due to the varying scale, tone, genre and (in a common but not unwarranted criticism) similar monsters/threats.
If you take short stories into account as well, there's a wealth of material there ripe for the picking (as told by the various movies and series made from the works) and King's nothing if not prolific. I love a bit of Stephen King, I have to admit, and studios love money/franchises.
So this would be the match for them. Why not? They're milking everything else dry, and with the aforementioned Dark Tower movie, it's only a matter of time.

Part One

To start with you'd have to keep it small scale, maybe make a simple one of his stories, set in Derry, Maine. You couldn't choose many of the later ones, and you couldn't use "Cujo", because one of the major characters of "Cujo" (spoiler, he dies) is a character in "The Dead Zone" and is mentioned in other works.

"Christine" works. John Carpenter already made a great adaptation of "Christine". For the unfamiliar, here is the set-up:
Possessed car is bought from old man by kid.
Done, easy. The car in the novel is possessed by the spirits of Roland LeBay's dead wife and daughter, and whoever owns/drives it begins to take on the man's vile personality. It's a pretty good novel, focusing on the corruption and deterioration of a young man, possessed by an evil force, which fights for his soul alongside the good people in its life. It'd make an interesting character story, and would help introduce the psychological and supernatural tones of King's work. The forces which cause the car to do this are only ever hinted at, never named, leading to set-up for the town of Derry itself. Your protagonists are normal people, they have their own lives, thus the "small town" can be established. You could drop hints throughout the film to a strange case going on alongside it, something weird in the neighbouring town, leading to the events of...

This novel was also adapted into a film, called "Silver Bullet" in the 80s, like "Christine". It's not a John Carpenter movie, but it's still pretty fun, even just for Gary Busey. This one would be a similar sort of tone to "Christine", where the former was a love story with strange goings on, this being a tale of a Marty Coslaw, a disabled boy, and his family's discomfort being around him, save for his cool uncle, Al, who is convinced that the string of brutal, horrific killings in the town are the result of a werewolf...
It's a pretty simple set-up, but tackled very well, in a typical King fashion. It has the town's loveable residents, each with their own quirks and lives and back-stories, facing off against this mythical creature as it stalks and murders them. Nobody wants to believe it, save this boy in the wheelchair, until it's too late. The protagonist is a positive role-model for disabled characters and his relationship with Al is sweet, and touching, and sets the tone for many character interactions in other books. Also, I imagined the town of Tarker's Mill as being very closeby to the town of...

Again, made into an okay movie. This one is probably one of the more famous Stephen King novels. The set-up is simple: Dr Louis Creed and his family move to Maine (see...) when he gets a job at their university, where they discover an old cemetery  tucked away in the woods behind their house, which (he is reliably informed by his loveable old neighbour Jud) was used by kids to bury their pets. Louis' wife Rachel is uncomfortable living there, naturally, especially since it means that she will have to discuss the subject of death with their son Gage. When their cat is run over and Gage is upset beyond belief, Jud takes Louis to "the real cemetrary" where he tells him to bury the cat...

The premise is nice, and it focuses on a small group of characters (Dr Creed, Rachel, Jud and Gage) without being part of the "small town" directly, though Jud grew up in such a town (Ludlow in this case) and could thus have stories or references to things such as Pennywise the Clown (from "It", my favourite Stephen King novel which itself contains references to many, many things in the King canon), the events of the Overlook Hotel in "The Shining" and a variety of other things, including the aforementioned Cycle of the Werewolf.
This is where things could also get interesting. In the novel, Dr Creed is visited by the spirit of one of his dead students, who warns him of the cemetery and its purposes. This is basically a simple haunting/visitation in the novel, but you could tie it in to the "Breaker" myths of the world (a key point of "The Dark Tower", referenced in "The Shining", "Insomnia", arguably in "The Dead Zone",  "Dr Sleep", "Everything's Eventual" and somewhat used in "Firestarter") by making the visitation something connected with Dr Creed and his "gift".
Breakers are those with psychic gifts, who are sought by dark forces who enslave them and put them to work for nefarious purposes in the events of "The Dark Tower" which I shall not get into here...
But they have to be introduced sooner or later, so why not here? In addition, "The Shop" could make their first appearance in these circumstances, though how would be strange.

See, that was one of the big problems I had with "The Shop", the sinister government agency who pop up in "Everything's Eventual", "Firestarter" and "Tommyknockers". They're supposed to be this big agency with funding and goals, but we never really see them go anywhere after those books. It's kind of a frustrating thing.

I'll leave it there for now, as we're about to get onto the big ones: "It", "The Dead Zone", "Firestarter" and "Needful Things" to name but four.

To be continued in further installments.