7 Deadly Wonders

Having recently read Matthew Reilly's Great Zoo of China, it didn't take my husband long to track down one of his older books, 7 Deadly Wonders (#483).  For me, it was equally entertaining, with its premise of tracking down the missing Golden Capstone which once adorned the Great Pyramid of Egypt.  It had been split into seven sections and concealed in the ruins of the remaining Wonders of the Ancient World. 

No pressure in this novel, except there are three competing teams searching for the pieces, and they must be assembled on the top of the Great Pyramid before noon on the day the Tartarus Sunspot aligns perfectly with earth (once every 4,500 years), or the world will end.  Of course, there is a bonus for anyone who does succeed in this task: political power for a thousand years, or a time of unprecedented peace - owner's choice.  For Jack West, Jr., it's a matter of stopping the evil Americans or the equally nasty European Union faction headed up by a sinister cardinal.  Jack West's alliance represents smaller nations which stand to be wiped out if either of the other two teams beat them to the prize.  And of course, each one of the pieces of the Golden Capstone have been extravagantly booby-trapped by the Egyptian architects who designed their resting places.  Can any team possibly survive?  To up the ante, there are children involved in the hunt.

It's high octane, non-stop entertainment with an ever-mounting body count interspersed with all kinds of arcane trivia regarding the real Seven Ancient Wonders of the World.  As Reilly points out through his characters, only one of these survives today: the Great Pyramid of Egypt.  Since obelisks are important to this story, it's incumbent on me to refute one of these fascinating bits of trivia.  In the novel, he says that the top of the Great Pyramid with the Capstone surmounting it is exactly the same height above sea level as the Washington Monument.  While that may have been true previously, after the earthquake which damaged it and repairs were completed, it was recently revealed that the Washington Monument is now 9 inches shorter than originally measured.  Sorry if that throws any mystic interpretations out of whack, Mr. Reilly!  Still a fun read, though.