From the Publisher

AN ANCIENT SECRET . . . A TEAM OF HEROES . . . THE ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME

A legend of the ancient world decrees that every 4,500 years, a terrible solar event will wreak worldwide destruction . . . but whoever sets the Golden Capstone atop the Great Pyramid at Giza will avert disaster and gain the ultimate prize: a millennium of world dominance.

Now the Sun is turning once again and nation will battle nation to retrieve the missing Capstone . . . but a group of small nations, led by super-soldier Jack West Jr., bands together to prevent any one country from attaining this frightening power. Thus the greatest treasure hunt of all time begins — an adrenalinefueled race on a global battlefield.

From the Colossus of Rhodes to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to the Great Egyptian Pyramid itself, unlock the thrills of

SEVEN DEADLY WONDERS

Publishers Weekly

Full-stop "Screams. Splashing. Crunching. Blood" punctuate and come to epitomize Reilly's (Area 7; Ice Station) latest video game-style thriller about a race to find the seven pieces of the Golden Capstone that once sat atop the Great Pyramid at Giza. Two millennia ago, Alexander the Great broke the Capstone into seven pieces and hid them in the seven ancient wonders of the world. According to legend, whoever finds and replaces them during a rare solar event called "Tartarus Rotation" (predicted for March 20, 2006) could secure a thousand-year reign of absolute power. The race is on, and among the contenders are the United States, a coalition of European nations (and the Vatican), an Islamic terrorist group, and a team of smaller nations (including Canada, Ireland and New Zealand) led by the novel's hero, Australian Jack West Jr., a next-generation Indiana Jones. The Europeans, goaded by evil Jesuit Francisco del Piero, and the U.S., headed by Jack's nemesis Col. Marshall Judah, want the Capstone for their own aggrandizement, while Jack's noble team believes it's too potent to belong to any one superpower. The "greatest treasure hunt in history"-a nonstop roller-coaster ride that lurches around the globe-might make a summer blockbuster-if American audiences will swallow their compatriots as the baddies. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Maybe it is the attack on Guantanamo Bay to capture a bin Laden-type terrorist, or perhaps it is the theft of a priceless artifact from the Louvre. It could be the umpteenth escape from certain death, but this book is a roller coaster of a ride. Reilly, author of the recent best-selling teen novel Hover Car Racer, takes the nonstop action of that story, adds ten times more death-defying stunts, and comes up with this convoluted tale of the search for unimaginable power located within remnants of the Seven Wonders of the World. Jack West, an Australian commando with an artificial "superarm," leads a small group of soldiers who come from countries still friendly with the United States but irritated by its actions in Iraq. With them is Lily, a precocious little girl who is the daughter of an oracle and who knows the secrets of the Wonders. Trying to explain this "thrill-in-every-paragraph" story read by William Dufris is impossible, but it's jam-packed with just enough testosterone to keep male listeners demanding more escapist fiction from Reilly. Joseph L. Carlson, Allan Hancock Coll., Lompoc, CA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The names may have changed but the game remains the same as Reilly (Scarecrow, 2004, etc.) offers up another absurdly over-the-top adventure with this globetrotting thriller. It's 2006, just a week before the sun's hottest point-the Tartarus Sunspot-rotates into direct alignment with the earth, and governments all around the world are a-twitter about the long-lost Golden Capstone-the precious piece of gold that once sat atop Egypt's famed Great Pyramid at Giza. Why? Well, for starters, unchallenged global domination. A few thousand years back, Alexander the Great split the Capstone into seven parts, secreting them away in the ancient architectural marvels known today as the Seven Wonders of the World. Now, whoever pieces them back together in time for the Tartarus Sunspot's rotation will rule the world for 1,000 years. Which, of course, is why Australian commando Jack West Jr. is racing around the globe with a crack squad of soldiers and scholars, gunning to keep the prize from falling into the wrong hands. Along the way, the team battles shady Catholic priests, sadistic Special Ops sergeants, 3,000 or so Guantanamo Bay marines and more superheated lava slides than you can count. No one would mistake Reilly for a master stylist, but he certainly manages to keep the action coming, with the book's endless run of treasure hunts, high-speed chases and gun battles reading like the wet dream of some especially militaristic adolescent. Ridiculous, but fun.

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Read an Excerpt

ANGEREB SWAMP

BASE OF THE ETHIOPIAN HIGHLANDS

KASSALA PROVINCE, EASTERN SUDAN

MARCH 14, 2006, 4:55 P.M.

6 DAYS BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS

The nine figures raced through the crocodile-infested swamp on foot, moving fast, staying low.

The odds were stacked against them.

Their rivals numbered in excess of two hundred men.

They had only nine.

Their rivals had massive logistical and technical support: choppers, floodlights for night work, and boats of every kind — gunboats, houseboats, communications boats, three giant dredging barges for the digging, and that wasn't even mentioning the temporary dam they'd managed to build.

The Nine were only carrying what they'd need inside the mine.

And now — the Nine had just discovered — a third force was on its way to the mountain, close behind them; a much larger and nastier force than that of their immediate foes, who were nasty enough.

By any reckoning it was a hopelessly lost cause, with enemies in front of them and enemies behind them, but the Nine kept running anyway.

Because they had to.

They were a last-ditch effort.

The last throw of the dice.

They were the very last hope of the small group of nations they represented.

Their immediate rivals — a coalition of European nations — had found the northern entrance to the mine two days ago and were now well advanced in its tunnel system.

A radio transmission that had been intercepted an hour before revealed that this pan-European force — French troops, German engineers, and an Italian project leader — had just arrived at the ThirdGate inside the mine. Once they breached that, they would be inside the Grand Cavern itself.

They were progressing quickly.

Which meant they were also well versed in the difficulties found inside the mine.

Fatal difficulties.

Traps.

But the Europeans' progress hadn't been entirely without loss: three members of their point team had died gruesome deaths in a snare on the first day. But the leader of the European expedition — a Vatican-based Jesuit priest named Francisco del Piero — had not let their deaths slow him down.

Single-minded, unstoppable, and completely devoid of sympathy, del Piero urged his people onward. Considering what was at stake, the deaths were an acceptable loss.

The Nine kept charging through the swamp on the south side of the mountain, heads bent into the rain, feet pounding through the mud.

They ran like soldiers — low and fast, with balance and purpose; ducking under branches, hurdling bogs, always staying in single file.

In their hands, they held guns: MP7s, M16s, Steyr AUGs. In their thigh holsters were pistols of every kind.

On their backs: packs of various sizes, all bristling with ropes, climbing gear, and odd-looking steel struts.

And above them, soaring gracefully over the treetops, was a small shape, a bird of some sort.

Seven of the Nine were indeed soldiers.

Crack troops. Special forces. All from different countries.

The remaining two members were civilians, the elder of whom was a long-bearded sixty-five-year-old professor named Maximilian T. Epper, call sign: Wizard.

The seven military members of the team had somewhat fiercer nicknames: Huntsman, Witch Doctor, Archer, Bloody Mary, Saladin, Matador, and Gunman.

Oddly, however, on this mission they had all acquired new call signs: Woodsman, Fuzzy, Stretch, Princess Zoe, Pooh Bear, Noddy, and Big Ears.

These revised call signs were the result of the ninth member of the team:

A little girl of ten.

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, poured the Angereb River. Its waters paused briefly in this swamp before continuing on into the Sudan, where they would ultimately join the Nile.

The chief resident of the swamp was Crocodylus niloticus, the notorious Nile crocodile. Reaching sizes of up to twenty feet, the Nile crocodile is known for its great size, its brazen cunning, and its ferocity of attack. It is the most man-eating crocodilian in the world, killing upwards of three hundred 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 gunboats, the small fleet connected by a network of floating bridges and all facing toward the focal point of their operation: the massive coffer dam that they had built against the northern flank of the mountain.

It was, one had to admit, an engineering masterpiece: a 110-yard-long, forty-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 forty feet below the waterline.

The artistry on the stone doorway was extraordinary.

Egyptian hieroglyphs covered every square inch of its frame — but taking pride of place in the very center of the lintel stone that surmounted the doorway was a glyph often found in pharaonic tombs in Egypt:

Two figures, bound to a staff bearing the jackal head of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the Underworld.

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.

The structure inside the mountain was an ancient mine delved during the reign of Ptolemy I, around the year 300 B.C.

During the great age of Egypt, the Sudan was known as "Nubia," a word derived from the Egyptian word for gold: nub.

Nubia: the Land of Gold.

And indeed it was. It was from Nubia that the ancient Egyptians sourced the gold for their many temples and treasures.

Records unearthed in Alexandria revealed that this mine had run out of gold seventy years after its founding, after which it gained a second life as a quarry for the rare hard stone, diorite. Once it was exhausted of diorite — around the year 226 B.C. — Pharaoh Ptolemy III decided to use the mine for a very special purpose.

To this end, he dispatched his best architect — Imhotep V — and a force of two thousand men.

They would work on the project in absolute secrecy for three whole years.

Copyright © 2006 by Karanadon Entertainment Pty Ltd.

Read a Sample Chapter

Seven Deadly Wonders

Simon & Schuster

ANGEREB SWAMP

BASE OF THE ETHIOPIAN HIGHLANDS

KASSALA PROVINCE, EASTERN SUDAN

MARCH 14, 2006, 4:55 P.M.

6 DAYS BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS

The nine figures raced through the crocodile-infested swamp on foot, moving fast, staying low.

The odds were stacked against them.

Their rivals numbered in excess of two hundred men.

They had only nine.

Their rivals had massive logistical and technical support: choppers, floodlights for night work, and boats of every kind -- gunboats, houseboats, communications boats, three giant dredging barges for the digging, and that wasn't even mentioning the temporary dam they'd managed to build.

The Nine were only carrying what they'd need inside the mine.

And now -- the Nine had just discovered -- a third force was on its way to the mountain, close behind them; a much larger and nastier force than that of their immediate foes, who were nasty enough.

By any reckoning it was a hopelessly lost cause, with enemies in front of them and enemies behind them, but the Nine kept running anyway.

Because they had to.

They were a last-ditch effort.

The last throw of the dice.

They were the very last hope of the small group of nations they represented.

Their immediate rivals -- a coalition of European nations -- had found the northern entrance to the mine two days ago and were now well advanced in its tunnel system.

A radio transmission that had been intercepted an hour before revealed that this pan-European force -- French troops, German engineers, and an Italian project leader -- had just arrived at the Third Gate inside the mine. Once they breached that, they would be inside the Grand Cavern itself.

They were progressing quickly.

Which meant they were also well versed in the difficulties found inside the mine.

Fatal difficulties.

Traps.

But the Europeans' progress hadn't been entirely without loss: three members of their point team had died gruesome deaths in a snare on the first day. But the leader of the European expedition -- a Vatican-based Jesuit priest named Francisco del Piero -- had not let their deaths slow him down.

Single-minded, unstoppable, and completely devoid of sympathy, del Piero urged his people onward. Considering what was at stake, the deaths were an acceptable loss.

The Nine kept charging through the swamp on the south side of the mountain, heads bent into the rain, feet pounding through the mud.

They ran like soldiers -- low and fast, with balance and purpose; ducking under branches, hurdling bogs, always staying in single file.

In their hands, they held guns: MP7s, M16s, Steyr AUGs. In their thigh holsters were pistols of every kind.

On their backs: packs of various sizes, all bristling with ropes, climbing gear, and odd-looking steel struts.

And above them, soaring gracefully over the treetops, was a small shape, a bird of some sort.

Seven of the Nine were indeed soldiers.

Crack troops. Special forces. All from different countries.

The remaining two members were civilians, the elder of whom was a long-bearded sixty-five-year-old professor named Maximilian T. Epper, call sign: Wizard.

The seven military members of the team had somewhat fiercer nicknames: Huntsman, Witch Doctor, Archer, Bloody Mary, Saladin, Matador, and Gunman.

Oddly, however, on this mission they had all acquired new call signs: Woodsman, Fuzzy, Stretch, Princess Zoe, Pooh Bear, Noddy, and Big Ears.

These revised call signs were the result of the ninth member of the team:

A little girl of ten.

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, poured the Angereb River. Its waters paused briefly in this swamp before continuing on into the Sudan, where they would ultimately join the Nile.

The chief resident of the swamp was Crocodylus niloticus, the notorious Nile crocodile. Reaching sizes of up to twenty feet, the Nile crocodile is known for its great size, its brazen cunning, and its ferocity of attack. It is the most man-eating crocodilian in the world, killing upwards of three hundred 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 gunboats, the small fleet connected by a network of floating bridges and all facing toward the focal point of their operation: the massive coffer dam that they had built against the northern flank of the mountain.

It was, one had to admit, an engineering masterpiece: a 110-yard-long, forty-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 forty feet below the waterline.

The artistry on the stone doorway was extraordinary.

Egyptian hieroglyphs covered every square inch of its frame -- but taking pride of place in the very center of the lintel stone that surmounted the doorway was a glyph often found in pharaonic tombs in Egypt:

Two figures, bound to a staff bearing the jackal head of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the Underworld.

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.

The structure inside the mountain was an ancient mine delved during the reign of Ptolemy I, around the year 300 B.C.

During the great age of Egypt, the Sudan was known as "Nubia," a word derived from the Egyptian word for gold: nub.

Nubia: the Land of Gold.

And indeed it was. It was from Nubia that the ancient Egyptians sourced the gold for their many temples and treasures.

Records unearthed in Alexandria revealed that this mine had run out of gold seventy years after its founding, after which it gained a second life as a quarry for the rare hard stone, diorite. Once it was exhausted of diorite -- around the year 226 B.C. -- Pharaoh Ptolemy III decided to use the mine for a very special purpose.

To this end, he dispatched his best architect -- Imhotep V -- and a force of two thousand men.

They would work on the project in absolute secrecy for three whole years.

Copyright © 2006 by Karanadon Entertainment Pty Ltd.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Seven Deadly Wonders by Matthew Reilly Copyright © 2005 by Matthew Reilly. Excerpted by permission.
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