TEMPLE
By: Matt Reilly
St. Martin's Press, New York
1999
“Deep in the Jungles of Peru the race of the
century is under way to locate a legendary Incan idol.
An artifact carved out of a strange kind of stone, the idol could
be used as the basis for a terrifying new weapon…” So reads the
endpaper of Matt Reilly’s high adrenalin, high testosterone thriller, Temple.
Reilly introduces the reader to his hero, William Race, a
professor of ancient languages, who is hired by the U.S. government to
translate an ancient document. This
document will lead Race and an intrepid band of scholars and military to
an even more ancient temple in the Andes, wherein lies the
aforementioned Inca idol. But
before the world can be saved from the awesome power of the doomsday
device that can be activated only by the stone from which the idol was
made, Race and company face man-eating crocodiles, giant black leopards
with almost human-like intelligence, anacondas and best of all, really
evil neo-Nazis.
This is
not a book to read if you wish to learn more about Inca archaeology (or
any other kind of archaeology), but it can easily become a guilty
pleasure. The narrative
races along at breakneck speed (with the quality of the writing often
falling in its wake) and William Race, who seems at first to be a bit of
a Casper Milquetoast, quickly turns into an action hero that makes
Indiana Jones look like a wimp. You
may not remember much of the plot five minutes after you’ve finished
reading Temple, but you will have a
heck of a good time while you’re reading it!
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