Now into his 7th book Matthew Reilly has developed a faithful fan base thanks to his winning formula of providing non-stop action all of the time. Readers hungry for a chance to stick their brains into neutral, who are prepared to believe in the absolute unbelievable and who already know what the out come of the story their reading is going to be will love this book.

If you've never experienced a Matthew Reilly adventure before, the following plot summary will not only serve you for this book but for most of his others too - only the names have been changed.

The arrival of Tartarus is approaching. This is a once in 5000 year event when the sun will pass perfectly perpendicularly over the Great Pyramid of Giza, where a sunspot will be aligned with the tip of the pyramid. Missing from the top of the pyramid is a golden capstone, said to contain a crystal centre that will capture the sunlight, harnessing the energy, the wielder of which will rule the earth for a thousand years.

The capstone was separated into 7 pieces thousands of years ago and hidden at the sites of what we now know as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The race is on to find and reassemble the capstone atop the Great Pyramid with 3 teams participating. There's a team of Europeans (French, Germans and Italians), there is a US team both of these mighty forces with endless resources, and then there is a tiny team of 9 headed by Jack West Jr who are searching on behalf of an alliance of smaller nations - this last team may be identified as The Good Guys.

The actual details behind why there is a frantic race taking place is largely inconsequential. The important thing to be aware of is that the stakes are enormous, the odds are stacked terribly against The Good Guys and their enemies will stop at nothing to win this race.

From ancient wonder to ancient wonder, circumventing the most ingenious and deadly of booby traps, usually by the barest of margins, Jack West Jr and his team leads the race to recover the capstone. It's full on action all the way through adversity, explosions and general mayhem. As I said before, check your disbelief out side the front cover of the book and just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Reilly barely bothers with filling us in about his characters barring the bare details, giving us a smattering of their pasts if only to establish that the leaders of each team have encountered each other before and they have personal motivations to succeed. But being a plot-driven novel, the characters aren't as important as the wondrous sights they witness, the unbelievable deeds they perform and the inevitable cataclysmic finale.

The style of Matthew Reilly has remained constant right from his first book, Contest, through to this current book. There is always a cool, rugged protagonist who is faced the most daunting of tasks with overwhelming odds against him. There is often a time limit and there are evil opponents who are trying to kill him. Seven Deadly Wonders has the added lure of the mystique behind the wonders and the ingenious traps that must be passed.

My problem with this book comes from the fact that I have read other Matthew Reilly books. I just found it way too similar to his other books and felt that I'd read it before so why should I read it again. This, of course, won't be a problem if this is the first book by Matthew Reilly that you've come across. But again the warning, suspension of belief is required when reading it, impossible escapes from certain death reaches outlandish proportions.

A nice touch to the book are the many diagrams and maps to aid in visualising exactly how a booby trap works or the floor plan of the caverns that are being explored. Although largely nothing more than simple pen diagrams, they helped explain where everything stood in relation to each other.

The point of a Matthew Reilly book is the journey rather than the destination. By this I mean that we all know that the good guy is going to overcome all the odds and save the world, it's just a matter of sitting back and enjoying the way he goes about it. I like to think of a Matthew Reilly book as Clive Cussler on steroids.

A note about the title of the book. Outside the US, the book's title is Seven Ancient Wonders - another one of those mysteries that makes you wonder why the publishers would bother with the re-titling.