Book #20 - the Five Greatest Warriors

This is the third in Matthew Reilly's series on Jack West, the Hunstman. The first one, the Seven Deadly Wonders, wasn't well reviewed, but I enjoyed it. I was disappointed by the Six Sacred Stones, which I pre-ordered and got on release day, because it ended with a cliffhanger, really not a complete book in itself. Jack West falling to his doom as the book ends. Just like a two part series on TV, except in this case the second part was over a year in coming.

Still I was glad to finally finish this book. My son recently re-read the first two and then this one, and was waiting for me to finish it so we could talk about it. He enjoyed it immensely and loves the action. This book does a pretty good job of completing the Jack West saga for now, but I was disappointed in that each of the locations where the traps were set seemed to be the same thing over and over. Maybe water instead of lava or tar, but essentially the same thing needed to be done. That alone didn't have the same intrigue as the traps of the first book, which I thought were pretty neat.

That characters are very lightly developed, and you have to watch the timeline as this book jumps back and forth in time at a few points, but not too many. If you enjoyed the first two, you'll probably like this one. However I warn you that these books aren't quite like his other Scarecrow novels. I think those are much more interesting to read.