Book#1: The Three Secret Cities by Matthew Reilly

The Three Secret Cities by Matthew Reilly

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The Three Secret Cities is Matthew Reilly at his best showcasing 3 of everything.

3 quests to 3 cities guarded by 3 guardians carrying 3 ancient weapons to empower it while battling bronze warriors who search for their master.

The Four Kingdoms ended with Jack West Junior blowing up the obelisk to prevent the King of Land Orlando Compton-Jones from becoming the King of Kings and obtaining the knowledge of the Mysteries. Now the Omega Event is approaching and the secrets of the Mysteries need to found some other way.

Jack has with his actions plunged the shadowy Royal World into interregnum. Various factions are forming and new villains are coming to the fore to stop our fearless hero in his quest to understand the Mysteries and then face the two trails - The Trial of the Cities and The Trial of the Mountains.

Since the Mysteries are now not known, now it is upon Jack and his team to put together the clues with help of Lord Hades - King of Underworld. and find stop the Omega Event from happening.

In a nutshell this boils down to the biggest treasure hunt in the world where the stakes are extinction of humanity. There will be no winners here if the Trails are not fulfilled. If that's not enough then the world's best team of bounty hunters have been hired to find Jack and kill him. They are called the Knights of the Eight and they have never failed in the last 2000 years.

With new alliances forming, and treachery, and backstabbing the norm, Jack will have to pull all the stops to fulfil this quest.

To say anything more beyond this point would spoil the book for the adrenaline junkies. Know my friends that this is the hardest quest that Jack West Junior has ever faced.

Matthew Reilly has really outdone himself with this one. The plot points from all the previous books just fit in seamlessly into one giant jigsaw puzzle which gets build piece by piece, but the final shape is not yet known.

The cameos from Scarecrow & the reference to Mother was well done, but the biggest surprise was the appearance of the Black Knight - Aloysius Knight. Last seen in Scarecrow helping SS survive the biggest bounty hunt in the history, the situation in this book in tailor made for a wreaking machine like Knight and boy oh boy does he go on a wrecking spree. The sheer joy of seeing Knight on the same page as JWJr is just amazing.

MR should give the Black Knight his own book.

A special shoutout to the douchebags in this book, The Knights of the Golden Eight, The Sphinx, and the Fraternal Order of St Paul. The sheer savagery shown by the Knights while trying to kill Jack and capture Lily, and Alby has be read to be believed.

A special shoutout to the bronzed faceless warriors who speak the language of Thoth. They are a mystery one I would like to see and learn more about in the next book - time permitting.

Ending the book with a surprising twist but not without making us shed a few tears first, Matthew Reilly asks us in the author notes to guess the title of the next book in the series since he's left enough hints in the book itself.

So my guess is: The Two Trials. (which in hindsight sounds a bit obvious)

The entire book spans 7 days and just reading though the stuff is exhausting, imagining doing that in 7 days would require superhuman strength and courage which in hindsight is why JWJr is the Fifth Greatest Warrior and the winner of the Great Games.

In the author notes MR mentions that the next JWJr book will be out in 2020, that is wait of over 2 years to read second to last in the series. The only thing to do during this timeframe is to reread all the books in this series and climb the walls in the spare time.