In my home back in Alto, Michigan, there’s an overflowing bookcase full of the books that I couldn’t rationalize carrying up five flights of stairs in my new apartment in New York. There’s the stacks of Penguin Classic Editions of Victorian and Classical Literature (because Penguin is the only publisher Calvin College professors apparently want to support), there are stacks of picture books from my childhood, and there’s rows of fantasy series that have come and gone from the public consciousness. The second row from the bottom contains any Michael Crichton book ever published (except for Pirate Latitudes. There’s something that seems mean about reading an author’s unfinished manuscript to a novel that he probably was never going to publish), a good portion of John Grisham’s library (they get tedious, but Painted House changed my life), and, until this past Christmas, all the books by Matthew Reilly (pictured above. The over-the-top setting/stance/car tickled me).
To be honest, Reilly’s books lack the science of Crichton‘s. There’s nothing very intellectually stimulating about them, they can be excessively violent at parts, and you can be almost completely sure that your main character is going to win the day. But, although I have never been able to get through the first fifty pages of Crichton’s State of Fear or Airframe (Admit it world. They suck.) there has never been a Matthew Reilly novel that I haven’t finished.
Each book puts a hero figure in some life-and-death situation. Contest sees a normal, everyday doctor who is selected to participate in a win-or-die contest against alien races. Temple sees an average professor who finds himself way over his head in the jungles of South America. Seven Deadly Wonders sees a military-elite Australian Jack West racing the world’s superpowers to gain supreme power. Ice Station sees Lt. Shane “Scarecrow” Schofield racing the French government to uncover what could, or could not be, a UFO. All of the heroes are too-good to be true, and all of the situations are this-would-never-ever-happen, but they’re page-turners in the best sense. Each new twist leads me to wonder “how will they get out of this one?” and, the knowledge that most of the main character’s team is going to die somehow before the book ends keeps the suspense going.
And, almost despite yourself, you find yourself growing attached to your main characters. Scarecrow, for example, has been the main character in four of Reilly’s books, and despite the format that Reilly has become pinned into (the “AHH! PROBLEM! AHH! BAD GUYS! AHH! PEOPLE ARE DYING! AHH! HOW WILL HE GET OUT OF THIS ONE!!! format) Scarecrow grows/weakens/goes through some serious psychological trauma in a realistic, and at times heartbreaking, way. Sure, he may technically win the day, but Reilly is always quick to show at what cost.
So, almost despite myself, when I packed up a box of books to bring back with me to New York, I left the Victorian and Classical literature, the picture books, most of the fantasy books, all of the Crichton and Grisham, and instead packed all of my Matthew Reilly. At the least, they’ll give me a means to recover from the ARGS that is JONATHAN FRANZEN’s Freedom (two hundred pages down, a thousand and a half to go.)
Books to Read: Temple and Ice Station
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