From Publishers Weekly

ETs with a mordant sense of drama turn the New York Public Library into "the labyrinth" for an interstellar survival game show in this ungainly thriller from Australian Reilly (Ice Station). Seven players, each from a different world, compete for their lives, combating not only each other but also a monster called the Karanodon. The earthly representative is Dr. Steven Swain, chosen for his courage in successfully fighting off a gang of thugs who invade his operating room. Unfortunately, Swain happens to be holding Holly, his plucky little daughter, at the moment he's transported into the labyrinth, so she goes with him. The most devilish trick the "sponsors" provide is an unremovable digital bracelet, whose face shows how many opponents remain, and will commence a deadly 15-minute countdown should its wearer manage to escape the library's electrified confines. Derivative of Michael Crichton's techno-thrillers as well as Stephen King/Richard Bachman's The Running Man, the book offers constant, nail-biting action, but not a lot of reverence for one of New York City's greatest public institutions.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Australian thriller writer Reilly--Area 7 (2001)--self-published this debut novel in 1996. It now appears, with a retooled story and some new characters, in its first U.S. edition. The premise is wild: an intergalactic contest, the Presidian, is held once every thousand (Earth) years. This time it's taking place on Earth, and seven contestants from across the universe--including Dr. Stephen Swain, our human hero--have been teleported into New York Public Library, where they will hunt one another until only one remains alive. The narrative is rough, bogged down by long passages of backstory designed to transmit great wads of information, but the pace eventually picks up nicely, and Reilly generates a great deal of excitement. It's all riddled with enormous logical flaws, of course, but somehow it works anyway: the novel's sheer audacity pulls us in and keeps us flipping pages. An interesting look at an established novelist's humble but energetic beginnings. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Publishers Weekly

The wildly imaginative Reilly has taken inspiration from comics, video games, movies, thrillers and Code-style puzzle novels to create this rocket-fueled sequel to his 7 Deadly Wonders. After completing a 10-year mission to acquire the Golden Capstone of the Great Pyramid from what's left of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Jack West Jr. has retired to the Australian outback to raise his adopted daughter, Lily. Jack's pal, Professor Max T. Epper, known as Wizard, has discovered that the Dark Sun, a mysterious heavenly body, is due to emerge in nine days, triggering the Apocalypse. Ultimate disaster can only be averted if someone can locate the six legendary Pillars, cleanse them with the Philosopher's Stone and insert them in the 6 Vertices, thereby causing the Great Machine to power on and negate the fatal blast from the Dark Sun. If anyone can perform these Herculean labors, it's Reilly's resourceful hero. A pervasive tongue-in-cheek quality (one that extends to the low tech–looking maps and illustrations) will help readers find this outlandish adventure thrilling. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"The wildly imaginative Reilly has taken inspiration from comics, video games, thrillers and Code-style puzzle novels to create this rocket-fueled sequel to his 7 Deadly Wonders...A tongue-in-cheek quality (one that extends to the low-tech looking maps and illustrations) will help readers find this outlandish adventure thrilling." -- Publishers Weekly

"[T]his fast-paced, international adventure will keep you turning pages...just sit back and enjoy the ride." -- Elizabeth Willse, The Star-Ledger

"The 6 Sacred Stones is a pedal-to-the-metal literary ride, so hold on tight." -- Larry Cox, Tucson Citizen

"Matthew Reilly novels should come with health warnings on the cover. [T]he non-stop life-threatening action from enemies using guns, missiles, poisons, machetes and martial arts against Reilly's heroes is not for the faint-hearted. It's a wild ride." -- Ray Chesterton, The Daily Telegraph (Australia)

"The age-, sex- and race-balanced team from Reilly's 2006 thrill-a-second novel 7 Deadly Wonders returns, still under the management of handily bionic and super resourceful Australian Commando Jack West...[A] video game in print." -- Kirkus Reviews

"In this sequel to Seven Deadly Wonders, Reilly increases the tension and the threat to produce another winner. The interwoven combination of action and mythology in the narrative makes for the perfect winter beach read." -- Library Journal

"Whisking you through wave after wave of nonstop action on a cloud of exuberant improbabilities, Reilly really makes you feel like a kid again; it's a blast." -- Booklist

From Publishers Weekly

In the thrilling third installment in bestseller Reilly's series to feature Jack West Jr. (after Seven Ancient Wonders and The Six Sacred Stones), the adventurer from the Australian outback and his band of merry men, women and children race against several nefarious groups to defuse a disastrous celestial event. The planetary entity known as the Dark Star, the evil twin to our sun, is set to return to our solar system, igniting a massive negative energy source that will destroy all life on earth. It's a tough challenge, but if anyone can save the world, it's Jack. There are riddles to solve, bad guys to kill and derring-do to be done, all of which flashes by as one action scene piles onto the next. Readers should leave their thinking caps behind, hang onto the panic bar and be prepared to be flung hither and yon.Plenty of maps and diagrams add to the fun. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

When we last saw Jack West Jr., our hero was in quite a pickle, having not yet found all six of the sacred diamond pillars that, when ritually cleansed and placed in far-flung secret vertices, might avert apocalypse. West; his peregrine falcon, Horus; his adopted daughter, Lily; and the rest of his colorful band take off in their trusty 747, Halicarnassus, in a perpetually last-minute race to the finish against such baddies as Colonel Mao, Vulture, Scimitar, the iron-jawed Carnivore, and West’s own dark father, Wolf. Reilly leaves no cliff unhung, no tomb unraided, no moustache untwirled, and almost no bit of arcane hokum unused, including the Templars, the Romanovs, Napoleon, Genghis Khan, and Jesus Christ himself. Reilly outstrips, outpaces, and outlandishes such adventure-smiths as Dan Brown, Steve Berry, James Rollins, and Clive Cussler, writing with the inexhaustible invention of a hyperactive 10-year-old with a fresh box of crayons, drawing exotic battle scenes accompanied by real-time narration and sound effects. (Oddly, gratuitous profanity mars the book’s potential as a whistle-clean pulp novel for boys.) Many readers will find this book and its two predecessors hopelessly campy, but for those ready to play along, they’re a giddy delight. --David Wright

From Publishers Weekly

Area 7; Temple; Contest; Ice Station—fans of Reilly's novels know that no one writes faster-moving adventure fiction, so it's a shock to read, in an interview with Reilly included at the back of this novel, that he aimed to "create a new level of speed and pace" here. He has succeeded—the text is all fury, akin to taking a James Bond film, cutting out everything but the action and running that at double speed. The plot is preposterous and secondary, a frame on which to hang one extraordinary fighting/escape scene after another. The world's greatest bounty hunters are offered, by a cabal of the world's richest humans, $18.6 million per head to bring to the cabal's headquarters in France the heads of 15 men. One of the heads belongs to U.S. Marine captain Shane Schofield, aka Scarecrow, hero of Ice Station and Area 7. It turns out that he and the other targets have the world's fastest reflexes, allowing them to disarm nuclear missiles about to strike—an ability that can defuse the cabal's plan to launch nuclear attacks on major world cities, instilling chaos and creating a new international arms race for profit. Character, too, is secondary here, though Reilly does take the unusual step of killing off one major series hero. And even the traditional novel form is secondary in this entertainment entity; this is as much video game as novel, complete with meticulous diagrams of most of the many locales (a penal installation in Siberia; an office tower in London, etc.) and literary sound effects ("An ominous deep-seated thromming emanated...."). What's foremost, along with the action, is quick-cut entertainment: up to 20 paragraphs per pages, with some paragraphs running only one word, sweep readers from beginning to end. Reilly's admirers will love this one, and anyone interested in the outer limit of action writing should check it out; that the villains are headquartered in France should add to its populist appeal.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

James Bond and Dirk Pitt can step aside--a new action hero has arrived to take their place in Reilly's latest roller-coaster ride. In the third outing for Shane "Scarecrow" Schofield (after Ice Station,1999, and Area 7, 2002), the U.S. Marine Corps captain is pitted against a colorful collection of bad guys (and gals) as he finds himself one of 15 men who have been put on an international hit list. A shadowy group of billionaires calling themselves the Council have put a price of $18.6 million on the head of each person on the list--literally, as the head must be exchanged for the bounty--and the assassinations all have to be completed within a 24-hour period. Schofield, aided by his resourceful sidekick Gunnery Sergeant Gena "Mother" Newman, must dodge the bounty hunters after his head as well as discover what common denominator binds the 15 men together. This thrill fest is highly recommended for all fiction collections--even the most jaded readers will need to fasten their seatbelts and hang on for dear life. Michael Gannon
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

I created this eBook from a collection of short stories converted from .pdf, HTML and .txt files I had archived from a few years ago; or in the case of Hell Island, that I downloaded from the internet. I have taken these files, converted, re-formatted them and adjusted them to better suit an eBook reader. 

I “test” my final epubs on a Nook Color and an iPad2 to ensure the best possible reading experience; however, not all eReaders are the same and don’t always display epubs in the same way as others.  This is especially true when it comes to the Table of Contents (ToC), images within the epub and the display of the book cover. 

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Flyboy707

October, 2011