Rating: 
Summary: Check reality at the door...
Review: before reading Temple and enjoy the ride! And oh, what a ride it is!WOW! Temple was my first M.R. thriller and it won't be my last, not by a longshot!Pick up a copy soon and lose yourself for a few nights!psalso check out 'a tourist in the yucatan' asap, it's very good!
Rating: 
Summary: Wow! How unrealistic / totally improbable can you get?!
Review: I must admit that reviewing Temple isn't easy for me.
My usual reviewing style is to pan a book for minor inconsistencies in the plot or for unrealistic characters or for a lack of accuracy in information presented as being historically correct. By these standards Temple deserves one star (at most).
But here I am giving Temple four stars despite it being the most blatantly unrealistic and totally improbable book I've ever read!
The operative words here are BLATANTLY unrealistic. And FUN.
Reading a book by Matthew Reilly is like going to a liars convention, where the person who tells the most outlandish, unbelievable, crazy, entertaining story is the winner.
William Race, the hero of Temple, spends approximately 750 pages in constant action, fighting for his life, running for his life, dodging bullets and surviving one disaster after another, always at the very last "nanosecond" (one of Mr. Reilly's favorite words). William Race does things that are not just improbable but totally impossible. He cheats death every 10th page and spends the next nine pages getting into a situation that has only one possible outcome: certain death!
Several other reviewers have characterized Matthew Reilly's books as "comic books in words". Exactly! They can also be compared to the old Batman TV shows, where the screen explodes with a "POW" when one of the characters punches another character.
Here's an example of Matthew Reilly's prose (page 434 in the paperback edition I read):
"Race hit him again, and again, and again - yelling with each punch as the Nazi staggered backwards.
'Get -'
Punch.
'- off -'
Punch.
'- my -'
Punch.
'- boat!'"
In conclusion, totally unrealistic, totally improbable and 100% entertaining!
At the end of the paperback edition I read there's an 11-page interview with Matthew Reilly that I found quite interesting. Mr. Reilly is very up-front about writing books that attempt to pack as much action as possible between the covers, and he also describes how he became an author:
"What led you to self-publish Contest (Matthew Reilly's first book)?"
"Simple. I offered it to every major publisher in Sydney and they all rejected it!"
Sounds like something so improbable that it could be straight out of a Matthew Reilly book. :-)
Rennie Petersen
Rating:
Summary: Completely preposterous, but a wild ride!
Review: I picked up "Temple" during a Clive Cussler hiatus, and I was not disappointed. The story was completely and thoroughly unrealistic, but it was a fun and quick read. The action is constant and often preposterously improbable. How many times in one day can an ordinary guy face (and defeat) death? I felt like I was reading a movie script for a mindless but entertaining summer blockbuster. The imagery is vivid. Reilly did a good job of making me feel like I was actually in the jungle and at the temple.
Rating: 
Summary: Uh?????
Review: If this is a Story involving the Incas, Why is the front cover displaying the pyramid El Castillo from Chi chen itza? That is a Mayan Pyramid thousands of miles away on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
Rating:
Summary: Add This Author to Your Reading List!
Review: In the constant sarch for new authors to read, Matthew Reilly is my newest. Having seen his new hardcover on the stands, I opted to look for one of his earlier books in paperback to start and see if I liked his style. Well I wasn't disappointed at all. In fact I am impressed. This book had a great story line and constant action, that had me reading till late into the night and morning. The story, which revloves around a language specialist who's been co-opted to Peru to look for a rare Incan idol, is fast-paced and full of interesting ancillary side stories and action. The combination of archaeological mystery with a Clive Cussler/Dirk Pitt story-line is always a winner with me; assuming it is well written and does not labor on fine points. The really best part of this story was that just as I thought it was over, it picked up yet again as the story moved on to another conclusion. I think you'll enjoy this book and hopefully his others as well.
Rating:
Summary: Texans and Rappas and Bombs! Oh my!
Review: Ladies and gentlemen, we're about to go supersonic. With a plot that moves at the speed of light and enough over the top action sequences to make Arnold Schwartzenager do a double take, Reilly's third novel is testestosterone central.
Anyone framiliar with Matt's writing style will be plesed to see that he has once again made excellent use of his formula: Fast, plot driven, 2-D characters.The story goes something like this: William Race, nerdy collage professor and cookie cutter "good-guy", is asked to help the US army find an ancient Incan idol in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Why? Because it's made of a material that, when placed in a special bomb called a Supernova, can destroy the Earth. And it seems that just about every terrorist in the world has a Supernova, minus this crucial ingredient. And they're all willing to kill to get it. To put things lightly, all Hell breaks loose. In the course of 24 hours, Race and friends deal with Nazis, suicidal Texans, traitors, traitors who're betraying the original traitors, vicious jungle cats, crocodiles....... starting to get the gist of it?
And in between all that, there is a parallel plot. Every once in a while, our hero reads some of an ancient Incan manuscript, which tells the story of Santiago and Renco, the two fellows who hid the idol so many years ago. The manuscript as as action-packed as the main plot, culminating in an amazing battle sequence between our heroes and Fransisco Pizzaro. Good stuff. So, as per usual, Temple is a rollicking roller-coaster ride, an action packed good time delivered by a man whose fans expect no less. Oh, yeah, by the way "blah blah blah bad character developement blah blah blah who cares its a blah-ing action thriller."
Rating:
Summary: A thrill-a-minute adventure
Review: Matthew Reilly's second book, "Temple", is part Indiana Jones, part James Bond, part Clive Cussler hero, and part Tom Clancy hero. Other reviewers have deemed this a "fun" read and I whole-heartedly agree. The novel is not deep on character development, but that doesn't seem out of place here. The novel hits the ground running with the massacre of monks at a monastery. The novel continues at a quick pace for the next 500 pages and never lets up. There are many twists and turns, surprises, double agents, etc. By then end, the reader wonders who is the more prominent villain in the grand scheme of things. Many mysteries abound ranging from creatures inside the temple, the history of the sought idol, why everyone wants the idol, etc. Unfortunately, it's difficult to go into much detail as there are a number of surprises the reader must discover for himself/herself. If you're a fan of Clive Cussler, James Rollins, or Tom Clancy, this is a "must-read". While there is little to no character development, the non-stop (and sometimes very far-fetched) action will keep the reader enthralled for many hours.
Rating:
Summary: A WRITER ABOVE THE REST!
Review: The 'Temple' is an action/thriller masterpiece. Having followed Matthew Reilly's books thus far (contest and Ice Station), Matthew seems to blossom with each book in providing the reader with a new concept of reading. Matthew's books are guaranteed to have you lost in 'his' world from the moment you read the first sentence, until finally having drained the final words and closed the cover, breathed deeply, then realised that you spent the last twenty four hours on a roller-coaster ride...and loved every minute of it. How many authors can offer the reader this for the price of the book. Not many. As with Matthew's previous novels 'Contest'( of which I have an autographed copy of the original thousand)and 'Ice Station', this writer continues to prove to his readers that he indeed writes FOR the readers. If you want to read a snippet of Matthew Reilly's writing prowess, a short story titled 'The Mine', a piece Matthew Reilly did recently can be found at the Sydney Morning Herald. Although short, 'The Mine' keeps with the Matthew Reilly tradition of sensational hold-your-breath suspense sequences and character created brilliance that only he can do. As for the 'Temple', YOU MUST READ IT! Simple.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: This book has you at the edge of your seat. It's non-stop action. After every page and action the fun just gets better and better.
Rating: 
Summary: I can only suspend belief for so long
Review: This book, what can I say but that this book was total junk. I didn't go into it thinking "Oh look another Pulitzer Winner." I went into thinking that I like Crichton books, I'll like this one the summary seemed to support my theory. But alas, was I ever friggin wrong. Really we only needed about half of this book, the rest was just a rant gone bad.
Really only one scene where the hero miracously stops the exploding bomb or doomsday device 5 seconds before it detonates is needed, defintely just the once, not twice. And come on could there have been enough villians in this book, Nazis, Militia groups, rogue Army officers, ex-girlfriends who become whoring sister in-laws, giant jungle cats, and man eating caimans. Furthermore there was way too many tremendous feats achieved by a language prof. Yeah, yeah, yeah you can tell me the whole line about the courage of the everyday man, but come on. Oh and I don't know, but I guess that Mr. Reilly must have forgot that he had one of the pontoons on the seaplane shot off. But the charactors continue to fly and land the thing throughout the rest of the book. I thought that it'd be kind of hard to land a seaplane with just one pontoon WITHOUT IT CRASHING!!!
I will say this, the initial idea for the story was good, but not much else. In fact I think this book sucked. The only reason I gave it a star was because I finished it. Why I don't know, but I did, guess I just figured I had too much time invested to just give up.
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