6 Sacred Stones - by Matthew Reilly

Just finished 6 Sacred Stones at 1 a.m. in the morning on Friday night =P (It was too good of an action-thriller to put the book down)

The 6 Sacred Stones can be considered the sequel to 7 Deadly Wonders, both having the main character as Jack West Jr. Jack West is ex-Australian SAS, and was the top 5 soldiers of the world (the lone Australian among Americans). After he left SAS, he used his skills to hunt for treasures over the globe.

In 7 Deadly Wonders, Jack West and his team (there are eight teammates, together they were known as the Nine), had to collect treasures housed in the Seven Ancient Wonders. These 7 treasures were the vital components to stopping an Egyptian prophecy-the ending of the world during the Tartarus Sunspot. After he had successfully, though through many many difficulties, stopped the world from being destroyed, another (and much bigger) threat was introduced in The 6 Sacred Stones.

The 6 Sacred Stones describes the Sun's "evil twin", the Dark Sun, that will eventually destroy Earth. How? It is basically a black hole -- that moves. In the beginning of the book, several hieroglyphs and ancient inscriptions at the site of each stone were pieces to solving the puzzle of this Dark Sun. One of the inscriptions had a circle and 10 rings surrounding it. The characters in the book had proposed that it represented our solar system (but it couldn't because there's 10 rings. We only have 9 planets.) Later in the book, it was revealed that the 10th planet was eaten and destroyed by the moving Dark Sun.
Soon, the Dark Sun will reach Earth, and the only way to end its power is to take the 6 pillars to 6 vertices in different locations of earth. Together, they will generate enough power to stop the moving Black Hole.

Side note:
6 pillars & 6 vertices? What? Another one of the ancient symbols displays a picture of The Machine, which will ultimately stop the end of the world. It is a large circle with 6 lines. One end of each line points toward the centre of the circle, and the other end points toward the perimeter (the space between each line is equal, so think of it was cutting a pie into 6 equal proportions.) This Machine is actually Earth itself! In order to activate the Machine, pillars (gigantic diamonds in the shape of a rectangular prism) had to be set in place at each verticle.

The 6 Sacred Stones only goes up to the 2nd Pillar and Verticle, since Jack West Jr. falls down a pit connected to the core of the earth in order to set the 2nd Pillar in place.

At the end of the book, there was an interview with the author. Right off the bat, the first question was: "How can you let Jack West fall down a pit and die?" Reilly stated that he wanted to write a novel that is different from others, one that stands out the most. (And he did it very well.) To achieve this, he had made an extremely big cliffhanger at the end of the book, making his readers wait for the 3rd book that continues the story of Jack West Jr.

And I too, am waiting for the publication of the newest Jack West Jr. series book. (How will West get out of the pit?!, I thought to myself as I was reading the interview)

On a completely different note, for those of you who had enough patience to read through the entire post, I have to say so myself: This post was long. Really long. But the book by Matthew Reilly was longer. Not only have I read 7 Deadly Wonders and 6 Sacred Stones, I have also read (the Shane Schofield series): Ice Station, Scarecrow, and Area 7.
To those who like to read action-adventure-thriller novels, I recommend Matthew Reilly to you. He will keep you at the edge of your seat until you are done with his book-guaranteed.