Matthew Reilly.
Holy fucking shit, where do I even begin with motherfucking Matthew 'Jumped The Shark And Makes Kojima Look Intelligent' Reilly. He's if you locked a 10 year old in a room with a six pack of Red Bull spiked with LSD, a typewriter, a 40 inch plasma screen TV that broadcasted Ancient Aliens 24/7, a tack-board of post-it notes scribbled with mad conspiracy theories and every Tom Clancy novel published in existence.
Now, you might be asking yourself, who in the goddamn hell is Matthew Reilly? For those of you who were fortunate enough not to hear of his name, this is what Goodreads has to say about the man himself.
Born in Sydney in 1974, Matthew Reilly was not always a big fan of reading. It was only after he read To Kill A Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies in Year 10 that he realised reading could transport you to another world. Following this revelation, Matthew soon began creating stories of his own and set about writing his first novel, Contest, at the age of 19 while still at university studying law.
Following rejections from all the major publishers, Matthew self-published Contest in 1996, printing 1000 copies. He produced a big-budget-looking novel which he sold into bookshops throughout Sydney, one shop at a time.
In January 1997, a Commissioning Editor for Pan Macmillan Australia walked into Angus & Robertson's Pitt Street Mall store and bought a copy of Contest. The editor tracked Matthew down through his contact details in the front of the book. Interestingly, those original self-published editions of Contest have now become much sought after collectors' items. One recently sold on eBay for $1200!
Matthew Reilly is now the internationally bestselling author of the Scarecrow novels: Ice Station, Area 7, Scarecrow, Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves and the novella Hell Island; the Jack West novels: Seven Ancient Wonders, The Six Sacred Stones, The Five Greatest Warriors, The Four Legendary Kingdoms, and The Three Secret Cities; and the standalone novels Contest, Temple, Hover Car Racer, The Tournament, Troll Mountain, The Great Zoo of China and The Secret Runners of New York.
His books are published in over 20 languages with worldwide sales of over 7 million copies.
Since Seven Ancient Wonders in 2005, Matthew's novels have been the biggest selling new fiction title released in Australia for that year.
Matthew has also written several short stories, including Roger Ascham and the King's Lost Girl, a special free prequel to The Tournament which is available online. Other short stories include Time Tours, The Mine and the hyper-adrenalised romp, Altitude Rush.
He owns and drives a DeLorean DMC-12, the car made famous in the Back to the Future movies. He also has a life-sized Han Solo in carbonite hanging on the wall of his office! When not writing or penning a film script, Matthew can be found on the golf course.
Matthew Reilly is currently living in Los Angeles.
Other than proving that any author who drives a DeLorean should not be taken seriously (Looking at you, Ernest Cline), Matthew Reilly is the type of guy who makes amateur Australian writers wonder whether luck was his dump stat during character creation. Here's a cold hard fact. Modern action thrillers sell particularly well, have massive broad appeal, so much so, that you can find them virtually anywhere. They all feature the same archetypes, a predictable by-the-beats narrative and a consistent ability to value narrative set pieces and action scenes over characterization or thematic consistency. There is no shame in liking an action thriller.
The problem is that Matthew Reilly represents the worst aspects of this genre and then, some. His writing style is despicably basic. His idea of maintaining tension and pace within an action thriller consists mostly of italicization, exclamation points and a horrifying blend of run-on and short sentences that make me want to cringe. His characters are concept first, characterization last which leads to some of the most superficial, shallow character arcs that I have ever seen in a novel. His villains are always James Bond mustache twirling psychopaths with little to no interesting features to them. Don't even get me started on his endless capacity to insert pop-culture references (Fuck, I think I remember one time where the villain referenced the Devil From South Park in the most corny way possible) and the worldbuilding.
Holy shit, the worldbuilding.
Remember when I said Ancient Aliens and Tom Clancy? I'm a big fan of inane concepts but somehow, Matthew Reilly manages to make the concept of an intergalactic tournament that determines the fate of Earth, biological species of traditional Chinese dragons, a military plot to melt the polar ice caps with fictional radioactive isotopes and an ancient conspiracy involving duels to the death between every culture on Earth
boring. Reilly throws more new elements and retcons in each of his novels than Charlie Sheen does cocaine.
Perhaps, I'm too harsh on the poor guy. There's gotta be something that he's good at, right?
I'll say his best strength is his consistency.
His consistency to deliver the same shit forgettable plot points that are delivered in an infantile writing style and structure in every single novel.
So, please, the next time you find yourself bored in an airport, do not ever touch a single Matthew Reilly novel you find in a bookstore.
1x Laugh
