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Bridgehead by David Drake is a reprint of a 20 year old book and the first book written by Drake that I’ve read. There might be some spoilers ahead, but considering that the title of the book itself is a bit of a spoiler it might not be a problem…

The book is a quick and easy read and I quite like the overall writing style of the author. It’s too bad that this particular story feels a bit dated. The technology descriptions are pretty decent but there are some parts at the end where it becomes very apparent that the science labs aren’t equipped with modern computers and networking. The basic storyline is that at a Professor and his grad students have built a time machine that physically transports people and objects back in time. They were told how to build by a trio that calls themselves the Travelers who claim that they come from a Utopian society 10 000 years in the future. The Travelers have come back in time to make sure that the time machine that is crucial for the development of their perfect future is invented (yes, thinking about this classic time travel paradox might make your head hurt). This is of course not quite true; as the blurb on the back of the book ominously states: “The future isn’t peaceful. The past is not the past.”.

I did enjoy the book, but on the same level as you might enjoy a mediocre movie – a nice way to spend a few hours but it will be quickly forgotten. After being spoilt by reading the works of excellent writers like Peter F Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds etc this book is simply isn’t very good. My rating is 2 out of 5 stars.

Edit: I stumbled upon Drake’s own description of the book, it was an interesting read. Check it out here.

If you want an effortless and thrilling reading experience you can’t go wrong if you pick up one of Matthew Reilly’s books. Reading “Seven Deadly Wonders” (7DW) is almost like watching a movie or a TV show, the writing style is very script-like. Reilly also includes numerous simple illustrations to more easily let you visualize the different environments in the story.

Reilly probably isn’t what you would call a Science Fiction writer but 7DW definitely incorporates some SF themes, mostly (near) future technologies and some other things that requires some suspension of disbelief. Reilly himself describes 7DW in an interview included in the book as “a ‘modern real-world fantasy novel’ … in which hyper-real things happen in hyper-real environments”.

The story of 7DW is fairly simple; we have the heroes consisting of a small team of soldiers of various nationalities, a young girl and an old man dubbed Wizard. Up against them are two different enemies, one of them is a faction of the US army, the other a coalition of European countries such as Germany and France. The bulk of the story is an Indiana Jones-like archeological race to visit the remains of the seven wonders of the world and claim the different items hidden there that is needed to save the world from a disaster. At each site there are deadly traps which needs to be defeated and the illustrations mentioned before is a great help when trying to visualize them.

Reilly mixes in lots of different themes, the SF aspect included in some. The background story is a mix of real facts and fiction, which works rather well. The conspiracy theories involved will probably remind you of The Da Vinci Code, which actually is referenced in the story, Reilly’s comment: “if you do write a story about Catholic Church conspiracy theories or one which has a scene set in the Louvre, you should probably make a Da Vinci Code joke!”.

7WD definitely is a thrilling read and was a perfect companion on a recent 4 hour train ride. The writing style of Reilly is very uncomplicated and thankfully does not rely on tricks such as including mini cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter like Dan Brown employs in for instance The Da Vinci Code. (Can you tell that I’m not a fan of that style of writing? To me it feels like a cheap trick to make it harder for you to put the book down, the easy way out is of course to just continue half a page or so into the next chapter.)

The characters of the story are very movie-like, the good guys are very good and the bad guys very bad. I wish that we could have gotten to know some of the major characters a bit more. Mixing in flashbacks going back several years only increases my feeling of the story being constructed like an adventure movie or perhaps like one of the recent hit TV shows like Lost or Heroes.

As a whole I liked this book, and would recommend it to anyone who likes this kind of story, my rating is 3 stars out of 5. And if you haven’t already, take a look at Reilly’s other books; “Contest” and “Ice Station”, they are pretty good reads as well!