Hell Island. A short novel by Matthew Reilly. I have read all his novels except for this one, Hell Island. Never thought of able to get a hold on this book because this short novel was only released in Books campaign in Australia, and never get to be published to sell in book store. So I have given up searching for Hell Island for a long time.
But I found it~
In a small book store in Darwin airport, in the transit area. We flew from Cairns to Darwin, and after few hours waiting, flew to Singapore. I was just doing some quick look through the bookshelf, and I notice they have a lot novels of Reilly in store. Make sense. Reilly is Australian author. And then I saw Hell Island. I immediately took the book and bought it XD. Didn't even open the book or read the synopsis of the story. Was 101% it's a good one.
It is not a long novel. Around 100 pages. Short enough that both Andrew and I manage to finish the book before we reached Singapore.
It is a surprisingly good short story. Pretty straightforward plot. Action pack. Trademark of his novel. Action, action and non stop action. The main protagonist is the same guy called Shane Schofield who also appears in 3 other books Ice Station, Area 7 and Scarecrow. It's about their mission to investigate Hell Island where they later discovered some secret research and test done in the island by the government. Some of the old ideas (which appear in his other novels) were reused here. For example, the research of super soldier. And the subjects used in the super soldier research is not human, but something else. Their aim are to create a group of soldiers who are stronger, more resistant, intelligent, and most importantly, they will obey the leader no matter what. Means they did something to the subjects and are able to control them.
Also, of all Reilly books, Hell Island is the only book that remind me of Michael Crichton. Some ideas mentioned in Hell Island were also mentioned in Michael Crichton's novel Congo. Congo is a great book mentioned about animals' right. Crichton's book, compared to Reilly's, have less action (but still very good), and with more in depth storyline (not to say Reilly's don't have storyline, some of his novels have very good plot too, like Temple and Seven Ancient Wonders series).
Ok, I think I almost sounds like I'm trying to promote their novels.
Eldest, the sequel of Eragon. Just finished this novel tonight. A pretty lengthy and details novel, but not to the extent where the reader will find it boring. On the contrary, I think it's the minor details which are interesting. Enjoy very much on the parts where history of various races are introduced. Human, Elves, Dwarfs, Dragons, and the bad guy counterparts Razac, Urgal etc etc. It's also until today then I realize an amazing thing. Christopher Paolini was 21 years old when he wrote Eldest. And he started writing Eragon when he was 15. Simply amazing.
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