Book: The Five Greatest Warriors by Matthew Reilly

Third book in the Jack West Jr series continues the story left on a literal cliffhanger at the end of The Six Sacred Stones.

Jack's team must beat their rivals, including Jack West Snr, in the race to obtain the remaining sacred pillars and lay them at various spots around the globe to avoid the end of life on Earth.

No point in even attempting this one if you haven't read Seven Ancient Wonders and The Six Sacred Stones because the story is very advanced right from the beginning of the book.

These are Indiana Jones style adventures and West Jr is a terrific leading man supported by a fantastic cast of characters, some of which make their first appearance here. It's huge scale stuff, with raids on the tombs of Ghengis Khan and Jesus just two of the many hazardous locations that play important parts here.

This volume is superior to Sacred Stones but still not a patch on Seven Ancient Wonders and I urge everyone to read that, it is one of my all time favourite adventures, so that being said I highly recommend starting at the beginning and then deciding if you want to continue in the adventures of Jack, Lily, Zoe, Pooh, Stretch, Wizard and Horus (who disappointingly doesn't feature much in Warriors) to name but a few.

Ric's Rating: 76%

Book: In The Blood by Jack Kerley

Carson Ryder returns and this time investigates the case of a baby stranded on a boat and a dead tv preacher.

Lacking the tension and twists of Blood Brother (see review elsewhere here) this is run of the mill stuff and I didn't particularly enjoy Carson's company in this book (there are reasons for him being unpleasant) and not for the first time in this series I found myself wishing that his partner Harry Nautilus would become the main character.

Race tension rears it's head here too but there is nothing gripping or exciting and I can only recommend this one to anyone who wants to read the complete series.

Ric's Rating: 42%

Film: Armored

TV stars Amaury Nolasco (Prison Break), Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes) and Laurence Fishburne (CSI) appear along with Matt Dillon and Jean Reno in this thriller but its the unknown Columbus Short who emerges with his dignity intact largely thanks to the part he plays.

Short is persuaded to go along with the gang's plan to rob their own armoured truck and we end up with a seige type situation when he changes his mind.

Being an ex soldier he has the beating of the rest of them at every turn and their demise is inevitable as they kind of become Dumb and Dumber Rob A Truck.

No real tension here and I'm surprised this got a cinema release at all as it is perfect straight to dvd material, had I saw it that way I might not have been so disappointed.

Ric's Rating: 37%

Film: The Wolfman

In attempting to create an old fashioned Wolfman film the people behind
this one may just have been too accurate because what we have here is an almost exact replica of the wolfman films of a bygone era and it makes you laugh just as much as they do when you watch them now.

Benicio Del Toro just looks bored and Anthony Hopkins is good to begin with but he too descends into unintentional comedy as the story moves on.

The story itself isn't really worth mentioning as I'm sure you get the picture.

The laughs keep coming as we have the wolfman running around roofs with his big silly panting face right up at the camera and the finale is simply hilarious.

This didn't work for me on any level.
Bad story.
Bad acting.
Bad special effects.
Bad comedy.

Avoid.

Ric's Rating: 18%