To this day, I still get comments from fans about that death scene in Scarecrow. It impacted many of my fans really hard. But, I have to say, that was my intention.
In the first draft of The Three Secret Cities (3SC), I actually did not include the Epilogue with Pooh, Stretch and Alby going to the Rock of Gibraltar. So I was going to let readers hang till the next book to reveal that it isn’t Lily in the sacrificial pool. But after finishing The Six Sacred Stones (6SS) with a cliffhanger, I felt that this was too harsh.
I didn’t want to finish the novel on a downer. As I thought about it more, I felt it would be better to take readers to the very, very edge and then leave them with a nice bit of hope as Pooh Bear removes the chips of greystone, sees who it is, smiles and yells, ‘Call Jack! Call him now!’ (Remember the ‘package’ that the Knight brought back to Sphinx from New Zealand: Lily’s brother, Alexander, was last seen in NZ living with Sky Monster’s parents.)
That said, 3SC sees quite a few nice characters die: the Twins and Sky Monster’s parents get killed rather brutally. This was deliberate: I wanted these deaths to be sudden and shocking (much like Gant’s). And I warn everyone: there will be worse ones to come.
(This was also why I introduced in this book the concept of the Messages from the Other Side. They soften the blow of a death, and, to my mind, even in the middle of all this action and adventure, give us some tender moments: like Lachie writing about his affection for his brother, or Lily writing to Jack. Those messages give the characters a chance to say what they truly feel. Rest assured, more messages will appear in the last two books of the series and at terrible times.)
As I’ve always said, no character can be safe.
We were all left on the edge of our seats when the coffin opened in the Underworld in the Epilogue of The Four Legendary Kingdoms. Did you know what was going to emerge and the role the bird-beaked bronzemen would play in The Three Secret Cities?
I did know, yes.
I should make it clear that when I sat down to write The Four Legendary Kingdoms (4LK), it had been eight years since The Five Greatest Warriors (5GW) had been published. Writing the Jack West novels requires a lot of historical research and I needed to take a break from that for a while. In those intervening years, I had a very enjoyable time writing a range of standalone books including The Tournament, Troll Mountain, The Great Zoo of China plus one Scarecrow novel, Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves.
And then I decided to return to Jack.
I figured if I was going to recommence the Jack West Jr series, I had to plan all the way to the seventh and final book. With that in mind, I wanted each book to be a fully-contained story in itself, but to also lead into the next novel. The coffin opening scene at the end of 4LK was perfect for that: we had just been on a wild rampage with Jack and now something even more dangerous had been initiated! So, yes, I had to know what was coming out of that coffin.
After the surprise of bringing in Scarecrow to The Four Legendary Kingdoms how did you come to the decision to bring back Aloysius Knight, who we haven’t seen since Scarecrow, which was published fifteen years ago?
I am always listening to my fans at book signings, library events and via both email and social media. One question which always pops up is: ‘Will we ever see Aloysius Knight, the Black Knight, again?’
The Black Knight was very popular from the moment he appeared in Scarecrow. He was the anti-Schofield, the ultimate bad-ass killing machine; the good guy gone wrong. I was always keen to bring him back. I just needed the right story.
When I planned out the plot of 3SC—with a key moment where Jack would be captured and taken to an ancient prison from which no-one had ever escaped—the moment was suddenly right there: this was an occasion when Aloysius Knight could return! I mean, who else can rescue someone from an impossible-to-escape-from prison?
(It’s important to note that Zoe, Stretch and Pooh Bear try . . . and fail. It is Knight alone who succeeds, and he does so by performing an outrageously dangerous sky-dive right into the mile-deep elevator shaft of the mine.)
Having brought Scarecrow into the world of Jack West Jr (and thus showing that they exist in the same universe), it stood to reason that Aloysius Knight also lives in that universe. Even more than that, it occurred to me that he might have had run-ins with groups like the Knights of the Golden Eight in his bounty-hunting travels.
Having him present when Jack believes Lily has been sacrificed was not intended to echo the moment in Scarecrow where he is present for Scarecrow’s discovery that Gant has been murdered. I can’t say I planned that. It just happened.
There is quite a contrast from the action in The Four Legendary Kingdoms taking place mainly in the Underworld, and the action in The Three Secret Cities taking place simultaneously throughout the world. Was this always the plan?
Structurally, it’s actually 4LK that is unique in the Jack West series. It is the only book in the series that (a) is set largely in a single location and (b) takes place over a very short period of time, two days.
I had wanted 4LK to be fast, brutal and visceral. More like a taut and tense thriller than a sweeping adventure. The time was right to inject some undiluted adrenalin into the Jack West Jr world and I wanted 4LK to race like a rocket.
With 3SC I wanted to write something just as fast but which was more of the globe-trotting adventure readers expect of a Jack West book, one that sweeps quickly from location to location: from a metropolis like New York City to the remote Orinoco Delta in Venezuela.
Matthew, with every book, we presume you can’t think of a more gruesome way to torture someone to death, and then here we have suffocation by hardening greystone! Where did the idea for greystone powder originate from?
I’m very proud of my greystone powder! I love it!
Its creation actually arose out of my need to explain how all these massive underground castles, mountain-palaces and trap systems were built. I wanted to explain that greystone could be quite easily composed into a complex shape and then set in place (it also got a brief mention in 4LK with the hostage carriages).
I am particularly proud of the pills that form Medusa’s eyes in the Tomb of Poseidon. Since I was a kid, I’ve always been in awe of Medusa. She is such a cool myth: a snake-haired woman whose stare turns people to stone. The tale of Medusa is also a very enduring one that’s lasted for over 2,000 years.
Having adapted the Labours of Hercules in 4LK, in 3SC I wanted to examine and explain, in real terms, the origins of the Medusa myth. That meant coming up with something that could realistically explain the whole ‘her stare turns you to stone’ thing.
Creating the greystone powder was key to that. Making pills out of it and using them as the eyes of a Medusa carving was a eureka moment for me. I literally danced around my office when I came up with that, pumping my fist!
As for the suffocating deaths, well, this is just something that I fear, kind of like being buried alive. The idea of being physically trapped inside this hardening, intensely claustrophobic, totally enveloping concrete-like void scares the crap out of me. It’d be a truly awful way to die. I figure since it scares me, it’ll scare my readers.
Having said all that, I have an even better mythological tool-of-death ready to go in the next Jack West book . . .
When deciding on your three secret cities, why choose Thule, Ra and Atlas?
Right from the moment I wrote Seven Ancient Wonders (7AW), I always wanted the key feature of the Jack West Jr series to be the strange and unexplained places dotted around our planet. Places like the Pyramids, Stonehenge and Easter Island.
This, I figured, also included mythical places like the Underworld (in 4LK) and famously ‘lost’ cities like Ultima Thule, El Dorado and the City of Atlas (I don’t really like using the word ‘Atlantis’, as I think it’s been used too much over the years).
I particularly liked the notion o
f secret cities. When I decided on the title for this book, the idea that a city—by definition, a sizeable place that once housed a lot of people—could be secret was something that I found instantly intriguing, and intrigue is always a good thing to have in a title.
Ultima Thule has always interested me because the Nazis had a thing for it. El Dorado was a myth that lured many adventurers to their deaths. And Atlas, well, it’s the most famous secret city of them all.
But let me add one extra comment on this. One of the things I am keenly aware of is that readers nowadays often check Google while they are reading my books. They look up the myths, facts and historical events.
So I tried to keep the locations of places like Thule, Ra and Atlas generally in the spots where they are believed to be. The directions to Thule in 3SC, for instance, are the actual directions found in ancient writings. It was really believed to be northwest of Britain. For El Dorado and the City of Atlas, I had a little more creative licence, since the legendary locations for both are far and wide . . . plus the happy fact that they’ve never been found!
And how did you come to link them to the sword, helmet and mace?
Believe it or not, but at an early stage in the planning of 3SC, I actually thought of calling the book The Three Immortal Weapons, since it is about the finding of the three weapons and placing them at the three cities.
In my reading about historical stuff, I’ve often come across famed weapons, and I liked the idea of linking three of them to some awful human sacrificial ceremony. Like the three cities, I just found each of these mythical weapons intrinsically interesting.
I then set about adding to their mythologies: I love the idea that Excalibur, for instance, might be a sword that has travelled over the centuries from Egypt to Rome to Britain, and that the name ‘The Sword in the Stone’ changed over those centuries from ‘The Sword of the Rock’ (names change over time, like in a long game of Chinese Whispers). The Helmet of Hades really was reputed to make its wearer invisible. I just asked ‘to whom?’ My answer: it makes the wearer invisible to the bronzemen. As for the Trident of Poseidon, I just wanted to suggest that the passage of history sometimes changes the very nature of things: just as names can change over time, so too do maces sometimes become tridents.
Which leads us to the Knights of the Golden Eight. We all know the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table—was it fun to turn that myth on its head, and present us with the evil bounty hunters, the Knights of the Golden Eight?
As with Medusa and the weapons, with the Knights I was seeking to explain a cool legend in real terms. (When I’m doing research, I love it when I find a real-world theory for a mythical figure. For example, I’m a big fan of the theory that King Arthur was a Roman centurion who stayed in Britain.)
Back in The Great Zoo of China I wrote that myths and legends sanitise reality and that was my guiding principle when it came to the Knights of the Round Table.
I decided to suggest that medieval writers had really sanitised these Knights’ reputations! I adjusted the usual notion of ‘loyalty to our king’ to ‘loyalty to whoever pays us’. Having the Knights as guns-for-hire made them, at least to me, really interesting and unique; which would also explain the enduring nature of their myth.
As for their ‘Round’ Table: once again, I decided that constant retellings throughout history had turned an octagonal table into a round one.
(It’s funny, I followed this exact line of reasoning in The Great Zoo of China: that whole book was about explaining a mythical creature—the dragon—in real and modern terms; giving them lightweight bone structures, strong musculature and ultra-violet eyesight; plus an explanation for how the myth of the dragon is a worldwide one.)
Any hints about what the TWO in the series will refer to?
The clues are in this book. Maybe in the pictures . . .
Is it the next book you are writing?
As I mentioned on social media earlier this year, I’ve actually written a new novel in my spare time: a time travel novel! (So it’s not part of the Scarecrow or Jack West series.) Really cool time travel, with a lot of complex twists and turns. It’ll be released in 2019, so my readers won’t have to wait the usual two years between books.
As a kid who grew up loving excellent time-travel movies like The Terminator and Back to the Future (hello, DeLorean owner) I’ve always wanted to see if I could write a cool mind-bending one . . . so I did!
Right now, I’m sitting down to plan The Two Something Somethings and commence writing it so it’ll be released right on schedule in 2020.
How is life in LA going?
Really great. I enjoy doing meetings in Hollywood (I still get excited when I have a meeting at one of the major studios), I’ve made a bunch of new friends who enjoy storytelling as much as I do, and I’m quietly hopeful that an adaptation of one of my novels is on the way. This new ‘golden age’ of television has seen renewed interest in my books, especially the Scarecrow and Jack West series, as limited-event series. Whereas once I sold movie rights, now I get approached for TV rights, and I like that.
Los Angeles itself is a great city to live in and it really inspires my creativity. When I’m not working on a new novel, I’m doing screenplays and even a bunch of lightning-fast novellas which I hope to release over the coming years. I’m going through a creative purple patch, so I’m running with it and just enjoying it! I’ll always be Australian—and I certainly still have my accent!—but it’s been a very rewarding move.
As always, I just try to write something that people will enjoy. And I hope you enjoyed this book. The big finish to the series is coming!
Matthew Reilly
Los Angeles
July 2018
About Matthew Reilly
Matthew Reilly is 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 and The Four Legendary Kingdoms; and the standalone novels Contest, Temple, Hover Car Racer, The Tournament, Troll Mountain and The Great Zoo of China.
His books are published in over 20 languages, with worldwide sales of over 7 million copies.
Also by Matthew Reilly
CONTEST
ICE STATION
TEMPLE
AREA 7
SCARECROW
HOVER CAR RACER
HELL ISLAND
SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS
THE SIX SACRED STONES
THE FIVE GREATEST WARRIORS
SCARECROW AND THE ARMY OF THIEVES
THE TOURNAMENT
TROLL MOUNTAIN
THE GREAT ZOO OF CHINA
THE FOUR LEGENDARY KINGDOMS
MORE BESTSELLING TITLES FROM MATTHEW REILLY
Contest
The New York State Library. A brooding labyrinth of towering bookcases, narrow aisles and spiralling staircases. For Doctor Stephen Swain and his daughter, Holly, it is the site of a nightmare. For one night, this historic building is to be the venue for a contest. A contest in which Swain is to compete – whether he likes it or not.
The rules are simple. Seven contestants will enter. Only one will leave. With his daughter in his arms, Swain is plunged into a terrifying fight for survival. He can choose to run, to hide or to fight – but if he wants to live, he has to win. For in this contest, unless you leave as the victor, you do not leave at all.
Temple
Deep in the jungle of Peru, the hunt for a legendary Incan idol is under way – an idol that in the present day could be used as the basis for a terrifying new weapon.
Guiding a US Army team is Professor William Race, a young linguist who must translate an ancient manuscript which contains the location of the idol.
What they find is an ominou
s stone temple, sealed tight. They open it – and soon discover that some doors are meant to remain unopened . . .
Ice Station
THE DISCOVERY OF A LIFETIME
At a remote ice station in Antarctica, a team of US scientists has found something buried deep within a 100-million-year-old layer of ice. Something made of metal.
THE LAW OF SURVIVAL
In a land without boundaries, there are no rules. Every country would kill for this prize.
A LEADER OF MEN
A team of crack United States marines is sent to the station to secure the discovery. Their leader – Lieutenant Shane Schofield, call-sign: SCARECROW. They are a tight unit, tough and fearless. They would follow their leader into hell. They just did . . .
Area 7
A HIDDEN LOCATION
It is America’s most secret base, a remote installation known only as Area 7.
THE VISITOR
And today it has a guest: the President of the United States. But he’s going to get more than he bargained for on this trip. Because hostile forces are waiting inside . . .
HIS SAVIOUR
Among the President’s helicopter crew, however, is a young marine. His name is Schofield. Call-sign: SCARECROW. Rumour has it, he’s a good man in a storm. Judging by what the President has just walked into, he’d better be . . .
Scarecrow
IT IS THE GREATEST BOUNTY HUNT IN HISTORY
There are 15 targets. And they must all be dead by 12 noon, today. The price on their heads: $20 million each.
ONE HERO
Among the names on the target list, one stands out. An enigmatic Marine named Shane Schofield, call-sign: SCARECROW.
NO LIMITS
And so Schofield is hunted by gangs of international bounty hunters, including the ‘Black Knight’, a ruthless hunter who seems intent on eliminating only him.
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