Contest by Matthew Reilly

Matthew Reilly's Contest is not a book that seeks to give the reader new insights, or offer deep, thought-provoking opinions. It is, quite simply a duel to the death between seven different alien species, all for pride and accolades, with all of the intelligent races looking on, gambling on the results.

Unfortunately, Earth is not considered advanced enough to be made aware of the existence of the aliens, so our champion is picked for us. We end up with Stephen Swain as our representative. He is quite intelligent - a doctor no less - quick and agile, but he's not exactly the steroid-pumped "take on the vicious aliens" type that we would normally get in such a contest. Why he is chosen is explained, but it's a pretty cheap explanation.

Despite the fact that we can't know about the existence of the alien races, the contest is being held inside New York State Library. Cue the US Government agency seeking to acquire the sophisticated technology.

However, when you are reading this book, you will not care about minor inconsistencies or the lack of intellectual substance behind the story. Stephen Swain dishes the pain on the aliens in a variety of ingenious ways, and you rush through Swain's adventure, eager to see how he actually deals with it all. When you are reading, it doesn't appear that Stephen Swain survives his fights miraculously. There are no flukes to save Swain, nor are the aliens weak to seemingly harmless substances like water or wood. Whether they would be in real life or not is a different question entirely, but at least Matthew Reilly spared us such a cheap solution to Swain's problems.

Swain manages to come up with solutions to his own problems. All of the items and ideas are there for Swain to use to solve whatever problem he comes across, but you don't connect them all together until you read how Swain actually manages to do it. And you realise how clever Matthew Reilly really was, to include seemingly innocuous items and statements in his story that actually play a major role in the story later on.

There are a couple of minor inconsistencies in the story, and the plot is somewhat shallow. That doesn't matter, though. It's simply a book meant to excite and entertain, and in that regard, it certainly delivers.