The Four Legendary Kingdoms, The Three Secret Cities, The Two Lost Mountains, The One Impossible Labyrinth (Matthew Reilly)

The Four Legendary Kingdoms

1. Premise immediately looks interesting
2. Like contest but more advanced
3. Hades! I know! About the Labours!!
4. 4.4/5

The Three Secret Cities

1. I'm a friend of Scarecrow's. My name is Captain Aloysius Knight
2. She's your mother
3. Pooh and Stretch are loyal
4. Probably better than the previous book by a tiny margin 4.5/5

The Two Lost Mountains

1. CFA and CPA is a hard qualification
2. Jack treats everyone with respect and courtesy
3. Easton is Jack's friend
4. Also good but maybe slightly weaker than 4 legendary kingdoms

The One Impossible Labrinth

1. A very familiar pattern emerges - Jack appears to be coming last in a race and he's catching up
2. Probably on par with three secret cities
3. Diagrams are also cool
4. It's the type of book that conspiracy theorists will love - a secret group of elite in the know and running the show
5. 4 subteams with 4 missions
6. Rufus and Sky Monster, fish out of water, launching a rescue mission without their heroes
7. Really good, but weird ending
8. I think it's the equal best book 4.5/5

The Jack West series as a whole is interesting in the sense that Reilly tries to explain away real world legends, wonders, places, phenomena by way of conspiracy theory. In the first 3 books, and particularly the first book, it's a bit ridiculous to think ancient humans could have designed all those advanced booby traps or hid away all these ancient caverns without being detected. But once you hit 4 legendary kingdoms, it gets really interesting because you then see the hidden world / kingdoms Reilly has created to explain all the conspiracies, and he delves a tiny bit into aliens and science fiction. Great read but I wouldn't be in a hurry to re-read this. Much of the action can be skipped and just glanced over, which isn't exactly my favourite thing to do. But it does make for exciting reading.