The Four Legendary Kingdoms

In bestseller Reilly’s silly fourth thriller featuring Jack West Jr. (after 2009’s The Five Greatest Warriors), a runaway galaxy that’s traveling at 10 times the speed of light threatens to destroy Earth. West, after learning that he’s one of those five warriors (along with Jesus, Napoleon, Moses, and Genghis Khan), survives “a terrible showdown against his father in a giant underground shrine beneath Easter Island.” He settles into a quiet life of domesticity on his outback farm in Australia, only to get the bad news about the runaway galaxy and immediately be kidnapped by a representative of one of the four eternal kingdoms that rule the world. West lands in a hellish arena where he’s forced to participate in a brutal battle to death against human and not-quite human adversaries, including minotaurs who are really Neanderthals in bull masks. Diagrams resembling screenshots of video games don’t enhance the text, which is further marred by banal dialogue (“I’ve never found myself in a place calling itself the Underworld, ruled by a guy calling himself Hades, fighting for my life against guys in bull and lion helmets”). Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME. (May)