YMMV / Temple (Matthew Reilly)

• Complete Monster:
  • William Race, in present-day 1999, faces two groups of Western Terrorists aiming to acquire a working Supernova, a powerful bomb known as a planet-killer:
    • Oberstgruppenführer Odilo Ehrhardt was a lieutenant at Auschwitz who in the present is still a rabid Nazi and head of the group known as the Stormtroopers. Ehrhardt demands a ransom of $100 billion dollars, ultimately intending to cripple the US economy. When he learns the ransom won't be paid, Ehrhardt kills the only person who knows the disarm code for what he thinks is a working Supernova and sets up a Sadistic Choice for William Race: Either the Supernova would destroy the world—with Ehrhardt perfectly willing to die if he can take the world with him—or, if Race somehow manages to disarm the device, the world would be saved but this would trigger another mechanism which would explode and kill Race.
    • Earl Bittiker is the head of the Republican Army of Texas, while Troy Copeland is a key member. Bittiker was drummed out of the Navy SEALs for rape, while Copeland is a nuclear physicist who is having an affair with a member of the group who is unaware of Copeland's true affiliation. Having succumbed to a doomsday cultism, Bittiker leads his men to steal the powerful idol to power the Supernova, resulting in multiple fatalities. When Bittiker manages to obtain the idol due to Copeland's help, Copeland without a second thought murders the woman he was having an affair with, but not before taunting the woman's husband before shooting him. Bittiker ultimately intends to completely erase the world for the sole satisfaction of seeing it burn.
  • Alberto Santiago's 1500s story: Hernando Pizarro, brother and lieutenant of Francisco Pizzaro, is a sadistic psychopath of a Conquistador who leads his forces across the Incan Empire. Women are forced into brothels and enslaved, children sold into slavery, men tortured and maimed with Hernando having entire villages tortured or massacred for the sport of it. Locating the priest Alberto Santiago and his friend Prince Renco who have taken the idol, Hernando intends to recover it and then torture the two slowly to death simply for the inconvenience.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Van Lewen gets some great action scenes and bonding with Race, only to be killed without a fight while trying to appeal to the better side of a man who's shown he doesn't have one.
  • Molke ends up the last military survivor of the (quite large) German team out to stop the Neo-Nazis and helps save several main characters' lives offscreen, but never gets a single line or action to suggest that he's anything but a Red Shirt.