... or thinks her Daddy should be. Last summer, my wife handed me a book called The Tomb, and told me to give it a try. She thought I'd like the vigilante character of Repairman Jack. She was right. One of my Christmas presents was the 11th Repairman Jack book, Bloodlines, in hardcover. Clearly, I liked the character. For those of you unaware, Jack lives above the law and does "fix-its" for people who have nowhere else to turn. As the books unfold, it is discovered that he is to be the champion in a supernatural battle between Evil and Indifferent (he will be the champion on Earth for the side of Indifferent). So the books not only chronicle his stand-alone fix-its, but also his involvement in the supernatural battle and how they tie in to some of his fix-its. I've also read F. Paul Wilson's Midnight Mass, an outstanding vampire thriller, and The Select, a med school version of The Firm, albeit a bit lighter. The F. Paul Wilson shelf at the local Borders is right at my daughter's eye level. It's in the Horror section, and the way it's arranged the last set of shelves in Horror mirror the last set of shelves in SF/F. The last few times we've been to Borders, my daughter keeps taking a hardcover copy of Bloodlines (Which, I have and have read), and hands it to my wife or I saying, "Daddy read. Daddy like." We keep telling her that I already read the book. Today, my wife and daughter go off to Borders (as I try to sleep off two months of work hell that are now over). They come home with many books, including one that my daughter picked out for me. An F. Paul Wilson book, The Keep. She chose it after my wife reminded her that I already have a copy of Bloodlines and that I liked that book. Do I have a great kid or what?
Not only that but THE KEEP is the first part of The Adversary Cycle to which the Repairman Jack books belong! She chose wisely.
I picked up The Tomb a few months ago, as I've had a few people tell me I'd like the Repairman Jack stories. I've read Midnight Mass, but I enjoyed the first half of it more than the second. Overall, I'd say it disappointed me, but I've been assured that it's far from his strongest novel. I'll have to crack open The Tomb (heh) sometime soon.
I liked MIDNIGHT MASS, but it's a weird creature. It's composed of two short stories merged together and then continued. It kinda works... THE TOMB is much better. All the Jack books are pretty good.
Spiff, from what JKTim has had to say about you, I think you'll really enjoy the Repairman Jack series. However The Tomb is loaded with exposition and starts off pretty slow. If you are patient with it, it pays off in the end. I didn't get the feeling that Midnight Mass was two separate stories. I felt like it was a completely cohesive epic, and I really liked it. It seemed to flow just fine for me.
It's all lies. I can deal with slow, especially if there's a payoff. I'm reading The Ruins right now, and over 50 pages have been centered around a guy in a hole in the ground. I think it's evident just from the two very different types of vampires shown in it. He came up with a reasonable enough explanation for it, but now that I know it's a combination of stories, I can almost see where they're divided. It definitely wasn't bad; it was a pretty decent read. There were just aspects which disappointed me.
Several years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing F. Paul Wilson for a small press publication that I did reviews for. I am a big fan of his work, especially Repairman Jack. I'm anxious to see if he decides to redo Nightworld as the ending to the RJ series, as that was written long before he wrote Legacies, the follow-up to The Tomb.
Now that I have another book in the Adversary Cycle, I am interested to see where Wilson goes with it. I love the RJ books ... I'm looking forward to reading Secret Histories when it comes out next month, and I see that RJ 12 is due out in special edition form this summer and probably regular hardcover in late summer/early fall.
The last I heard, the title was going to be By The Sword, which really doesn't fit with the other "one word" title schemes that he's used before. There's precious little on his site about it, other than the special edition comes out soon.
Yeah, that's definitely the pattern the last six or so RJ novels have gone through, which means the standard Forge hardcover will hit Barnes & Noble and Borders sometime in November. Well, no matter what the title, it's good to know another one's on the way.
I've got to confess I'm a few books behind, though they're all sitting on my bookshelf, waiting for me. I tend to stockpile titles sometimes.