Fatal Error

As we all know, the last few Repairman Jack novels contained more exposition and less of the suspense, intertwined plot threads, and human interest that made the series so interesting. Much the same thing happened in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and for much the same reason: exposition comes before denouement in any series novel.

Here comes the denouement!

This is the penultimate novel in the 15-volume series, and it feels a lot more like the best books from early in the series, with a little extra punch. The tension builds — although it won’t finally be resolved until the next, final book in the series — the plot threads intertwine, and there’s even a sub-plot or two, as in the older books. I missed the intertwined sub-plots in By the Sword and Ground Zero. They added a lot to Jack’s character. That feel of watching a real person engaged in both human and superhuman events makes a welcome return in this volume, in my opinion. Jack is by turns noble and ruthless; the noosphere, the Lady, and the world are in ever-increasing danger; and Ras — I better not say his name — inches toward victory against our outmatched heroes while they watch each other’s backs. I especially enjoyed Jack taking on even a minor side-project, as these always added to the realism of the characters and their world. There hasn’t been a good “repair” mission for a while, and it brought back the fun feel of the first parts of the series.

I read By the Sword and Ground Zero, enjoyed them to some extent but felt it was more of a duty to read them, and now the payoff has begun. Best $14 I’ve spent on Amazon in quite a while, and Wilson has guaranteed I will buy the final volume on the first day of issue.

“Fatal Error” is the 14th and penultimate Repairman Jack Novel. Author F.P. Wilson tells us in a prefatory note that the series will end with number 15, tentatively titled “The Dark at the End. Previous comments by the author indicate that last RJ novel will serve as the final lead-up to a “heavily revised “Nightworld”, the truly shock and awe capstone of his “Adversary Cycle” that was first published in 1993. Both the Adversary Cycle and the RJ series, as well as some of Wilson’s short stories (some available free on the internet) comprise “The Secret History of the World”, a long and involved tale that revolves around an eternal struggle between two ber-God-like entities, called the Ally and the Otherness, for dominion over all sentiently inhabited worlds in the multiverse.

In the early RJ novels, The Secret History took a back seat to Jack himself, and his role as a fixer for clients that for various reasons, could not go to the authorities. The emphasis was on action, and Jack’s clever approaches to solving problems with the least amount of violence (sometimes that last part didn’t quite work out). There was always some tie-in with Ally/Otherness battle, but it was not in the forefront. For the last 4 or 5 RJ books however, and in “Fatal Error”, it is the Secret History that takes center stage. Whereas all the RJ books have been self-referential, this feature is now greatly expanded, and includes all previous RJ novels, the whole of the Adversary Cycle, the two YA Jack titles that have been published so far and several short stories. Fatal Error, as well as the last several books, are therefore much less self-contained and stand-alone than the earliest RJ novels. Rather, they comprise one very long novel broken up into book-length chapters. For this reason I do not recommend trying to read this as a stand-alone, or to jump into the series here. Do yourself a favor and go back to The Tomb and read forward from there, or better yet, look up the Secret History of the World and read all the novels (about 20) in the sequence that Wilson gives.

The stakes were already high at the outset of Fatal Error and the tension rises steadily throughout. There is a client, and a job, but it is mostly all backstory to the main event. All our favorite RJ characters, past and present, are here (one of them bites the dust) and the inexorable path to the final battle as all the players move into position is clear. Like the other RJ books, Fatal Error was a great read and kept me up late. The writing is still crisp and the plot moves along briskly. I am most curious to see the what “The Dark at the End” looks like, and most of all, to see how he revises “Nightworld to pull all the little bits and pieces of the whole RJ (and YA RJ) and Adversary Cycle series into a single congruent and cohesive whole.

tick…tock…

JMT

Just finished Fatal Error and am nearing the end of my journey with Jack. Once again F PAUL Wilson has kept me turning pages to get to the end. And once again he has succeeded in making me want more. But this morning I have “The Dark at the End” and “Nightworld” left in my journey. Sometimes, even in the literary world you make friends that remain with you for the rest of your life. That’s the way it is with Repairman Jack and his creator, F Paul Wilson. The journey has been awesome and I, for one, will miss not having a new day with a new problems to solve. Again, thank you Mr Wilson.

So after more than a dozen books we come to the penultimate Repairman Jack novel and if you have got this far, you will be pleased to get more answers. I see this as Ground Zero (Repairman Jack) Part II. We have the same small group of main characters, now focused entirely on the main struggle. Jack, Veilleur, Weezy and “the Lady” against Drexler and “the One” with their supporting cast of “the Order”, Kickers etc.

Whereas in Ground Zero, Jack seemed passive and ineffectual, now he starts to concentrate on what he really needs to do and is finally sparked into action. This book sticks to the main task at hand and we don’t get the usual fix-it jobs that he takes on – or do we? Everything eventually links up and the scene is finally set for the final battle.

By now if you are not a fan, this is about the worst time to start reading this series, as it all builds on what has gone before, yet the complexity has been finally “ironed out” to come down to what might seem a simplistic “good vs. evil” conflict. But just at this point Drexler starts to show doubts and although we can believe “the One” is wholly evil, would anybody else really want the kind of future he is describing?

Somehow, (Wilson seems to be telling us) every human being has some chance of redemption and maybe this is what saves us from chaos. No matter how bad it gets and no matter how passive we can seem – there is still a part of us as human beings that will do the right thing and save the species from self-destruction.

Now I have got this far, having read all the books – I can only say this is compulsive reading and a real page-turner. Overall the series has been consistently excellent – but maybe a newcomer would want to start at an earlier point.

If you’ve not read repairman Jack novels before then your in for a treat. I’ve got every single one and they are all consistently good. Don’t expect high literature, these are easy reading, but do expect to be educated, amused, excited and intrigued. You’ll be drawn into Jacks unusual and often frighteningly strange world, and if you’re like me you may leave somewhat inspired and addicted.

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