Gateways

Repairman Jack is every mans James Bond. In Gateways Jack is out of his element, the big city, and cast down to the Florida Everglades. Usually, when a storyline changes drastically, theres a drop off in story quality, not so in Gateways.
Book seven is different, and its good, we get an insight to Jack and his relationship with his father.
The story is well told and character details perfect.
Jack is one of the best good bad guys in print.

I just finished rereading this book, and I have to say that out of all of the Repairman Jack books (and I like each and every one of them) this is my favorite. First of all, the bulk of the story takes place in Florida, so you get to see Jack out of his natural habitat, and more importantly, Jack and his father reconcile after Jack has pretty much been out of his father’s life for fifteen years. The story itself is another outstanding RJ adventure, once again Jack comes up against the malign force known as The Otherness. There is a fair amount of bloodshed and other assorted mayhem, but no more so than any of the other books. If you’ve liked the other books, no reason you would not enjoy this one. I hesitate to get too specific with the plot, it’s easy to give away too much in a review, so forgive me if I’m not being specific enough about the storyline. This is the seventh of sixteen books in the Repairman Jack series that starts with The Tomb and concludes with Nightworld, just in case you are just now working on the series. He also wrote three RJ books for young adult readers, and they are also excellent. If you like RJ so far, you should also check out those books, especially since a couple of his childhood friends are introduced later on in the RJ series. Just through sheer luck, I read the first young adult book after putting it off for a while, and when the next RJ book came out, his two friends from childhood were featured in the book. After Nightworld, the author announced that he would write three novels that depict Jack’s early days in New York City and then that ws it for Repairman Jack. Cold City and Dark City have been published, and this November, the final Repairman Jack book, Fear City, will be released.

This book has it all and now I have ordered it on audio. I can’t wait to listen. It was so creepy to read. If you have not read the Repairman Jack series of books from F. Paul Wilson, you are missing some of the best books ever written. They are so hard to put down. Why he has not received more recognition is beyond me. I am glad that he did not give up writing his series. He has enough of a following that it has been worthwhile. While Hollywood keeps making trashy reruns of once great hits, here is a series that would be right up there with mysterious super hero fiction. I think the problem with Hollywood is they stopped reading and using their imagination. Now a movie has awful special effects with blasting sound and dialogue one can barely here as it is apparently not worth listening too. Latest example was the last Superman. What junk that movie was. It is good to be able to sit down and read a good book. This series goes all the way back to a book and then a movie called “The Keep.” I have read almost all…just waiting for the last to be released. I have bought these books 4 times and given them away. Now I am buying them for the last time and keeping them!

Gateways is the 7th entry in the “Repairman Jack” series, and in many ways, is the strongest one yet. For those who do not know, Repairman Jack is not a handyman but he is a fixer – of the sorts of problems that people have that for one reason or another preclude involving the authorities. Jack is smart, resourceful, trustworthy and completely moral in his own way. But his fixes frequently involve mayhem or even murder (although he tries to avoid killing people unless it’s absolutely necessary), and he has a kind of a dark side that asserts itself when something or someone threatens him or one of his loved ones.

From the very first Repairman Jack novel, written in 1984 (The Tomb), there has been a strong supernatural element in all the Jack adventures involving a sort of cosmic conflict between two super-uber entities of unimaginable power that are battling for control of all the universes. Somehow Jack has become a major player in this conflict that is an interesting twist on good versus evil; in Jack’s universe (which is the same as that depicted in Wilson’s “Adversary Cycle” that starts with “The Keep” and ends with “Nightworld”) it is the Ally (that exhibits benign indifference to humanity) versus the Otherness (that wants chaos and the destruction of all life). Jack has been drafted by the Ally.

Although all the previous entries in the series are set in New York CIty, in Gateways, Jack flies down to Florida to see his estranged father who is in a coma after a near-fatal hit-and run traffic accident. His father lives in a sort of retirement community called Gateways. In the hospital Jack meets his father’s neighbor and friend, a spunky elderly widow named Anya who seems to know an awful lot about his father and Jack himself, and who has been watching out for Jack’s dad after the accident. Jack’s father mysteriously comes out of his coma, Jack finds strange little voodoo like totems around the bed and the room and we’re off.

Gateways reveals a lot more of the backstory of Jack’s father, and his relationship with his son than we have seen before. There are also very interesting and explicit tie-ins with the Adversary Cycle and villains old and new, and many plot twists and turns. I’ll say no more about the plot because I don’t want to include any spoilers, but from the blurb on the back of the book I thought this was going to be on the boring side. Rather, it turned out to be one of the most revealing, interesting and exciting Repairman Jack entries yet.

All the Repairman Jack books stand on their own. but they are so much richer than simple novels if read sequentially. Either way Repairman Jack and Gateways are great and highly recommended.

yes, this is the book for connoiseurs of Jack, drawing as it does form other stories by F Paul Wilson, in particular The Barrens and even Nightworld itself. It starts with news that Jack’s father has been the victim of a hit and run accident in Florida, and our anti-hero must leave New York and travel down to visit him. Wilson provides his usual tense atention-grabbing scene at the start of the novel, as Jack’s false identity and smuggling abilities are put to the test as he is forced to take a plane in the high-security aftermath of 9/11. Now when even Repairman Jack is afraid of being highjacked in mid-air, something has clearly gone wrong in America…
Anyway, on arrival in Florida it becomes clear that this was no random accident, and that Jack’s father has quite a few secrets of his own. Without giving too much away, there are some surprise appearances along the way, with some of the cast of Nightworld sneaking out for a look at our world…I’m talking about you and your kin, Lobster-Wasp, as well as the one whose name we dare not speak (or borrow). These events are clearly going to require a slight re-writing of Nightworld by Wilson, as the current text was written before these recent Jack novels and does not contain any reference to Jack having experienced the events of Gateways…however, I’m sure FPW will tie up the loose ends perfectly in what is the greatest saga in modern fiction.

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