Hosts

Hosts (2001) F. Paul Wilson

The further into the Repairman Jack series I get, the more I’m starting to miss having read Conspiracies. In the fifth Repairman Jack novel, things start out badly for Jack when he’s on a Subway car where a man pulls out a gun and starts picking of the passengers one, by one. Things get worse from there, as not only is Jack scared of being identified as the hero, but he ends up getting called for a job that he absolutely cannot refuse.

As with the previous Repairman Jack novels, Hosts was well done, with a pace that tore along and didn’t make putting the book down very easy. (I snuck away for a few minutes while my parents were her Sunday to finish the book.)

But what I like best about this series is that although the are conclusions, there are not necessarily happy endings. It’s not that I’m opposed to happy endings or anything, I just like reading books where you really have no idea what characters are going to survive to the end of the story. When other characters die, it somehow makes you feel much more relief when other characters do survive.

We’re also continuing to see some of Jack’s habits come back to haunt him. In the last book he had to change where he met his clients because he was becoming predictable. Now he learns he has become predictable in other ways as well.

And really, that’s what I think I enjoy most about these books. Lessons learned in one book are carried into another, as are bad habits and problems. If Jack does something foolish, if it doesn’t catch him in the current book, it may well catch him in a later book

I am frustrated, however, by the fact that I really have no idea what happened in Conspiracies. (Great. It’s available for pre-order… for the end of September 2008. BAH!) I just know that things are building from book to book, and just is involved whether he likes it or not.

If you haven’t read a Repairman Jack novel, and you like true supernatural mysteries/thrillers, then you definitely want to check out this series, starting with The Tomb.
Rating:7/10

• Browse the archives:
  
• Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale » »
• « « Serenity: Better Days, Vol 1