18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Jack: "Looks like we've got a John Woo situation here.", October 17, 2008
Jack's back, and I'm all kinds of happy. For those new to this series, F. Paul Wilson has created one of the most fascinating protagonists in fictiondom. Repairman Jack is a paranoid urban mercenary, his distrust of the government having caused him to live off the grid. No tax records, no social security number, no lawful standing, none of that. When a wrong needs to be righted, you call the police or the fire department or your attorney. But if something really, really effed-up is going down and the devil is grinning at you, that's when you call Repairman Jack. Because he'll fix it, whatever it is. For a sizable fee.
It's not his fault that, more often than not, Jack gets plonked neck-deep in frightening paranormal adventures. But he's pretty good at pushing back at the darkness. Actually, he doesn't push back as much as belligerently shove at the darkness.
SPOILERS now (and also SPOILERS for those who haven't yet read
Bloodline: A Repairman Jack Novel (Repairman Jack)):
A month after the events in BLOODLINE, Jack is still reeling from his finding out that his genetic makeup, in part, originates back to the malevolent cosmic entity known as the Otherness. BY THE SWORD begins with a stroll in Central Park and with Jack finally getting a close face-to-face with the old man who had been stalking him in previous novels. The resulting chit-chat enables Jack to learn some invaluable things.
Not too long after, Jack is hired to recover a stolen ruined katana, a gig which seemed doable enough. Naturally, it quickly gets complicated. Several entities are also after this sword, including the Yakuza and a long-thought extinct cult called the Order of the Hidden Face. The fanatical Kickers movement is back (from BLOODLINE), with its leader Hank Thompson also interested in the katana, even as he continues to hunt down the vanished Dawn Pickering, a pregnant 18-year-old girl (also from BLOODLINE). Dawn's unborn child, we learn, will play a key role in determining the fate of the world. As BY THE SWORD unfolds, the search for Dawn gains equal fervency as with the race for the broken-down katana.
It culminates with a bloodbath and Jack desperately attempting to save New York from supernatural darkness. All in a night's work.
A bit of a segue now. Longtime fans of Repairman Jack know that he first appeared in
The Tomb (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack), a 1984 occult thriller which falls into the six-book Adversary Cycle, which is set in the backdrop of an eons-long war between two cosmic forces, the indifferent Ally and the malignant Otherness. The Adversary Cycle, by the way, then falls into Wilson's even broader, more all-encompassing Secret History of the World saga. F. Paul Wilson had originally intended Jack to be featured only in THE TOMB, and in fact had left him near death at the end of that book. However, Jack proved to be so popular that he was brought back for a crucial role in
Nightworld (1992), the culmination of the Adversary Cycle. Yet further clamoring and hankering by the fans finally earned the urban mercenary his own ongoing series, in 1998, with the second Repairman Jack novel
Legacies: A Repairman Jack Novel (Repairman Jack).
Here's the thing: all the Repairman Jack novels which follow THE TOMB are recountings of his adventures leading up to the apocalyptic events in NIGHTWORLD. We're up to the twelfth entry now, with BY THE SWORD, and, finally, finally, Jack's backstory (retro-continuity?) has caught up enough, chronologically, that certain early events from NIGHTWORLD are now being incorporated into this newest Repairman Jack novel. Readers of NIGHTWORLD will certainly be familiar with the opening Central Park sequence of BY THE SWORD.
As the author mentions in the foreword, Jack's story has advanced to the point now where the end of the overarcing story is in sight. I'm getting pretty dang psyched, especially since Wilson means to release a heavily tweaked version of NIGHTWORLD! But, now, more than ever, it's become more crucial to have read the prior novels. Wilson has stated that story arcs in one novel will now be bleeding into the next one. Case in point, BY THE SWORD features the Kickers and Dawn Pickering, whose story arcs began in BLOODLINE. There are also concrete tie-ins with
Black Wind and LEGACIES, as well as fleeting nods to
Jack: Secret Histories (Repairman Jack Novels) and to who knows what else I've missed. What's evident is that Wilson gets a kick in linking his novels.
BY THE SWORD is another fine entry in the series, with the terseness of the chapters lending an immediacy to things. And this novel boasts a pretty high body count, what with fanatical monks and relentless Yakuzas thrown into the mix, not to mention Jack himself. Jack does what he does best, as he in the end manipulates the situation so that all the bad guys get their well-deserved comeuppance. What makes Jack so engaging is that he comes off as such an unassuming, regular guy, given that he's existing outside legal boundaries. Until you cross him, of course, and then, well, he'll stomp on you. I really liked his interactions with the old man, Mr. Veilleur (ring any bells?), who by the way can also handle himself some.
Recurring elements of the Repairman Jack mythos are here: the woman with the dog, the "no more coincidences" theme, and Jack's fierce protectiveness of and love for Gia and Vicky, the street-savvy methods he uses to achieve his fix-its (as juxtaposed with the supernatural backdrop), and his massive distrust of the authorities. All the things that, without which, it simply wouldn't be a Repairman Jack adventure.
There are some flaws. Past Repairman Jack thrillers have had Jack engaged in two simultaneous fix-its, one seemingly innocuous, the other more serious and tinged with the supernatural. Here, Wilson veers away from the pattern as Jack gets involved with only one fix-it, the recovery of the katana. Instead, Wilson fills up the pages with respective chapters concerning Dawn Pickering, the Kicker Evolution, the corporate Japanese/Yakuza, and the crazed Kakureta Kao cult. Sucks to say, but not all these story arcs are that interesting. In fact, it was a struggle not to skim thru the chapters dedicated to Dawn Pickering and the Kickers. The other quibble is my usual one, that Jack's sensational lady love Gia and her daughter Vicky aren't featured more. But Wilson uses even the all-too-brief passages with Gia to set the stage for some disturbing foreshadowing. You see, ever since her near fatal accident, Gia has not been quite the same. Just another thing for Jack to feel guilty about.
A Japanese character in the book dubs him an "urban ronin," which certainly sounds more romantic than "urban mercenary." Whatever the case, Repairman Jack is an unforgettable character, and as his timeline careens ever closer to that of NIGHTWORLD, the anticipation in me begins to build and build. I won't begrudge Stephen King his role of President of the Repairman Jack Fan Club. But, man, can I be in the club? I'll even be the guy who just locks up after meetings.
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18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Where are the raisins?, October 19, 2008
Jack is back in the latest Repairman Jack novel,
By the Sword: A Repairman Jack Novel (Repairman Jack), but I have to confess that I don't think this is the strongest book in the series. I have noticed that many mainstream authors have been releasing extremely sub-par novels recently. I'm not sure if it is something in the air or water, or just crass commericalism on the part of publishers and authors, but whatever the reason, a plague upon all their houses. This novel is not horrible, as have been some of the others released this year, but it does show weaknesses and is a wee bit disappointing compared to past adventures with Jack.
I'd say the biggest problem here is that in most Repairman Jack novels, in addition to having a main confrontation between Jack and the forces of Otherness, the books also had a side story or two wherein Jack turns the tables on ordinary criminals with fiendishly clever ploys. For me that was always the best part of the Repairman Jack novels and the most interesting. There isn't such a side story in this book and I really missed it. In fact, while many people may not agree, I feel the whole Otherness/Adversary element of these novels in some ways actually detracts from the books. In my opinion Jack is one of the coolest and most imaginative characters created since Sherlock Holmes and if he was just left free to play urban mercenary he might be my favorite character ever. Nevertheless, the Adversary/Otherness crowd are pushing the time-table and the whole end of the world thing is quite a downer, not just for me the reader, but also for Jack who, after losing friends, family and his unborn child, is not nearly as creative in his mayhem in this outing as he has been in past novels. In fact, all he does in this novel, after some judicious prodding, is get out of the way of three groups of bad guys and let them maul each other. An intelligent choice, but lacking in the finesse and craftiness that makes Jack so interesting in preceding novels. His talent for taking out the bad guys while also delivering unto them their just comeuppence is missing in this book. As the end of the world draws nigh, Jack's stress has mounted and his patience and creativity have waned, and therefore one of my prime elements of Repairman Jack glee is now missing. This book is still OK and I'd rather have read it than not read it, but it was something like an oatmeal raisin cookie that doesn't have any raisins. A plain oatmeal cookie is better than no cookie, but c'mon Mr. Wilson, please put the raisins back into our cookies.
In this novel we still have Dawn, the pregnant girl, and Hank Thompson, leader of the Kicker cult, left from the last book, but Mr. Wilson throws in a Japanese cult with a predilection for self-mutilation, and another Japanese group, The Kaze Group, a corporate organization whose ends are opaque, but whom employs Yakuza assassins to do their dirty work. The event that kickstarts this novel is the theft of an ancient Japanese katana from a farm in Hawaii which the thief transports to NYC. The sword is riddled with holes and apparently worthless but both Japanese groups are vying to get it and the Kickers decide they need it when Hank dreams about it repeatedly. Jack tracks it down, loses it to the cult, and then the novel goes into high gear as the groups battle for both possession of the sword and Dawn.
There were two things about the sword that bothered me that you may notice yourself while you read. The sword is supposedly created by the famous Japanese swordsmith Masamune, partially using metal given him by Glaeken, the champion for the Ally, and partially using more prosaic metal he had laying around. The two metals didn't mix well. The sword is at ground zero in Hiroshima when the atom bomb goes off and the more prosaic metal vaporizes leaving the sword with a swiss cheese look. The first thing that bothers me is how did Masamune, who couldn't create more than 2,000 degrees fahrenheit and one atmosphere of pressure, work the otherworldly metal into a katana if the 30,000 degrees fahrenheit and many atmospheres of pressure at groud-zero couldn't make the metal melt? The other problem is that all the characters who hold it talk about its fabulous balance, but if Masamune made it with two metals, it was then made to be fabulously balanced with both of them. With half the metal gone the sword should have then been unbalanced. These are minor points, but my suspension of disbelief got tangled up on them.
Overall I thought the book was OK, and as I said I'd rather have read it than not, but I hope Mr. Wilson will go back to basics and put the raisins back into his cookies in the future. Even if Jack has to spend all his time battling Otherness there is no reason he can't be gleefully sneaky and clever about it. That after all is what sets Jack apart from a 100 other action heroes. Anyone can shoot the bad guy, but how many action heroes can also think circles around them and trick them into into destroying themselves? I want my tricky Jack back. I want my raisins.
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