F. Paul Wilson

This one is the best of the Jack prequels, probably because all of the loose threads from the two earlier books finally getting stitched together. It's also such a success because FPW goes back to something he's really good at - folding in real life events to his fictional narrative. In this case, it's the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Jack thwarts the radicalized Muslim operatives on some level, but not completely. This one is so much fun because Jack seems fully realized at this point - show more and because we see the rage and vengeance start to leak into his psyche and behavior, a quandary he constantly noodles over throughout this book. He also gets ever so close to exposing the Order's involvement, only to let them slip by him without knowing it. But they know that they've come across a formidable opponent.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly Recommended!!!!! show less

What a banger. This connects up to [The Keep], [Reborn], [The Tomb], and the short story Faces. Best way to describer this one without a bunch of spoilers is that Jack gets sucked into a missing person investigation that he must conduct in the midst of a Conspiracy Theory convention. It's a wonderful set-up because so much of the stuff that happens around Jack as it relates to the One and the Secret Order reeks of conspiracy theories. So, Jack doubts his own sanity quite a bit through the show more book. But the climatic ending features Jack present as a house collapses into a cosmic hole in the ground. At this point, Jack must confront that he's been sucked into a cosmic battle between two powerful forces, and there's little he can do about it.

A short side note - the girlfriend, Gia - at first, I thought she was a bit of a passing character based on FPW not quite fleshing her into a full person. But she appears to be here for the long haul, and she's become a better part of the story and better written.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly Recommended!!!!! show less

This entry in [[[The Secret History of the World]]] series is by far the quietest and slowest-burning so far. It's downright quotidian for easily three quarters of the reading. And then.....when Wilson unleashes the horror..... it's arresting beyond words.

Jimmy and Carol can't have a baby; Jimmy can't get anything published; Jimmy gets an unexpected bounty in the form of a gaudy inheritance. That Carol is having downright blood-thirsty nightmares and urges, though some of the urges tend show more toward the basely sexual, too, is the only clue that we're not in Kansas any more, Toto.

The book calls back to the epic ending of [The Keep], where the malevolent presence is supposed to be vanquished - but we should all know better than that. This time, instead of a magic sword-wielding hero, we've got a weird Catholic Pentecostal sect of true believers who want to conduct a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, back-room (or in this case, kitchen) abortion. Honestly, I'm not sure how this book got published since the Satanic Panic hadn't completely died down when it was written. But I'm glad it did - it's a corker, in the end.

4 bones!!!! mainly because it was quotidian for too long.
Highly Recommended!!!! show less

[Wardenclyffe] owes a lot to H. P. Lovecraft, and admits it toward the end of the novella when the narrator has a conversation with Nikolai Tesla about a young man, recently deceased, who published stories in nature similar to the events they'd experienced - they bemoan their own dabbling with danger in a way that might have hurt this young author.

The story covers Tesla's attempts to use a tower, now referred to by the name of the place where it was erected, to bring wireless power to the show more world. Wilson uses these real world events to highlight the secret history of their efforts broke through to another dimension to release some creepy-crawlies. There's a plot twist in the story (no spoilers) that obviously dates the writing of the novella to our times now, but it fits in quite beautifully while also being a political/social comment.

Wilson again slips into another time and place effortlessly. There's stated connections to [The Compendium of Srem] that you won't be able to miss at some point, and this story seems to set up the larger battle in the secret history quite nicely.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly Recommended!!!!! show less