I honestly don't remember if I put up much of a fight against the recommendation. I think I must have, because I just don't do horror... but my friend isn't the type to pressure me into doing something. Somehow, however it came about, I found myself flopping in bed with a copy of The Keep. Maybe Devlin got me to give it a try with the Vampire angle... I'll have to pick his brain when I talk to him again. Regardless of how I got into it, within a few pages I was hooked. Nazis, Vampires, a mysterious guy, jews... It was great! great at first, anyway...
*cue the creepy music* by the time it started to get scary, I was too hooked to stop. I distinctly remember setting the book down and telling myself that I should stop reading because it was scary, and then picking the book back up and diving back into it.
By the time I had finished the book, I was in awe. This guy (as in the author) was freaking awesome! By the time I finished the next book in the cycle, The Tomb, I was hooked. I quickly searched online and found some used copies of the rest of the adversary cycle, spent all of my christmas money on those puppies that year. They had been out of print for years, and were hard to track down. I finally got my hands on the rest:
The Touch
Reborn
Reprisal
NIGHTWORLD
To explain this series, I'm going to use the author's own words, taken from his website repairmanjack.com
"The Adversary Cycle didn’t start out as a cycle. I like doing connected stories – future histories or separate stories sharing the same milieu, like the Village of Monroe – but I had no intention of doing a series. The first three novels of the cycle (The Keep, The Tomb, and The Touch) were intended as stand alones, completely unrelated. They shared no characters or themes.
Then I went to work on a new novel that was also meant to be a stand-alone. I wanted it to look like a Rosemary's Baby or an Omen but actually be something different (just as The Keep looks like a vampire novel for a while, but is not). I wanted to use an evil entity other than the tired old Antichrist, but who? Then I realized I already had that entity in Rasalom from The Keep. I needed a suburban setting convenient to Manhattan, and I already had one in Monroe where The Touch took place. I became intrigued by the challenge of tying those two novels, and The Tomb as well, into *CONTENT REMOVED FOR SPOILERS* bringing the books full circle. It worked so well that I suspect my subconscious might have been linking them all along.
The result was a 1,000-plus-page novel. Nobody was going to publish that, so I broke it into three parts – Reborn, Reprisal, and Nightworld."
so, you take that, and then add in the fact that the main character in The Tomb, Jack, begged to have his own series. (again, Wilson's own words) "By the time I reached the end of The Tomb, I realized I had a series character. I didn't feel I was ready to write a series then, so I *CONTENT REMOVED FOR SPOILERS* The Tomb never went out of print, and through the years it amassed a huge following. So after 14 years of pleas from readers, I wrote a second Repairman Jack novel. Legacies was so much fun I had to do another, and it’s been a book a year since then."
so, essentially, all 15 of the Repairman Jack novels squeeze into the time between The Tomb and Nightworld. That created some problems, as Nightworld was set in the 80s, and more recent RJ novels were obviously set in modern times. Therefore, Wilson has revised and is in the process of re-releasing Reborn, Reprisal, and Nightworld in order to make the dates flow properly. With 14 of the 15 RJ novels published, (last one is due out in 2011), and the revised versions of Reprisal and Nightworld still forthcoming, I can't really explain how excited I am. I know how the whole series ends, but at the same time, I don't. Somewhere, I've seen Wilson describe this set of works as a "river" of stories. You have no idea how they're interconnected, but as you go with the flow bits come up from the depths and tie together, and all of a sudden it all makes sense.
I'm totally not doing this series justice, and I haven't even started in on Wilson's other works, but I feel that I've gushed long enough. This is a must-read series for anyone who enjoys fiction that makes you think a little bit (Jared, Dick, I'm talking to both of you here. read these). If you want, you can only read the Repairman Jack stories, starting with The Tomb, but I'd really suggest reading them in this order:
(+ indicates adversary cycle, and * indicates Repairman Jack)
(+ indicates adversary cycle, and * indicates Repairman Jack)
The Keep+
Reborn+
The Tomb+*
Legacies*
Conspiracies*
All the Rage*
Hosts*
The Haunted Air*
Gateways*
Crisscross*
Infernal*
Harbingers
Bloodline*
By the Sword*
Ground Zero*
The Touch+
Reprisal+
Fatal Error*
The Dark at the End* (not yet published)
NIGHTWORLD+*(wait for the revised version)
Reborn+
The Tomb+*
Legacies*
Conspiracies*
All the Rage*
Hosts*
The Haunted Air*
Gateways*
Crisscross*
Infernal*
Harbingers
Bloodline*
By the Sword*
Ground Zero*
The Touch+
Reprisal+
Fatal Error*
The Dark at the End* (not yet published)
NIGHTWORLD+*(wait for the revised version)
Fatal Error was published this past October. In the midst of reading it, I honestly sat the book down, my jaw on the floor, and just marveled at the artistry that Wilson has used to sew all of these tangents together. Seriously a master of the craft.
