Fatal Error

Repairman Jack #14

by F. Paul Wilson

“Repairman Jack is one of my favorite characters--I'm full of happy anticipation every time I hold a new RJ novel in my hands.”

--Charlaine Harris, creator of True Blood

The End of the World is at hand!

Munir Habib's life has become a nightmare. His tormentor has warned Munir not to report the kidnapping of his family, or else they will pay a terrible price. A friend realizes something is terribly wrong and tells Munir he doesn't have to go to the cops. There's a guy who fixes situations like this-Repairman Jack. Jack is backed into helping Munir despite his ongoing involvement in the cosmic shadow war between the Ally and the Otherness. Or perhaps because of it. He's chafing at being forced into the defensive role of protecting the Lady, the physical embodiment of the consciousness of the planet Earth.

Meanwhile, the Septimus Order and the Kickers are seemingly working in concert on a plot to extinguish the Lady and open the way for the Otherness to take over our reality. To top it all off, Dawn Pickering finally goes into labor and delivers a baby she only glimpses as it's whisked away, and is terrified by what she sees. Later she's told the baby died, but she doesn't believe it. Neither does Weezy. Neither does Jack. All these interlocking plots mean doom for humanity. But Jack never gives up or gives in.

Genres: Horror, Thriller, Urban Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction, Mystery, Supernatural

Audible Audio

First published July 1, 2010

About the author

Francis Paul Wilson is an author, born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He writes novels and short stories primarily in the science fiction and horror genres. His debut novel was Healer (1976). Wilson is also a part-time practicing family physician. He made his first sales in 1970 to Analog and continued to write science fiction throughout the seventies. In 1981 he ventured into the horror genre with the international bestseller, The Keep, and helped define the field throughout the rest of the decade. In the 1990s he became a true genre hopper, moving from science fiction to horror to medical thrillers and branching into interactive scripting for Disney Interactive and other multimedia companies. He, along with Matthew J. Costello, created and scripted FTL Newsfeed which ran daily on the Sci-Fi Channel from 1992-1996.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/fpaulw...

Reviews

[Chloe · Rating 1 out of 5]

I should have known better than to segue from Mario Vargas Llosa into the cheap pablum of another Repairman Jack adventure. I should have realized that it would be akin to drinking a shot of Eagle Rare, neat, with a Kool-Aid back. I should have known this and, to be fully honest, a part of me did admit to it on some deep down unconscious level. Yet that did not stop me at all. I had a new Jack book in my hands- not just any Jack but the second to last book in a series that has stretched so long Wilson could have given The Wheel Of Time pointers in how to draw out unnecessary story lines. I was nearing the cusp, the coup de grace, the finishing move with which Wilson would unleash his literary fury and leave his opponents/readers teetering, knocked out on their feet like so many Mortal Kombat matches.

I should have known better. For the past three or four books, Wilson has been saying that he's had a grand plan for Jack, his eminently entertaining antihero. This was all building for something and if readers had patience it would all be revealed in good time. Well, I've finished the penultimate Repairman Jack and I know where this has been going since Day One: a new series for F. Paul Wilson to dick around his readers with. Yep. There won't be any conclusion to the next Repairman Jack book, just as there wasn't for this one, or the previous five or six. Instead there will be new battles to fight in the apparently unceasing struggle between the Ally and the Otherness.

He's the stereotyped pusher on the corner, slinging sub-par product to desperate junkies who want their adrenaline fix. Instead we get this ridiculous story that adds up to 80% baby laxative, 10% fiddling while Rome burns, and 10% recap of everything we've already read. Wilson has a plan all right- keep pumping out tripe like this for as long as it takes until he is either imprisoned for crimes against the written word or he loses enough of a fan base that he experiences a moment of clarity and renounces his hack past. It's going to be a train wreck waiting for this moment though.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars

Fatal Error, Repairman Jack #14 was to me a good story that sets up the obvious endgame in this amazing series and guilty pleasure of mine. F. Paul Wilson has created a special series led by a main character in Jack that always walks the line between good and bad. The Repairman Jack series has developed into one of my very favorite series out there and I can never seem to get enough. Wilson does an amazing job at making each book work as a standalone while at the same time never neglecting the overall story arc. We the reader now not only know that each book and story will have a deeper connection, we expect it. Wilson goes out of his way to tell us the readers and fans that like the last book, this one and the next one will carry into one another, one long story arc. These books will have less of conclusions as they are the last steps leading to the final story.

Jack is one of my favorite heroes/anti-hero of all time.

The blending of a blistering fast paced action thriller with a tiny, albeit meaningful supernatural twist, this series is my cup of tea.

The writing is superb.

The novel's are true page turners.

Fatal Error is a story that focuses on the inevitable endgame. There are some great new characters but most are familiar. Munir Habib was a great addition and relevant character.

I absolutely love this series, Wilson's writing, and Repairman Jack.

14 books down and now, the end is in sight. I still cannot get enough of Jack and his story. Like the last several books, this one is one of the darker and scariest Repairman Jack novels of the series. Things have not gone well for our hero. So many bad things have happened. Too many people killed, some were family. The weight of the world rides on our invisible hero.


This series as a whole is guilty pleasure of mine often making me give it even higher marks. I love the writing, the characters, the action, and the tiny bit of supernatural. I cannot wait until my wife finally listens to me and she also jumps in to the world of Repairman Jack.

One of my all time favorite series..

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

The penultimate Repairman Jack novel picks up right were the last one left off. The Lady survived (ultimately) her encounter with the 'otherness', but this is the second time she has been killed. If she does die a third time, then the world is open to the otherness (she is something of a avatar for earth's intelligent beings, and her death implies the Ally will abandon even 'his' slight presence on the earth). The One, being thwarted once again, is frustrated, but he still has many back-up plans which are alluded to, but never in detail.

Meanwhile, Jack is frustrated, playing basically a defense game against the One, when a hacker friend of his comes to Jack with a problem. One of the hacker's buddies has had his family kidnapped and wants Jack to help 'fix' it. Jack advises the guy to go the fibbies, but he will not. So, Jack decides to help him out; this seems like a side story, but as the Lady told Jack a few installments ago, there are no coincidences any more. We also know that the One is planning a massive attack against the WWW with the Kicker's help in the hopes that a massive crash of the internet will be the blow to kill the Lady once and for all.

Again, this came off as another place holder before the final denouncement Wilson has kept hinting about for several installments know, in fact, as long as he started putting the postscript 'Secret history of the World' timelines in the books. It seems it is left to four people to thwart the One-- Jack, the Lady, Weezie, and Veilleur, the ex-champion of the Ally. Again, Wilson's easy prose and fast pacing really move this one along. 3.5 stars rounding up!

[Already Overbooked · Rating 4 out of 5]

He knows

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looks like I have a couple of books to read now as FPW's saga comes to a climax. One more Repairman Jack and the climax of the Adversary series. (A side note here, I don't care for the Adversary series nearly as much as this series.).

Here things are moving toward what seems to be the inevitable end (of the books and maybe of the world). The end of this book is a no nonsense cliffhanger. The words "Get the Next Book" should have been the last thing on the pages.

I like these books. A heads up here for some readers "by the way", if you're a Christian (like me) or for that matter if you're in any way religious then you have to get used to not only Wilson's "of course there's no God" book viewpoint, you have to get used to the point being rehashed pretty often. So myself...I go into the novels to read a story not discuss philosophy or metaphysics. I take the attitude, "it's just a story".

The only reason this book gets a 4 instead of a 5 (as the story is interesting and has drawn me as well as many other readers in) is that the part of the story with Jack performing his "Repairman Jack service" manages to (somehow) slow down and start to drag a bit.

How a story that is in its own way horrific can start to drag I don't get...but he manages to accomplish it. The slow down doesn't go on long however and the book/series/story gets back in the saddle careening it's way toward the end of everything here on Earth. You know, rivers of blood, lakes of gore, fiery death, meteorites, asteroids, dogs and cats sleeping together, Justin Bieber becoming a role model.....

By the way (back to the review) now even the calls Jack gets to "help", you know to be "Repairman Jack" end up tied into the overall events swirling around him..."No more coincidences for Jack anymore".

So, yeah. Good book, good series. It manages to hit several shelves, Urban Fantasy, Horror action, if you like any of these categories of novel you probably ought to try the Repairman Jack series.

Recommended.

[Ensiform · Rating 3 out of 5]

The penultimate Jack book. In this issue, Jack is hired by Munir, an Arab whose wife and son have been kidnapped by a sadistic lunatic who blames Munir for his sister’s 9/11 death – but the kidnapper is actually a tool of the Adversary, who needs Munir’s code to create a super cyber-virus. For the forces of the Adversary are intent on taking down the entire Internet, which will weaken the noosphere so much that the Lady will die.

This is a surprisingly weak Jack book, in my opinion. On the one hand, the street-level action involving Munir is top-notch. On the other hand, the plot against the Lady has one of the lamest resolutions in the history of plot (the attack succeeds, except it doesn’t, for some reason). Then there’s a side plot involving the former sentinel, Glaeken, which must occur in one of Wilson’s other innumerable inter-related books; its inclusion, as it adds nothing to the drama and serves only to distract, is perhaps ill-advised. Finally, there’s a scene of fan service, in which Jack takes down some Kicker thugs in the airport during the chaos that follows after the Internet is taken down: it’s a nice return to rage-filled, alpha-male Jack, but the scene is deeply flawed, as Jack leaves Gia and Vicki to go deal with the men, who had been harassing Gia. It seemed the most obvious thing in the world to me that their luring Jack away was a trap, not to get him, but to hurt him by attacking Gia. That it didn’t happen that way only shows that Wilson didn’t think of it, and it makes Jack look stupid. I would call this book the first misstep Wilson’s made in this saga.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Repairman Jack series is nearing it's end. Only one more to go and then the updated Nightworld. In Wilson's time line, it's February of Year Zero and the final novel will be set in March. Nightworld is set in May and is The End of Civilization as We Know It.

Several plot threads run through this one, all eventually connecting.

Jack help out an Arab-American named Munir whose wife and son have been kidnapped and is being forced to jump through hoops to save them, being forced to perform things a practicing Muslim normally doesn't do. All to an end.

It's part of the Septimus Order's plans to kill the "Lady," the personification of humanity, after which Rasalom can begin the change, bringing about the end of the millenia old battle for Earth between the Ally, and an indifferent God-like being, and the Other, the God'like being who has unholy things planned for Earth.

[Benjamin Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 14th book in the Repairman Jack series hurtles the action along at a breakneck pace towards its inevitable conclusion coming in the next book, The Dark at the End. As high as my hopes and expectations for this novel were, F. Paul Wilson has managed to meet and even exceed them. He has created a monumental series and this penultimate novel cements them in my all-time favorite series, all genres included.

This is not a stand-alone novel. If you have not read the preceding novels in the series, especially the last 3 or 4, then you will be completely lost trying to read this one. This is by design and the author warns us of that in his forward to this volume. The story has grown beyond what can be contained in a single book so we are now reading the final chapters in a much larger story.

I won’t go into any kind of plot summary. I don’t think I could at this point in less than 5,000 words or so. Suffice it to say that the battle for the future of Earth is about to be decided, a fact unknown to all but a handful of people. The rest of the world continues on oblivious to the coming “end of everything as we know it”. Jack’s role in this battle has been a defensive one up to this point, a fact that annoys to no end the fix-it mentality that is Jack. He and his close friends simply do not have enough information and understanding to do anything but react to rapidly changing circumstances. But this novel is so very important in the overall story arc because that all changes by the end.

But even while the huge conceptual battle between the Otherness and the Ally plays out, Jack still acts in his Repairman role of helping other people out of tough circumstances when others can’t. This down-to-the-ground immediacy of what Jack is all about is what really makes these novels great. Jack is the guy we all wish we could be. Off the grid, saavy, a physical threat though not a superhero, Jack can fix situations like few others. But as good as Jack is, he is still humble and his unconditional love for his girlfriend and her young daughter really tugs at the heartstrings.

The final words of the entire book filled me with an awesome energy and serves as a brilliant lead-in to the next and last novel in the series.

[Andrea Yargeau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not put this one down! So close to the end. I know I don't usually give 5 stars to books that are "to be continued" but I read this book in 24 hours. That has to be saying something. Jack gets involved with an Arab man whose family has been kidnapped and is being tortured. He thinks it is unrelated to him, but remember, there are no more coincidences in Jack's life, so of course this turns out to be related to the Septimus Order and Rasalom's ultimate plans. The Order's plan is to take out the internet, damaging the noosphere (which is the evidence of sentience on theis planet) so that the Lady will die, thus allowing for the Otherness to take over. So much is coming together. Dawn Pickering's baby is also born, but what she sees is an abomination, and she is told it is dead. There is also something going on in the Carolina's involving Veilliur and Rasalom that is told in "Reprisal" and is happening simultaneously with this book, yet it doesn't hurt you not knowing if you have not read that book yet. I believe I will try to read Reborn and Reprisal next while waiting for "The Dark at the End." They will fill in a few gaps, but I did not feel it hurt my enjoyment of this story at all.

[Kaje Harper · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the Repairman Jack books, despite their darkness, because Jack is just such a great character. The next book in the series will be the last one, and I expect a lot from it. I think that coming end affected this book a bit negatively though - it seemed like a lot of the story was setting up for the climax, and it felt less like a complete narrative than most of this series. Still good though.

The situation is becoming complex - in the early books you might be able to read one in isolation, but this is not the one. If you like dark/urban fantasy/apocalyptic with a strong hero who is protective of his friends, girlfriend and family, mostly moral but prone to violence as an answer and faces arcane foes without superpowers of his own, you might enjoy these. Begin with the first one though.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll admit to being disappointed. I've been a big fan of the Repairman Jack series, but this one is less a complete book of its own, and more a bridge between the RJ series and Nightworld, and even at that, it's more a companion book to Reprisal than something which can be read independently.

The call-outs to Wilson's YA series were also a bit unwelcome, being worked into the story about as smoothly as a Family Guy flashback scene.

This one is for Wilson completists, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone else.

[Mark Maynard · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always a thrilling read I love the repairman jack books and the adversary cycle too. I love long series that create entire universes and Paul Wilson does just that he has created an entire world that never ceases to pull me in and enthrall me.
I am getting so excited now with only the dark at the end and nightworld to end the story is almost complete. the only bad thing is once I have finished I thing there will be a feeling of sadness knowing I will never get to go on another adventure with Jack.

[Skip · Rating 3 out of 5]

The end is approaching. An Arab man is being tortured psychologically by a man, who has kidnapped his wife and son, to access some clever code he has written to help crash the Internet as a means to kill the Lady and allow the Others to take over Earth. Jack's techie friend Russ begs Jack to help Munir. Meanwhile, Dawn Pickering finally gives birth to horrible spawn, but Mr Osala's plans for the progeny are unknown. Weird installment, with nothing resolved.

[Shelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot believe that I only have a few more books left in this series. The author recommends reading "The Adversary Cycle" before the next Repairman Jack book, so I think I will do that. F. Paul Wilson, so far these have been great--I hope the payoff is worth it!

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

That last sentence. Badass.

[Jennifer Gottschalk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the start of this book really hard to read and quite a bit of it was confusing - which is almost expected when one dives into a series at such a late stage.

In many ways I expected a lot more from the story as the idea of having a character who was able to solve unconventional problems was quite compelling. The reality was slightly underwhelming.

Readers who enjoy conspiracy / suspense type novels will find a lot to like with this book but the overall narrative did not appeal to me and I was quite relieved when I got to the end of the book.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years have passed since I set down Ground Zero and got distracted away from the world of Repairman Jack. That was probably not the best idea.

Clearly the second half of the series is a lot more interconnected than the first half, and it took quite some time for me to put all of my memories together of what came before.

Reading “last Christmas” as a primer to this did not help. ( as it’s more of a backdoor pilot for Signalz)

Anyhow.. solid and entertaining as always.
I’m looking forward to seeing how it all wraps up

[Matthew Woodrow · Rating 2 out of 5]

The weakest in the Repairman Jack series thus far.

It felt like this entry could have been left out of the narrative outside of one or two items.

I'm obviously going to continue the series, at this point, but it very much felt like a bridge book.

Why does nothing kill the Lady? I thought it was a cop out when she survived the first two times, and then the third time just seemed lazy.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Starting book #14 of this series, I am seriously clueless what this is about. It seems to be science fiction. About half way through, I was a bit lost, but by the end, I think I get the gist of what is supposed to happen. I probably won’t be reading the rest of the series. Sorry, this is not my kind of book.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 2nd last Repairman Jack story (chronologically speaking) got 4.5* from me. BIG crescendo and gathering of so many disparate threads over many books is fully under way. Giant cliffhanger of an ending!

[sonja Kreshel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book 14 of 15. I’ve read them all, in order. I’m committed now. Last book in the series is next. I love Jack, after 14 books he’s like an old friend. SciFi or NetFlix or Amazon should make a tv based on these characters!

[Tiff · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little slow. It was ok.
I'm sad tho that this is the second to last Jack book. I know all good things have to come to an end, but why now? I could read of Jack's day to day investigation cases forever! I just really enjoy these stories as a whole.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the Repairman Jack focused stories better than the Otherness focused stories. This story was more about Jack doing his thing, and less about the unimaginable ungodly force trying to destroy mankind. That makes the story more grounded and relatable, and at least for me, more enjoyable.

[Christopher Ogden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weakest in the series still excellent

My least favorite in the Repairman Jack series. Still an excellent book would be great if not being compared to the other books

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great series.

[Joanne Gentiluomo · Rating 3 out of 5]

It started off very interesting and intense and then....I don't know I guess it got confusing. Towards the end, it picked up again.

[Tanvir Muntasim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Action packed story gathering momentum towards its culmination.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The end nears. The lady lives. Jack is free to do what he does best.

[Gerhard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bit of an abrupt lame end...but I assume it's picked up in the next installment...off we go...

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

One more to go... Thanks FPW.