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A review by topdragon
Cold City by F. Paul Wilson
5.0
Ahhh…it’s a wonderful feeling to get back to Repairman Jack, one of my all-time favorite series, and one of my favorite characters. I’d finished the original RJ series over a year ago as well as the related series, “The Adversary Cycle” (some 20 books in all) and have been looking forward to diving into this prequel trilogy ever since then.
This first book of the trilogy is really a fairly straight-forward thriller novel, albeit with quite a complex array of sub-plots. It basically serves as a sort of origin story for Jack. We get to see how he gets his start as a fixer, how he learns to live off the grid, the budding relationship with friend and mentor Abe, as well as quite a few opportunities to see how he acquires his various skills (hand-to-hand fighting, lock picking, pick pocketing, shooting, etc.) that will come in so handy in the later series. This novel does set up the second and third books and while a variety of antagonists are introduced, their plot lines are not all concluded in this first book.
While some readers may want to start here so as to read the entire RJ series in chronological order (not counting the “Secret Histories” YA trilogy that takes place even earlier), I am happy to be coming to it at the end. Knowing Jack’s future and having a good handle on the entire “Secret History of the World” makes it fun when Easter Eggs happen in this prequel trilogy. There’s just something about elderly women and dogs that tends to affect Jack’s life so when I see that here, I understand the nature of destiny and what is waiting in Jack’s future.
This first book of the trilogy is really a fairly straight-forward thriller novel, albeit with quite a complex array of sub-plots. It basically serves as a sort of origin story for Jack. We get to see how he gets his start as a fixer, how he learns to live off the grid, the budding relationship with friend and mentor Abe, as well as quite a few opportunities to see how he acquires his various skills (hand-to-hand fighting, lock picking, pick pocketing, shooting, etc.) that will come in so handy in the later series. This novel does set up the second and third books and while a variety of antagonists are introduced, their plot lines are not all concluded in this first book.
While some readers may want to start here so as to read the entire RJ series in chronological order (not counting the “Secret Histories” YA trilogy that takes place even earlier), I am happy to be coming to it at the end. Knowing Jack’s future and having a good handle on the entire “Secret History of the World” makes it fun when Easter Eggs happen in this prequel trilogy. There’s just something about elderly women and dogs that tends to affect Jack’s life so when I see that here, I understand the nature of destiny and what is waiting in Jack’s future.