World Famous Comics NetworkWorld Famous Comics Network World Famous Comics CommunityComic Book ClassifiedsSketchCards.com
WFC Home | About | Columns | Comics | Contests | Features | Freebies | Gallery | Links | News | Podcasts | Shop
SHOP >> David Mack | Andy Lee | Amy Allen | Michonne | Dean Haglund | Virginia Hey | WFC Published | WFC Auctions



ScheduleUPDATED TODAY! Wed, 7-Jan-2009
Anything Goes TriviaAnything Goes Trivia
Bob Rozakis
Megaton ManMegaton Man
Don Simpson
Tony's Online TipsTony's Online Tips
Tony Isabella
TrevorTrevor
Piper & Lee


NewsNEWS 7-Jan-2009 10:02pm
The Manga Messiah
OOPS: ?X-Men: Manifest Destiny? #5 Actua...
UPDATED: Mickey Rourke, Sam Rockwell in ...
Comic book action "Spirit" lacks soul

Comic Book - Movie - Video Game - Anime 

Friends & Affiliates
Adobe Store
Amazon.com
Anime Studio
Apple Store
Dick Blick Art Materials
eBay
GoDaddy.com

StarWarsShop.com
TFAW
World Famous Comics: Gateways (Repairman Jack)
Gateways (Repairman Jack)
By: F. Paul Wilson
Publisher: Tor Books
Average Rating:4.50 out of 5.00 stars
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Label: Tor Books
Number of Items: 1
Number of Pages: 448
Publication Date: February 07, 2006
Release Date: February 07, 2006

Enlarge Image
Gateways (Repairman Jack)
Used Price: $2.69
Collectible: $10.00
3rd Party New: $3.92
Amazon's Price: $7.99

Usually ships in 24 hours


Similar Items

Crisscross: A Repairman Jack Novel (Repairman Jack)

The Haunted Air : Repairman Jack (Repairman Jack)

Hosts (Repairman Jack)

Harbingers: A Repairman Jack Novel (Repairman Jack)

Infernal: A Repairman Jack Novel
More Similar Items...

Editorial Comments

Product Description:
Following last year's successful The Haunted Air, F. Paul Wilson returns with another riveting episode in the saga of Repairman Jack, the secretive, ingenious, and heroic champion of those whose problems no one else can solve. As Dean Koontz says, "Repairman Jack is one of the most original and intriguing characters to arise out of contemporary fiction in ages. His adventures are hugely entertaining."

In Gateways, Jack learns that his father is in a coma after a car accident in Florida. They've been on the outs, but this is his dad, so he heads south. In the hospital he meets Anya, one of his father's neighbors. She's a weird old duck who seems to know an awful lot about his father, and even a lot about Jack.

Jack's arrival does not go unnoticed. A young woman named Semelee, who has strange talents and lives in an isolated area of the Everglades with a group of misshapen men, feels his presence. She senses that he's "special," like her.

Anya takes Jack back to Dad's senior community, Gateways South, which borders on the Everglades. Florida is going through an unusual drought. There's a ban on watering; everything is brown and wilting, but Anya's lawn is a deep green.
Who is Anya? Who is Semelee, and what is her connection to the recent strange deaths of Gateways residents-killed by birds, spiders, and snakes-during the past year? And what are the "lights" Jack keeps hearing about-? Lights that emanate twice a year from a sinkhole deep in the Everglades . . . lights from another place, another reality.

If he is to protect his father from becoming the next fatality at Gateways, there are questions Jack must answer, secrets he must uncover. Secrets . . . Jack has plenty of his own, and along the way he learns that even his father has secrets.



Customer Reviews
Average Rating:4.50 out of 5.00 stars

5 out of 5 starsReapirman Jack is great!
I love this series! Along with The Haunted Air, Gateways is my favorite Repairman Jack book. It's set in my homestate of Florida. It was a hoot to see Florida through the eyes of someone (Jack) who had never been here before. I also enjoyed the interaction between Jack and his father. We learned so much about Jack, the man he is and the man he could have become if circumstances had been different. This was a wonderful addition to an already great series!



4 out of 5 starsA nice change of pace
This was a delicious blend of frightful supernatural and contemporary crime-buster. I am reminded often of Pendergast from Preston and Child's thrillers. I enjoyed how Gateways took the story out of the city and set it in the Everglades - it gave the series a new flavor and brought in a sizzle of adventure (hurricanes! crocodiles!) that we needed!



3 out of 5 starsSolid adventure
For those new to this series, Repairman Jack is a man who doesn't officially exist. He has gone to great lengths to have no social security number, no tax records, etc. When people have a problem, he's available to fix it. For a price. Gateways is a bit of a departure from the norm as Jack heads to Florida after his father is injured and fallen into a coma. Rather than working for a client, Jack investigates his father's accident and soon learns that there's a lot more going on than the police had suspected. Aided by his dad's mysterious neighbor, Anya, Jack struggles against a clan of deformed criminals and their shamanistic leader.

Gateways is a bit shorter than many of the Repairman Jack novels and the benefit is a leaner story with few lulls. Things move along at a good clip and the climax is definitely satisfying. The characters are solid, if not spectacular. Jack's father is pretty interesting as he shares his military background and even proves helpful to Jack in his confrontations with the bad guys. The villains were somewhat disappointing, though. Semelee, a witch woman who can control animals, is more of a petulant adolescent than a worth adversary and her bodyguard/boyfriend Luke is a completely generic muscleheaded buffoon. The Adversary puts in an appearance, a high point to be sure.

Wilson knows how to tell a good yarn, but he has some idiosyncrasies that I dearly wish he'd address. First, he inserts social commentary into his novels that is so blatant that he might as well have a banner line proclaiming "We interrupt this novel to bring you the following public service announcement!" Thankfully, this book's dissertations on the state of the Florida Everglades and the problem of old people's fear of becoming a burden to their children were relatively brief but Wilson badly needs to stop his rants or learn how to integrate them into the story much better than he currently does. He has a few other quirks, like using a kind of gutter English for the third person narration of the scenes involving Semelee, that are also distracting and unnecessary.

Overall, Gateways wasn't a bad read. It was a definite step backward from The Haunted Air : Repairman Jack (Repairman Jack) (Repairman Jack), the prior book in the series, but is mostly solid. There is good action mixed with supernatural elements. Jack is tough as nails, but his sense of honor and decency make him easy to root for. Established fans should be happy with Gateways, but newcomers might do better to start with The Tomb (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack)so they can see how Jack got his start.



5 out of 5 starsRich with twists and turns
Gateways is the 7th entry in the "Repairman Jack" series, and in many ways, is the strongest one yet. For those who do not know, Repairman Jack is not a handyman but he is a fixer - of the sorts of problems that people have that for one reason or another preclude involving the authorities. Jack is smart, resourceful, trustworthy and completely moral in his own way. But his fixes frequently involve mayhem or even murder (although he tries to avoid killing people unless it's absolutely necessary), and he has a kind of a dark side that asserts itself when something or someone threatens him or one of his loved ones.

From the very first Repairman Jack novel, written in 1984 (The Tomb), there has been a strong supernatural element in all the Jack adventures involving a sort of cosmic conflict between two super-uber entities of unimaginable power that are battling for control of all the universes. Somehow Jack has become a major player in this conflict that is an interesting twist on good versus evil; in Jack's universe (which is the same as that depicted in Wilson's "Adversary Cycle" that starts with "The Keep" and ends with "Nightworld") it is the Ally (that exhibits benign indifference to humanity) versus the Otherness (that wants chaos and the destruction of all life). Jack has been drafted by the Ally.

Although all the previous entries in the series are set in New York CIty, in Gateways, Jack flies down to Florida to see his estranged father who is in a coma after a near-fatal hit-and run traffic accident. His father lives in a sort of retirement community called Gateways. In the hospital Jack meets his father's neighbor and friend, a spunky elderly widow named Anya who seems to know an awful lot about his father and Jack himself, and who has been watching out for Jack's dad after the accident. Jack's father mysteriously comes out of his coma, Jack finds strange little voodoo like totems around the bed and the room and we're off.

Gateways reveals a lot more of the backstory of Jack's father, and his relationship with his son than we have seen before. There are also very interesting and explicit tie-ins with the Adversary Cycle and villains old and new, and many plot twists and turns. I'll say no more about the plot because I don't want to include any spoilers, but from the blurb on the back of the book I thought this was going to be on the boring side. Rather, it turned out to be one of the most revealing, interesting and exciting Repairman Jack entries yet.

All the Repairman Jack books stand on their own. but they are so much richer than simple novels if read sequentially. Either way Repairman Jack and Gateways are great and highly recommended.



4 out of 5 starsJack goes to Florida
This here is 7th Repairman Jack novel, and the first to leave the New York City area Jack makes his home ground. Responding to a emergency with his father, Jack travels south and gets involved with deformed Southerners. Excellent ending to this one, while Jack fights the Otherness in the midst of hurricane Elvis.


Related Categories:Similar Items

Crisscross: A Repairman Jack Novel (Repairman Jack)

The Haunted Air : Repairman Jack (Repairman Jack)

Hosts (Repairman Jack)

Harbingers: A Repairman Jack Novel (Repairman Jack)

Infernal: A Repairman Jack Novel
More Similar Items...

Books
 Comics
  Comic Strips
  How to Draw Comics
  How to Draw Manga

 Graphic Novels
  AiT/Planet Lar
  Alternative Comics
  Archie Comics
  Avatar Press
  DC Comics
    Batman
    Justice League
    Superman
  Dark Horse Comics
    Hellboy
    Sin City
    Star Wars
  Drawn & Quarterly
  Devil's Due Publishing
  Dreamwave
  Fantagraphics Books
  Gemstone/Gladstone
  IDW Publishing
  Image Comics
  Kitchen Sink Press
  Marvel Comics
    Fantastic Four
    Spider-Man
    Wolverine
    X-Men
  Oni Press
  SLG/Slave Labor
  TwoMorrows
  Top Shelf Productions

 Manga
  ADV Manga
  Antarctic Press
  Central Park Media
  Digital Manga
  Gutsoon
  TokyoPop
  Viz Communications

 Books
  Animation
  Antiques & Collectibles
  Art Instruction & Ref.
  Art Reference
  Arts
  Business
  Cartooning
  Children's
  Computer Graphics
  Computers & Internet
  Digital Business
  Drawing (general)
  Entertainment
  Entrepreneurship
  Figure Drawing
  Games
  Graphic Design
  Horror
  Humor
  Literature & Fiction
  Movies
  Music
  Mystery & Thrillers
  Nonfiction
  Photography
  Pop Culture Collectibles
  Popular Culture
  Publishing & Books
  Reference
  Role Playing & Fantasy
  Sci-Fi & Fantasy
  Screenwriting Film
  Screenwriting TV
  Sketchbooks/Journals
  Stationary
  Teens
  Television
  Toys
  Video Games
  Writing

 Calendars


WFC Home | About | Columns | Comics | Contests | Features | Freebies | Gallery | Links | News | Podcasts | Shop

Order Serenity Comics, Graphic Novels, DVDs & More!

World Famous Comics Network
World Famous Comics Community
ComicsCommunity.com
Comic Book Classifieds
ComicBookClassifieds.com
SketchCards.com
SketchCards.com

GO SHOPPING >>

© 1995 - 2009 World Famous Comics. All rights reserved. All other © & ™ belong to their respective owners.
Advertiser Info . Terms of Use . Privacy Policy . Contact Info
World Famous Comics Network