[SIZE="5"]***SPOILERS***[/SIZE]
It's a shame that he lets himself down later on in the book.
I have always liked it when series are strong enough to kill off characters for the benefit of the story arc. Killing Jack's dad was a good move, and really did start the story off with a bang.
But then the whole business with the Infernal device really made me groan. In fact I nearly stopped reading it at one point. It reminded me of the Halloween special Simpsons edisode when Lisa tries to show the rest of her family that the aliens are going to try to eat them. Each time they reveal the name of the book, the other character will blow away more space dust and reveal the next name:
HOW TO COOK HUMANS
HOW TO COOK FOR HUMANS
HOW TO COOK FORTY HUMANS
. . . or something like that. The way that the definitive and immutable laws of the Infernal device kept on having little bits adding onto them seemed really contrived, and the quanitity of them was farcical.
When Jack had the dot, I thought the next book was gonna be a blinder! I was relly looking forward to him disappearing at the end of the book, and not finding out until the next book exactly what level of Other Hell he had landed in, and how hard-core he would have to be to fight his way out to get home in time to share a nice crab dinner with Vicky.
I thought it was a really bold, exciting shake up of the Repairman Jack franshise serial fiction, but, alas, F Paul Wilson cheated us with yet another deus ex machina at the last minute and all in all I think it's one of my least favourite RJ books (along with Gateways).
:mad: