finished Reprisal, and am 30 pages into Nightworld (the job, wife and kids definitely are eating into my good reading time). I STILL can't argue fully with you folks, but Jack just told Glaeken he can't help him (but he'll reconsider whwn the Park starts to shrink). This may have been a fabulous bridge when Jack had only been seen in The Tomb, but now that he's seen Rasalom try to build the device in Conspiracies, now that he's heard the old woman (Anya + Oyv) in Florida and holds her skin as a map where Rasalom is burying the columns (in Gateways)[and he met Rasalom himself in the Everglades and Rasalom didn't find him dangerous enough to kill yet. Shouldn't that come back to bite old big and nasty?], now that he's bumped into Ozymandius' flying circus in the Pine Barrens [I might be able to buy a time sequence where he bumps into Oz pre Oz turning on his device and getting stopped at the last minute by George], now that in Crisscross Herta TELLS Jack who Glaeken is and how Rasalom has used the Dormentalist Church as a tool of the Otherness (and Jack puts his fingers in the holes in her skin) [quite a Christian refernece there with doubting Thomas], now that Jack has lost his sister to a cult of mind control associated with the otherness, obviously he would not say no to Glaeken.
The obvoius argument here is that this is precisely what FPW will handle in his updating/editing (right?). But my contention (and again I may be proven wrong in the next 350 pages) is that unless Nightworld somehow brings together the columns, the Dormentalists, the old women (who are as we know Jack's mother and a 3rd party to this battle [mother Earth anyone?]), and hands Jack the larger role that the old women seem to be prophesying (sp?), something is missing.
Since Nightworld predated all of these. I doubt that the grand build-up of Jack as the penultimate "against his will, last hope for the sorta good guys" will be realized. But won't the Men in Black, the third player (old women with dogs), Jack's "no more coincidences" frequent encounters with Otherness and Rasalom stuff (particularly the dude himself in the Everglades) become less meaningful if the last chapter is already completely written?
I'll step off of the soapbox and go finish Nightworld (and the Adversary series all by itself is some of the best fiction I have ever read, and I read voraciously). Perhaps I am over-reacting. But I am simply hoping that FPW has some fabulous Jack heavy crescendo up his sleeve, and that the mere fact that he disposed of the enemy 11 years before he had finished building up Jack doesn't prevent a battle royale. After all, if Muhammed Ali actually could have gone back in time and fought Rocky Marciano, imagine the interest the bout would have had.
I think I'm getting too emotionally invested in this argument, so I'm going to sign off. Please consider my request in the "I'm really enjoying all of this and want it to grow bigger and never end" light that I have intended.
Chris
This post was last modified: 07-20-2004, 12:22 PM by catman9.