With HOSTS, F. Paul Wilson turns up the heat on his Repairman Jack series (and on Jack), folding these novels more aggressively into his Adversary cycle and serving up Jack's toughest case yet. The connections to this apocalyptic cycle of novels has always been there, if somewhat obscured by Jack's down to earth quality and the many more traditional subplots woven through the larger quilt that makes up this fictional but engrossing universe. At heart, the series has always centered on the intrusion of one world into ours. If up to now the worlds have merely flirted, here they collide with a bang. 

To be honest, at first I thought the impact too blunt, too much and too quick. When supernatural messengers deliver vital information and motivation, there's always some suspicion that the author is taking an easy way out. But the fact that Jack has his own doubts softens this potential negative response and, in the end, if the reader trusts the author (and readers should) then the appearance of the old woman with the dog recedes as a problem and becomes a valuable clue to the future of the series.

Graced with one of the most thrilling and exhilarating openings of any novel in recent memory, HOSTS gets right to the point. A woman follows her once terminally ill lover to a meeting of the strange cult which appears to have brainwashed her. Elsewhere, on a subway train, a madman armed with two handguns opens fire on innocents, unaware that one of them is Repairman Jack - armed as always and more than ready to defend himself. Jack is forced to step outside his carefully constructed invisibility and become The Savior, disappearing into the night but fated to be resurrected in the news again and again, thanks to young eyewitness Sandy Palmer, a geeky tabloid reporter with dreams of making it big by milking his experience - and the fact that he alone can recognize The Savior. Palmer's newspaper account alerts a pair of revenge-seeking bombers, brothers who hope to ride his coattails to a satisfying blast which will kill Jack, the "guy" who put them out of business and more.

That the woman with the estranged lover, Kate, is Jack's sister comes as a shock both to readers and Jack himself, given his longterm self-imposed exile from the family. That the virus which has stricken Kate's lover also threatens the very fabric of the universe is farfetched only to a point, as Wilson's medical knowledge helps weave an incredibly chilling portrait of what could happen if an outbreak of a "smart" virus were to occur. That the virus, Jack's unsought heroism on the subway, the bombers' revenge campaign, and Palmer's increased demands on The Savior will converge is no surprise. But how these elements converge - and how they will propel Jack into the next novel - will keep you hooked to the last page. Jack is no Superman, and Wilson here forces the realization onto his hero with unexpected ruthlessness. Now faced with the fact that his encounters with the supernatural have been part of some destiny, if not actually scripted, Jack also knows that nothing will ever be the same.

Written with Wilson's distinctive yet invisible style, HOSTS is the most intense Repairman Jack novel since THE TOMB. Scary, thrilling, occasionally frustrating, and ultimately tragic, this chapter of Jack's life comes to a close with the utter certainty that things will get a lot worse for humanity before they get better. And humanity's hopes may just rest on a loner named Jack. If you know and love the other Repairman Jack novels, HOSTS is a must-read. If not, it's not too late to hunt them down and make up for lost time.          
 

(Correction: in my review of ALL THE RAGE, I stated that Jack is not his real name, but I was wrong and I apologize for the error.)