The Last Christmas is the first Repairman Jack novel published in seven years. By all accounts, Jack’s fans are going to eat this book up with a spoon.
Jack is a fixer. He helps people with difficult problems to find a solution. In this case, he is hired to look for a missing person and safeguard an object. Jack uses his wits more than any weapon to solve these cases. There are a lot of paranormal aspects thrown into this novel. There is extensive alternate history type world-building too.
The series, especially if you include the author’s related Adversary Cycle books, is long. This book is book 13.5 in the sixteen books in the Jack series. I have never read any book from either series until now. To be honest, I felt that I didn’t get all the nuances in the plot and between the characters that a long-time reader would have immediately understood. Still, even from a new reader’s perspective, The Last Christmas is a great genre mash-up of a hard-boiled PI within a paranormal fantasy setting. Therefore, 4 stars!
This book was intriguing enough that I’m going to look for the best book to begin the saga. But that question is harder than it sounds. Should I begin with the book published first in the Repairman Jack series, The Tomb? Or Jack’s chronologically first book, Secret Histories? Or perhaps the first book in The Adversary Cycle, The Keep, which is then followed by The Tomb (at least in most lists) because The Tomb intercepts both series? You can see why I’m confused so please let me know what you think in the comments. Thank you.
Thanks also to Gordian Knot, Crossroad Press, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.