Here is a writer who cares enough about his work to revise books written 20 years ago to make them more coherent and to bring them up to date so that they have a stark immediacy. Repairman Jack, who began as a minor character in the Adversary Cycle, has evolved into a most major player. He has a history, friendships, alliances, love interests both acknowledged and unacknowledged, and responsibilities as a Guardian that go beyond anything Plato conceived when he posed the question, “Who/What guards the guardians?” (Yes, that is the origin of “Who Watches The Watchmen?”) In other words, there is so much more that can GO WRONG for Jack. And it does.

Rasalom, the arch-villain who has conspired for millennia to deliver Earth and everything that lives on Earth into the hands of Cthulu-like entities, is about to succeed. He has out-maneuvered Jack and everyone else who is committed to the defense of The Lady, the avatar of awareness (and conscience) who must be killed three times before Earth can be taken by The Otherness. Since The Lady has already been twice destroyed, Jack doesn’t have any margin for error.

This is a magnificent summation of what is at stake and how the diverse characters are moved by courage, longing, desperation, self-interest – enlightened or Otherwise – hope, love, resolution, and even despair. As the title implies, things get very dark indeed for Jack and his allies. By the end, we are poised on the edge of the beginning of Nightworld, due, in its own revised and updated form, any day now. Read this to get ready for the ultimate end game in this, the fourth age’s version of The Lord of the Rings. ~~ Chris R. Paige

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