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On September 11, 2001, a man drifts in a boat off lower Manhattan as the towers burn. He removes a small box from his pocket and presses a button. As he waits for the south tower to collapse, he thinks: The vast majority will blame the collapse on the crazy Arabs who hijacked the planes and the Islamic extremists who funded them—the obvious choice. A few will notice inconsistencies and point fingers elsewhere, blaming the government or Big Oil or some other powerful but faceless entity. No one—absolutely no one—will guess the truth behind the who and why of this day.
Years later, someone does. Repairman Jack’s childhood friend, Weezy Connell (the genius girl from the Tor Teen novel, Jack: Secret Histories), has started fitting together the pieces of the puzzle and anonymously posting her conclusions on the Web. But she can’t stay anonymous forever. Someone is after her. Jack becomes involved in her troubles and in the paranoid mazes of the 9/11 Truth Movement, where conspiracy theories point in every direction.
They’re all wrong. The truth is stranger, darker, and more evil than anyone can imagine. It involves the cosmic shadow war into which Jack has been drafted. And if the plot behind it--millennia in the planning--succeeds, it will forever change life on this Earth.
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1
Diana stared at herself in the mirror. She did that a lot. Maybe too much. No, definitely too much. But she didn’t have much else to do.
She hated her life. So boring.
Mainly because she was so lonely. Not that she was alone. She shared this big house with three men— grown men, sworn to protect her with their lives— but they weren’t friends. She could talk to them, as in have conversations, but couldn’t really talk to them about things that mattered. She chatted online all the time, but that wasn’t the same as having another flesh-and- blood fourteen- year- old girl in the same room.
But that flesh- and- blood girl wouldn’t stay long once she got a look at Diana’s eyes.
She stared at the reflection of those eyes now. With their black pupils, black irises, and black everything else, they looked like ebony marbles stuck in her sockets. Sometimes she wanted to rip them out. Yeah, she’d be blind, but at least then she could go to school instead of having tutors. And she’d have a true excuse for wearing wraparound sunglasses all the time instead of lying about a rare eye condition.
She guessed it wasn’t a lie. It was rare— only a few Oculi left around the globe— and it was definitely a condition.
So she was an Oculus. Big deal. These black eyes were supposed to allow her to see things regular eyes were blind to, warnings from Outside.
Alarms.
She’d yet to experience one.
Not that she was complaining. She’d seen her father when he’d received Alarms and it didn’t look pleasant. In fact, it looked awful.
Why was she thinking of Alarms to night? She hadn’t—
Something flashed to her right. She turned to look but it flashed again, still to her right. She realized it wasn’t in the room, but in her eye. A scintillating scotoma. She’d looked it up. The flashing lights always preceded her migraines. This wasn’t the sparkle she usually saw, more like wavy lines, but she knew the sooner she dug out her bottle of Imitrex and took one, the better.
And then the room tilted. For an instant she thought earthquake or tsunami, but then the pain stabbed through her head— much, much worse than a migraine— and the lights flashed brighter and longer and fused to blot out her room as her knees gave way and she dropped to the floor.
As she lay there shaking, shuddering, writhing with the pain that suffused her, a tunnel opened through the light, revealing . . .
. . . a man in a loincloth, standing on an old- fashioned scaffold and carving a huge block of stone more than twice his height into some sort of thick pillar or column . . . his hammer striking the chisel again and again but making no sound . . . all eerily silent . . .
. . . the same man carving strange symbols into the side of the pillar . . .
. . . and others . . .
. . . and carving a cavity, perhaps three feet across and five feet deep, into one end of the pillar . . .
. . . and suddenly she is grabbed from behind and bound hand and foot . . .
. . . forced into the cavity . . .
. . . sealed over with a stone plug, plunging her into darkness . . .
. . . as she struggles for air she feels the pillar tilt as it slides into a deep hole in the earth and is covered over . . .
. . . she thrashes in the small space until her air runs out and darkness claims her . . .
. . . and then . . . a spark in the distance . . . growing . . . swelling . . . to become a glowing egg . . .
. . . the egg fades and darkness regains control until a booming voice splits the silence . . .
IT HAS AWAKENED!
. . . and then the egg reappears and a spot of darkness materializes within it . . . growing . . . growing until . . .
. . . it bursts free . . .
. . . a strange, formless, flickering, alien being . . .
. . . and as it emerges, an odd word forms in her mind . . .
Fhinntmanchca . . . Fhinntmanchca . . . Fhinntmanchca . . .
The vision faded, and with it the pain, replaced by beckoning oblivion. Diana fought the draw of the temporary reprieve it promised and forced her eyes open. She pushed herself off the floor and staggered to her bedroom door. She had to tell them . . . she had to go to New York.
She had to tell the Heir. She had to find Jack. But where was he?
Excerpted from Ground Zero by F. Paul Wilson.
Copyright © 2009 by F. Paul Wilson.
Published in September 2009 by Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.
Another hit in the Repairman Jack series. Had to devour this as soon as it was out... can't wait for the last two.
Beats Dan Brown's new book hands down! (Jeers to B&N for not even listing it as a new release though. I smell kickbacks.)
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.On 9/11 a person in a boat in New York Harbor detonates explosives planted in the Twin Towers at about the same that al-Qaeda agents commit suicide by crashing airplanes into the two buildings. The boatman quietly escapes as the Towers collapse and the world blames al-Qaeda whose leadership also believes they did the dastardly deed.
Several years later, Eddie Connell asks Repairman Jack to find his missing sister Weezy, a forensic scientist who anonymously placed her brilliant 9/11 findings on the web. Jack locates Weezy in a hospital. She, and anyone trying to protect her, is in danger. Weezy found evidence of strange suspicious stock trading just prior to the World Trade Center destruction. Additionally, she shows to Jack that someone's picture was deleted from photos of bin Laden and his top deputies. Soon Jack and the Connell siblings conclude the world is in peril perhaps from the Otherness or the adversary he dubs the One missing from the pictures.
Although fast-paced and filled with an apocalyptic 9/11 conspiracy subplot, the latest Repairman Jack thriller is saved from being grounded by Weezy's key appearance (see JACK: SECRET HISTORIES). Filled with plenty of action, Jack struggles to keep Weezy safe while she continues her ingenious effort to solve the 9/11 puzzle. As Year Zero Minus One countdown continues, readers will enjoy GROUND ZERO, but mot quite as frightening as the other Minus entries perhaps because of the 9/11 connection in which reality was the chiller.
Harriet Klausner
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted December 5, 2009
The Repairman Jack series is one of the best that I have read in a long time. I always look forward to reading his story. I feel let down when I get to the end, because I want to know what is going on at all times there. I hope everyone reads his tale from begining to end.
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Overview
On September 11, 2001, a man drifts in a boat off lower Manhattan as the towers burn. He removes a small box from his pocket and presses a button. As he waits for the south tower to collapse, he thinks: The vast majority will blame the collapse on the crazy Arabs who hijacked the planes and the Islamic extremists who funded them—the obvious choice. A few will notice inconsistencies and point fingers elsewhere, blaming the government or Big Oil or some other powerful but faceless entity. No one—absolutely no ...