Jack: Secret Histories,  Jack: Secret Circles and Jack: Secret Vengeance comprise F. Paul Wilson’s YA trilogy about the younger years of Repairman Jack. My introduction to the character was through this spin-off series (via Secret Histories), which led me to pick up Legacies and get into the main story. Now that the last two books of the YA series are out, I thought I would do a quick write-up.

Whereas the first book introduced the enigmatic Jack and his childhood friends, as well as some of the supernatural oddities of the town he grew up in, Secret Circles and Secret Vengeance show clear signs of his path toward being the vigilante he will become. (Readers who are already familiar with the Repairman Jack series will enjoy the prequels for the references to the other books. Don’t worry about them being “YA” novels; they’re solid stories that just happen to have younger characters.) The third book, especially, has the key elements of a Repairman Jack novel: vengeance, through cunning subtlety, rather than simple violence.

The prequel trilogy is definitely worth reading if you’re already an RJ fan, and it makes a great entry point for younger readers, as it was no doubt intended.