Wild Cards, Volume 1 [Paperback]

The sixth book is written in the same way that the third book was. The original idea behind the sets of books was that the first two books of each set of three were to be individual stories linked by an overarching storyline. The third book in each set of three was to be a true mosaic novel in that each author involved would be writing part of one story. No obvious story breaks would occur. These third novels would finish off the overarching storyline started in the first two books.

The sixth novel works a bit better than the third novel did in that regard. The story is more tightly woven together flowing cleanly between the events of each author.

The novel focuses on the Presidential campaign of Gregg Hartmann and the events of the Democratic National Convention of 1988. Hartmann, as readers of the series know, is the Ace Puppetman and has used his manipulative powers to get to this point in his political career. In this novel we get an extra helping of Puppetman and really get to delve into what makes this character work.

The other characters prominent in the events of this novel are Tachyon, Jack "Golden Boy" Braun, and James "Demise" Spector.

The build up is quite slow in this one and an awful lot of time at the beginning of the book is given up to Tachyon's continuing impotence problem and his associated self loathing. Jack doesn't fair much better as he is still playing the despised outcast role. The only one that really has some interesting moments in the first half is Puppetman, but he isn't really able to hold up the book by himself.

When things finally start rolling along in the second half the action flies fast and furious and events unfold that have large repercussions on the characters involved. It is just a bit of a chore getting to that point.

For those readers of previous books there are tantalizing glimpes of the problems that Hiram is going through with Ti Malice, but there is no resolution. Look to further books to solve that issue. Other than that no other Aces get much use.

I grappeled with giving the book a 3 or a 4 star rating. While I felt the last part of the book was 5 star stuff I didn't feel like it was enough to make up for the tedium of the 2 star first half. I'd probably give the book about a 3.5, but since I enjoy the series I bumped it upward to 4.

-H

Here's the concept -- in the days after World War II a bomb went off in the skies above New York City, blanketing the people in a virus. Most of them died. Some, the "jokers" underwent a terrible transformation. A select few drew "aces" -- superpowers without a deformity.

Each writer in this collection (an intriguing device martin calls a "Mosaic Novel") tells the story of an ace or joker of his or her creation. All of the stories stand on their own, although many feel very much like a chapter in a longer tale (John J. Miller's "Comes the Hunter" especially) and I hope these threads are picked up in the later books.

As with any collection of diverse writers, some stories are better than others. Martin's own "Shell Games" is my favorite in this volume -- I could have done without the sewer tale, "Down Deep." Even with that lesser story, the concept and execution is wonderful -- I for one am hoping Martin deals out a few more Wild Cards in the future.