Rating: 
Summary: Great reprint
Review: This is a reprint of the first book in the Wild Cards series. When I first read the original many, many years ago, I became absolutely enthralled with the characters and the unique style of storytelling. The Wild Cards series is made up of predominantly "Mosaic Novels", meaning that each novel is comprised of short stories written by different writers, each from the point of view of their own characters in the Wild Cards universe, but all the short stories taken together comprise one whole META-story, if you will. When I finished this first book, I began a frantic search to find the rest of the series (they were out of print before I had even read the first book) that took me several years. And, to my surprise, I found that this book, as amazing as it was, wasn't even one of the best in the series! But, it's very important, as it portrays the events that seperate the Wild Cards universe from our own reality, and therefore is ALMOST essential to fully experience the Wild Cards. Most of the series I had ended up borrowing and have never been able to find for sale, so I was overjoyed when I found out they were reprinting it. The reprints contain some really nice art to illustrate the tale as you go along (the best art I have seen of the Wild Cards so far), and they make this book worth the purchase, even if you already own the original printing.
Rating: 
Summary: A hit and miss affair.
Review: Wild Cards has an interesting premise, but in this, the first volume, it fails to realise it's full potential. The main problem with this mosaic novel is the lack of continuity of characters throughout the book. As each chapter/story is written by a different author, they all seem to want to introduce several of their own characters into the story, and whilst these characters provide interesting plot lines, they never seem to interlace with other characters that were introduced earlier in the book, leaving you to ask; what's the point of having all these characters at all? There's only one character that appears consistently throughout the novel, and therefore he is the only one that provides any sort of interest.As each chapter/story is written by a different author, you have to constantly adjust to the authors style. This added to the fact that in each chapter the story jumps to a whole new set of characters, you can become confused and lose yourself very easily. The book, as a whole, is a hit and miss affair. For example, the story "The Long, Dark Night of Fortunato" by Lewis Shiner really is quite awful and to be frank, rather stupid. "Shell Games" by George R. R. Martin is very good indeed (though it lacks the sharp dialogue of his brilliant "A Song of Ice and Fire" series). "Strings" by Stephen Leigh is a taut web of a story with a few suprises and is easily the best in the book. Overall, the first volume of 'Wild Cards' is slightly disappointing with some major teething problems. However, the book is, in most parts, still immensely enjoyable due to the mostly accomplished storytelling of its authors, and the premise certainly has a lot of potential.
Rating: 
Summary: A classic series yet to be fully discovered
Review: Wild Cards is a comic book/sci-fi lovers dream. Putting superheroes/villians into the real world makes for the compelling drama. I read and collected this series around 8 years ago and have wanted to find someone else who read them ever since. Now that the first two volumes (out of thirteen) have been re-released I may finally get that chance. Not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: One big, essential prologue
Review: Wild Cards is a great series. This, of course, is not by far the best book in the series; as it mainly serves as a 400 page introduction; but for such an involved and sprawling saga, perhaps such a thing was necessary. The huge back story had to be chronicled, and there was little other way to introduce such a large gallery of significant characters other than to devote chapters to each without getting into a consecutive story. Even so, this book sets certain events in motion that DO eventually put it into the bigger picture and link this with the two following books as somewhat of a trilogy. Overall, very well written, great characters, and Martin edits it exquisitely; making this shared, multi-author book seem like it was all done by one person.
Rating:
Summary: One big, essential prologue
Review: Wild Cards is a great series. This, of course, is not by far the best book in the series; as it mainly serves as a 400 page introduction; but for such an involved and sprawling saga, perhaps such a thing was necessary. The huge back story had to be chronicled, and there was little other way to introduce such a large gallery of significant characters other than to devote chapters to each without getting into a consecutive story. Even so, this book sets certain events in motion that DO eventually put it into the bigger picture and link this with the two following books as somewhat of a trilogy. Overall, very well written, great characters, and Martin edits it exquisitely; making this shared, multi-author book seem like it was all done by one person.
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