Wild Cards VI: Ace in the Hole

Rating:
Summary: All His Puppets
Review: There are three points about Wild Cards 6: Ace in the Hole, which perhaps make me unfairly biased against it.

The First is that this is a Mosaic Novel, meaning that there are lots of authors, each writing a short part ( between a few paragraphs to a few pages, usually), and than leaving the stage for someone else. I'm not particularily fond of this form of story-telling. I don't think it does justice to the author's abilities.

The second Problem I have with 'Ace in the Hole' is that the outcome is not one I approve of. I don't like the ending because the characters I wanted to win, didn't.

The third problem is really personal. This is the first WILD CARDS book without anything by George R. R. Martin. Martin is my favorite living author, so I think it's a shame.

Thus maybe someone who doesn't have all these problems will like ACE IN THE HOLE better than I did. Although, to be sure, I liked it quite a bit.

Basically it's the stroy of Puppetman's attempts to get elected as the Presidency Candidate for the Democratic party.

The other characters find out that Puppetman is an ace, and than they attempt to stop him from winning.

We have a pretty great collection of authors here. Stephen Leigh leads as the best of the bunch, writing Puppetman. Close behind are Melinda Snodgras with Dr. Tachyon, and Walter J Williams tellling us about the Judas Ace, Golden Boy. I wish the Golden Boy parts would have been written in the first person, like 'Witness' in the first WC book. The other two authors are Simon who reintroduces us to Demise ('don't look into his eyes' goes the WC gingle), and Victor Milan who writes the weakest bits, about Sara Morgenstern and Mackie Messer. Morgenstern was great when written by Leigh, but doesn't work nearly as well in other hands, and Messer was a character I never understood or wanted, and this book proves that he wasn't really necessary.

Overall, the book is well written, and pretty fast paced. Some scenes are great, many are interesting.

But it has problems. The most obvious is the exessive amount of Sex. The WC books have never shied away from Sex, but this is rather absourd. People seem to be falling into each other's... well... I don't know... well, ALOT. Exessively.

I don't want to explain the plot much further. It's pretty well handled with all the viewpoint characters etc, although there were some things left I didn't quite understand. Maybe there'll be further explanation in the volumes to come.

Three Short notes. If there's something you can't say on the universe of the Wild Cards, is that things have no consequences. They have lots of them. The Status Quo was dramatically changed in this book, with a major secondary character in the WIld Card universe discarded of off screen, and a life changing experience to Gregg Hartmann and possibly to Tachyon. The future should be interesting.

Second note is Tachyon. Tachy's tale returned to the realms of the Soap Opera with this book. He's getting way too much of the limelights, and it doesn't help him. I hope we'll get a little less from him, so that we'll miss his character a little more by the next time Snodgras returns to him.

And final note, if you're reading the Wild Cards Series, and want to discuss it, please email me.

Rating:
Summary: The best book in a phenomenal series
Review: While each of the 11 Wildcards books I've finished reading thus far would earn 4-stars in my opinion, thus making each one great, this one surpasses them all. Funny how, in a superhero story such as this, the most intriguing chapter should be one revolving around politics.

This book just focuses on a great selection of the most memorable characters from the Wild Cards universe, and to this day, to me at least, screams to be a movie. The whole series reads out very cinematically, but this book in particular.

Rating:
Summary: The best book in a phenomenal series
Review: While each of the 11 Wildcards books I've finished reading thus far would earn 4-stars in my opinion, thus making each one great, this one surpasses them all. Funny how, in a superhero story such as this, the most intriguing chapter should be one revolving around politics.

This book just focuses on a great selection of the most memorable characters from the Wild Cards universe, and to this day, to me at least, screams to be a movie. The whole series reads out very cinematically, but this book in particular.

Rating:
Summary: Slow in the first half, but makes up for it in the second.
Review: Wild Cards VI is a good, but not great continuation of this series of mosaic novels.

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

Rating:
Summary: Slow in the first half, but makes up for it in the second.
Review: Wild Cards VI is a good, but not great continuation of this series of mosaic novels.

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