This book is interesting in that it's an editorial tour de force, merging 6 separate POV characters written by 6 different authors into one relatively seamless timeline. Like book 2, a lot of Jokers Wild is a MacGuffin hunt - for understandable reasons given the self imposed constraints of 1 day and multiple characters that's likely the easiest connective mechanism - with 3 threads. Sewer Jack's 16 year old niece has run away to the big city on Wild Card day at Port Authoirty in 1986, which was not the safest of places for young newcomers, and we follow people trying to find her, seduce her or kill her (albeit never from her point of view). The Ace criminal Wraith has unwittingly stolen the private notebooks of the gang lord being hunted by Yeoman, containing secrets several factions will kill for. The Astronomer, the big bad guy from book 2, is back with a revenge scheme threatening several major characters and Fortunato is trying to track him down and stop him. These threads interweave the six characters lives well, and the book leads to a satisfying conclusion.

What I'm, not sure of, and not sure it's right to judge the book by, is if it works as six individual stories? and are those stories made better or worse for the intertwining? That's a harder call. And maybe it's not right to judge a book like this in that fashion, but it's clear that's what they were aiming for with some of the choices of viewpoint character, in that Roulette is there to show us a Tachyon story while being able to grow and change in the tale in a way that one of the series cornerstone characters can't. The Bagabond and Sewer Jack stories in this book are loads better than the one in book 1 and give some satisfying character growth, but some of the motivating factors only make sense with the 'follow the bouncing ball' of the intertwined MacGuffins. The Fortunato vs. Astronomer story more or less works, for all that you're following the super-magic-pimp vs. super-magic-serial killer conflict with lots of blood and sex, and gore and arrogance, and murder and more sex, but I found that less compelling than the Cohen Brothers Esque tale of Demise's bad day that really did the best job of integrating the various threads.

As with all of these you're viewing them from 30 years remove, and are as much period pieces about a long vanished NYC as they are the alternate history they were originally conceived as.

This "mosaic novel" is essentially a failed experiment. By interweaving stories from a half dozen authors, the result is basically an average of all of the clichés of 1980s "dark and gritty" superhero stories. This includes:

- A wizard pimp who gets empowered by having sex with prostitutes
- A woman who kills people with a poisonous vagina
- A woman with phasing powers who can only phase with small amounts of clothing, and we are continually reminded that she is wearing a bikini throughout the entire book
- A man looking for his lost niece, who has come to the city to potentially become a prostitute

Plus some very dated bits of Orientalism - studying Zen Buddhism apparently gives you ninja abilities, for instance.

The bits by GRRM aren't so bad though - they have a bit more of a sense of irony & cleverness running through them, featuring an overweight and somewhat pretentious restaurant owner who has the ability to change the mass of himself and others, and "Popinjay", who has the ability to teleport *other people* when he makes finger guns at them. It's perhaps not surprising that he's the only present-day household name out of the authors of this book.

This is the third chronological novel in the series. This book draws further on the events detailed in book two so it is worthwhile to read the books in order so nothing is lost. The characters are fleshed out but at times it feels like you are reading parallel books by different authors that overlap. I liked the characters and I liked the changes they faced as a result of the strife they faced. But this was not great storytelling as I have read Wild Cards novels that were better.

I love this whole Wild Cards story line. I understand that it has been optioned for a movie, and possibly a tv series. I think I enjoyed the first one the most, as I liked the WW2 setting, but they're definitely keeping with the time line and accuracy as far as the decades.

Solide Unterhaltung, aber meiner Meinung nach, stört das hier durchgezogene Mosaik-Konzept meinen Lesegenuss. Es sind zu viele Perspektivewechsel, es fehlt mir irgendwie der Reiz der ersten beiden Bände. Im Nachwort hält Mr. Martin diesen Band für den Höhepunkt und das Konzept für sehr gelungen. Ich widerspreche dem und möchte zurück zu den Einzelstories. Letztlich bleibt es ein sehr langer Wild Cards Day, bei dem man nicht wirklich groß überrascht wird.

I really enjoyed this volume. It is written as a unified novel rather than a series of short stories linked by an interstitial narrative. There are still multiple characters (and writers) involved, and it jumps between perspectives in every chapter. Once you get used to the regular shifts it flows really well and the story is mostly interesting and all the events tie together well.

astronomo sconfitto