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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
Working my way through the original Wild Cards books and this one is... weaker than the prior, but that might just be because of pacing.
The first book in the series was a lot of set up to get to 1986, with the stories in a chronological order but it doesn't matter much as few of them are interconnected. This book is more tightly integrated as a MacGuffin hunt - as an alien invasion spills out onto the world the key piece of technology that would give humanity an edge moves from one set of hands to another. Every story save one includes the MacGuffin in some way as various factions maneuver to gain it, and the one that doesn't have it is the culmination of the battle between several of the factions that are wittingly or unwittingly involved in the war and MacGuffin hunt.
This unfortunately stops the editors from placing the stories in a better order in terms of style and pacing, giving the whole book a disjointed feel. It doesn't help that timing wise the story of the big fight between factions is written from the point of view of a new character from a new author to the series (Pat Cadigan) whose work doesn't quite mesh - the emotional tale she's trying to tell ends up tonally incongruent with the events around it. That's a solid decision for an individual story but as a bog point in several other ongoing tales it drags the book as a whole down. Deciding to end the Alien Invasion with a "Mens' Own Adventure Story" also hurts it some.
Still, the GRRM and, Walter Jon Williams and Zelazny components are uniformly excellent (the Sleeper tale in this book could easily be a Cohen brothers comedy) and that makes up for a lot.
The first book in the series was a lot of set up to get to 1986, with the stories in a chronological order but it doesn't matter much as few of them are interconnected. This book is more tightly integrated as a MacGuffin hunt - as an alien invasion spills out onto the world the key piece of technology that would give humanity an edge moves from one set of hands to another. Every story save one includes the MacGuffin in some way as various factions maneuver to gain it, and the one that doesn't have it is the culmination of the battle between several of the factions that are wittingly or unwittingly involved in the war and MacGuffin hunt.
This unfortunately stops the editors from placing the stories in a better order in terms of style and pacing, giving the whole book a disjointed feel. It doesn't help that timing wise the story of the big fight between factions is written from the point of view of a new character from a new author to the series (Pat Cadigan) whose work doesn't quite mesh - the emotional tale she's trying to tell ends up tonally incongruent with the events around it. That's a solid decision for an individual story but as a bog point in several other ongoing tales it drags the book as a whole down. Deciding to end the Alien Invasion with a "Mens' Own Adventure Story" also hurts it some.
Still, the GRRM and, Walter Jon Williams and Zelazny components are uniformly excellent (the Sleeper tale in this book could easily be a Cohen brothers comedy) and that makes up for a lot.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Body shaming, Cursing, Death, Violence, Kidnapping, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Homophobia
Minor: Stalking
Meh. Mi única razón para seguir con este libro es porque ya lo tenía comprado. Pero si Wild Cards 1 mínimo tenía esa cualidad que me hacía seguir leyendo (sepa porqué, puro morbo seguro), este si me aburrió en varías partes. Aunque hubo uno que otro chascarrillo rescatable, no es suficiente cómo para sacar adelante a un libro, así que MEH.
Y aquí termina mi aventura con la saga Wild Card, obviamente no leeré más.
Y aquí termina mi aventura con la saga Wild Card, obviamente no leeré más.
Compared to the first book these are night and day.
This has more of a structured flow.
It’s still homophobic and racist but not as much as the first.
I won’t be continuing this series.
This has more of a structured flow.
It’s still homophobic and racist but not as much as the first.
I won’t be continuing this series.
This is a fun series overall, and somehow I missed this one. Each arc is written by a different author, which is a treat.
I LOVED Wild Cards - it is the story of America, of civil rights, of the 1960s. Aces High... The story of an alien invasion.
The characters were not as developed, the story was not as interesting.
I am not sure if I will read book 3 or not. Maybe from the library. Maybe.
The characters were not as developed, the story was not as interesting.
I am not sure if I will read book 3 or not. Maybe from the library. Maybe.
I really enjoyed it. Perhaps not as much as the first one, but still quite good. It seems like it focused on less characters this time around, but they were still spread across as many authors, so we had less new viewpoints to hear from. And as much as I enjoy a good 'crisis crossover', I did get a little sick of the story always coming back to the faux-Masons. Not enough Croyd, maybe too much Fortunato too. And perhaps I am just being overly-sensitive, but his constant 'faggot' diatribe in that one chapter seemed out of place.
I really enjoyed this book. Not so much as the first one in the series but I did enjoy it. My issue is that I enjoy the stories of the different jokers and aces interacting with real life, so the Turtle/Barbara story was one of my favorites (even though at first glance it didn't make much sense within the framework of the novel and only bore connection to the mosaic at the end). I like the concept of the mosaic novel and I like the reappearance of characters throughout. I will definitely continue with this series.
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
lighthearted
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Volume 2 of the extensive and long running shared universe Wild Cards series. We mostly have the same authors as volume 1, and *most* of the characters made at least some appearance in volume 1 no matter how small, though there are a few new characters.
Volume 2 takes place entirely within the 80s, mostly divorced from real world events at the time, which I think the book suffers for to some extent. Social commentary is one of the strong suits of alternate history, and of the first volume. Volume 2 also diverges in that it tries to focus on a single over-arching plot across the various short stories by different authors. In fact, it tries to focus on more than one single, over-arching plot, which again is a bit of a detriment. We have a big bad in the form of Dr. Tachyon's people coming back to earth, but wait, that's not really the big bad...we have a masonic cult!...but that's not really the big bad, they're just trying to call down their god to ravage the earth who is in fact...another alien species (think starship troopers bugs or starcraft zerg)!...but wait there's also a whole bunch of alien races who actually tried to engineer the situation from a few hundred years back...Interspersed with smaller scale bad guys and situations that while typically more interesting all somehow end up connected to aforementioned big bad. Its...tiresome. There's also a bit of a red herring in the form of a black sphere that features in what initially is a pretty amusing series of almost slapstick comedy-of-errors sequences but which also becomes tiresome as it keeps coming back up throughout the book.
The smaller scale stories, when divorced from the over-arching plot, are easily the most interesting, with the most character development. There's some great stuff with the Turtle and Croyd. It was fun learning more about some barely mentioned characters from volume 1. Even the material expanding on the Takisians and the Walrus was satisfying and expanded the world. But the book either needed to *less* focused and give us more snapshots of the world, or *more* focused and lose the bizarre and overly intricate plot. The stuff with the masonic cult was especially repetitive, unengaging, and frustrating. The book was slow to start because of this, as it felt like it was desperately trying to pull together disparate threads in an ineffective way, it almost lost me 25% in.
If I find subsequent volumes cheap in the wild like I did the first 2, I'll keep reading, but I desperately hope they don't involve the stupid Egyptian/Masonic cult.
Volume 2 takes place entirely within the 80s, mostly divorced from real world events at the time, which I think the book suffers for to some extent. Social commentary is one of the strong suits of alternate history, and of the first volume. Volume 2 also diverges in that it tries to focus on a single over-arching plot across the various short stories by different authors. In fact, it tries to focus on more than one single, over-arching plot, which again is a bit of a detriment. We have a big bad in the form of Dr. Tachyon's people coming back to earth, but wait, that's not really the big bad...we have a masonic cult!...but that's not really the big bad, they're just trying to call down their god to ravage the earth who is in fact...another alien species (think starship troopers bugs or starcraft zerg)!...but wait there's also a whole bunch of alien races who actually tried to engineer the situation from a few hundred years back...Interspersed with smaller scale bad guys and situations that while typically more interesting all somehow end up connected to aforementioned big bad. Its...tiresome. There's also a bit of a red herring in the form of a black sphere that features in what initially is a pretty amusing series of almost slapstick comedy-of-errors sequences but which also becomes tiresome as it keeps coming back up throughout the book.
The smaller scale stories, when divorced from the over-arching plot, are easily the most interesting, with the most character development. There's some great stuff with the Turtle and Croyd. It was fun learning more about some barely mentioned characters from volume 1. Even the material expanding on the Takisians and the Walrus was satisfying and expanded the world. But the book either needed to *less* focused and give us more snapshots of the world, or *more* focused and lose the bizarre and overly intricate plot. The stuff with the masonic cult was especially repetitive, unengaging, and frustrating. The book was slow to start because of this, as it felt like it was desperately trying to pull together disparate threads in an ineffective way, it almost lost me 25% in.
If I find subsequent volumes cheap in the wild like I did the first 2, I'll keep reading, but I desperately hope they don't involve the stupid Egyptian/Masonic cult.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The strongest part of the wild cards series continues to be the shear variety of concepts, heros, ideas and threats (in universe) they throw at the wall and somehow it mostly works.