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midici's review against another edition
2.0
I have previously read one other short story in the Wildcards universe on Tor.com, which I liked a lot. This one... not so much. I was surprised to learn that jokers weren't "mindless monsters" - it was sort of implied before but in this story they mentioned a whole society, sections of town, companies, service,s etc. that catered to jokers so I still have a lot to learn about this universe I guess.
Mostly this story just didn't seem to have a narrative? Spector runs around killing people, sort of befriends a joker, they cause a bunch of trouble together... and that's it. The extra information about joker society was a cool bit of world building but that was the only interesting bit.
It can be found here: https://www.tor.com/2019/08/28/wild-cards-the-city-that-never-sleeps-walton-simons/
Mostly this story just didn't seem to have a narrative? Spector runs around killing people, sort of befriends a joker, they cause a bunch of trouble together... and that's it. The extra information about joker society was a cool bit of world building but that was the only interesting bit.
It can be found here: https://www.tor.com/2019/08/28/wild-cards-the-city-that-never-sleeps-walton-simons/
misterjay's review against another edition
3.0
What happens when you have an unlikable protagonist doing unlikable things? This story feels like an attempt to answer that; we as readers are given few opportunities to sympathize with the anti-hero at the center of the story and, for me, that made it a hard read. It was a little too casually violent and chaotic for my tastes. But it was very well written and makes a hell of an impression.
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