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A review by subplotkudzu
Aces High by George R.R. Martin
3.0
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.