George R.R. Martin, why hast thou forsaken me?

Having just finished the first most recent George R.R. Martin edited Wild Cards book, "Inside Straight", I thought I'd try my hand at some reviewing.

I've read many, but not all of the Wild Cards books. I liked a good bunch of them. The thing about most of them is that they're what's known as "shared word anthologies", which from my recollection, started out with the Thieves World books or by the marketing mind behind the Wild Cards books "mosaic novels". A bit pretentious, but whatever. Pretension work some times.

The basic plot device behind the Wild Cards books is that an alien virus gave superpowers to part of humanity, and crippling, strange, and sometimes lethal disfigurements to another part. The heroic powerd ones get called "aces" and the disfigured ones get called "jokers". Of course, not every superhero has amazing fantastic powers. Some have lame powers. In an earlier book, they get the title "deuces".

There's a lot of the Thieves World conceptual space that's shared with the early Wild Card books. There's a grimness to a lot of the stories, and not a lot of huge high heroism. Anti-heroes and deeply flawed heroes are the main characters, for the most part. Of the most powerful aces, one is a homophobic pimp, another is an overweight drop out telekinetic, a another is a drug addicted schizoid who transmutes into a variety of heroes when he's tripping out.

Despite a lot of these flaws, the rise of real heroism and, failures of great figures, redemption and betrayal on a grand superheroic scale made the Wild cards books really interesting. It also helped that a lot of the authors were really great writers.

I wish I could say that the most recent Wild Cards book lived up to that. I have no idea how it managed to get a "Sci Fi Essentials" tag associated with it. Some sort of lobbying by the publicist? It wasn't because of the books quality, as far as I can tell.

Anyhow, on to the actual review.

The book starts with an blog post by a deuce named Jonathan Hive, who's blog posts divide the books chapters. By the end of the book, I liked who Hive became, but I didn't see his transformation into that person as plausible. He starts out as too much of an irresponsible self absorbed asshole to credit with becoming a heroic journalist blogger. His ace power is that he can turn himself into a swarm of green wasps, which can be used as spies, or to sting people.

I really had to power through the book, and finish it in a few hours, because with the exception of the first chapter it was an uninteresting read. The introductory chapter was actually great - an Egyptian leader is assassinated by an ace I can't remember form previous books, a female teleport called Lillith. The writing on that chapter was tight, and well paced. It was what I'd come to expect from the Wild cards books.

After the assassination, the book shifts to describing a reality TV show called "American Hero". Jonathan Hive is one of the contestants. I fully admit, I think reality TV is some of the worst crap ever invented. I can't stand it. And I couldn't stand any of the characters in the book that were on the show, and god, there were a lot of them. And the book actually played out scenarios from the fictional show. I really couldn't find it in myself to care about any of the characters in the book, because they were, on the whole, self absorbed assholes. I'm sure this is realistic, but it's a boring read.

I like books with characters who're real villains, or even interesting villains. Martin's Wild Cards books are great examples of this. There's an evil incestuous brother and sister who're twins, who eventually, you begin to really understand. they have depth, even if its in madness. One of them actually redeems himself. And the heights to which they climb and depths to which they fall are epic.

The contestants in Inside Straight are not that deep. They don't fall from heights. Some of them die at the end, and I can't even bring myself to feel anything other than relived that the plot was moved along, and I wasn't reading about who was fucking around on who in the reality show.

Concurrently with the brain bendingly unpleasant reality show, Egypt is falling apart. The assassin placed blame on a group of joker terrorists. Because of that, jokers in Egypt are being selected for genocide, as are worshipers of the "living gods" who're aces and jokers with either powers or animal heads that have them looking like ancient Egyptian gods.

In a convoluted plot twist, Peregrine, who's a producer of the show, was given an amulet from one of the living gods. She has wings, and despite being an American, gets called Isis by the Egyptian gods. The amulet has the power and memories of a previous god who can become a lion, breathe fire, and is immune to bullets, but only when it's melded to the flesh of Peregrine's son, John Fortune who's perpetually living in the shadow of his deceased father, Fortunado, who had vast power, and his mother, Peregrine, who was incredibly overprotective.

Did I mention convoluted? Keep in mind that there were a lot of wild card books. Plot twists get really damn gnarly.

The short of it is that Jonathan Hive, after getting kicked off the contestant part of the show, convinces John Fortune and another ace, Lohengrin, who has invulnerable psychic armor and a sword that can cut through anything, to raid Peregrine's home for the amulet, because he as told by another contestant, who happens to be from Egypt, that the amulet will give John Fortune his powers back. They do this while drunk. The writing was just as bad as the plotting.

Johnathan Hive is basically a device for moving the plot at this point. I had a lot of trouble accepting his motivations even when he was just a jerk on a reality TV show.

After some page filling angst, Johnathan Hive, John Fortune and Lohengrin shuttle off to Egypt to be real heroes, because the reality TV show land was just too nonheroic for them. Also the spirit of the Egyptian Ace in the amulet, and his own feelings of inadequacy about not being the hero his parents were motivates John Fortune. And Hive wants to be a journalist, so he tags along. Lohengrin just wants to be a hero. Really, he's another way to move the plot along, and to be an incongruous "crusader" in Egypt.

After close encounters with genocide by Hive, Fortune and, Lohengrin, large amounts of the cast of "American Hero" shuttle themselves off to Egypt to fight the good fight. they're motivated by Hive's blog posts from Egypt. Again, I couldn't really get behind the scene in which this happens. All of a sudden, vapid, self absorbed assholes decide to go off and fight the good fight? It's like a switch it turned in their heads.

They get to Egypt, and fight off soldiers, and Islamic aces. Some of the American aces die, some don't. I was unmoved by any of the deaths. Either the authors had no idea how to get me to care, or I was too numbed out by despising all of the characters in a fictional reality TV show. Eventually, the lesson of teamwork sinks in to the vapid, self absorbed reality TV fans, and they kill the boss at the end of the level, or book. Whatever. It's a decently written super hero battle, at least, but the triteness of the teamwork versus self absorbedness lesson spoiled a large chunk of it.

I'm know there's some message I was supposed to take home in here about how we decadent westerners watch our atrociously meaningless reality TV while people in the rest of the world have serious problems. It was pretty much beaten into the readers head by the end of the book when the remaining contestants get pre-empted by the Secretary General of the UN announcing that former contestants had saved the day.

In conclusion, if you really love Wild Cards, wait for the paperback edition.