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Inside Straight (A Wild Cards novel) edited by George R.R. Martin
01/01/2008 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: TOR/Forge. 384 page hardback. Price: $24.95 (US), $28.95 (CAN). ISBN: 978-0-7653-1781-0. Buy Inside Straight in the USA - or Buy Inside Straight in the UK  check out website: www.tor-forge.com
With a fresh desk of cards, a new assortment of writers, at long last the 'Wild Cards' series is back under the auspices of TOR for an opening trilogy.
I got hooked to this series when it was first released in 1987. I thought the first book was good, the second excellent and the third superb, something which was kept up for some fifteen volumes (twelve from Bantam Spectra and three from Baen), kick-starting the careers of many of the authors associated with it. Editor George RR Martin would meet up with a bunch of writers on a Friday night, kicking the breeze and developing this series.
Back in the 1940s, an alien experimental virus released in the atmosphere has a devastating effect on the human population. It killed many of those infected. Those who survived it were bestowed with super-powers and were called Aces. Those who were physically deformed by their powers were called Jokers. The various writers involved created their own characters and stories to play in this reality which a lot of the time paralleled events from our reality, often with different consequences. Occasionally, some of the characters had parallels to those from the Marvel and DC Universes but rarely with the same powers. Marvel even did a mini-series back in the early 90s.
A couple years ago, iBooks did two volumes before folding and here we are with TOR and we're off again. If you thought the TV series 'Heroes' was good, then 'Wild Cards' is a lot better. With this new start, you don't really have to read the earlier books to get stuck in although I suspect many of you will want to look them up to see what you missed. A series that can still keep going with its fourth publisher should speak volumes for its fan interest and popularity.
This book, 'Inside Straight', plays with two themes. The first is the drawing of twenty-four Aces and Jokers into a TV reality show called 'American Hero' where divided into teams, they have to perform 'heroic' tasks over a period of months. Although I don't watch any of these reality shows, it doesn't take much to get into the swing of the media hype here or the disillusionment of some of its contestants, especially when some of them are drawn to a real conflict in Egypt. The Wild Card virus can have an odd side-effect based on where you live and for some in Egypt they look like Egyptian deities. Over the years, this has now brought up a conflict and some foreigners arrive to re-enforce the loosing side. Make sure you have an uninterrupted couple hours to finish the end of this book.
Compared to the very early volumes, this book is some two hundred pages lighter. If anything, the biggest perspective lost is that of the opponents. They are ultimately just there to be villains to be ousted and we don't see enough of them to make any clear judgement on their motivation. This is a shame really as the characters we do see are very well delineated. Structuring with multi-authors also means that all the significant characters get their day in the sun and individual lives. If anything, this is one of its greatest strengths because it is then up to the individual reader as to which characters they might support.
Although I would hesitate to say it is as magnificent as the early volumes, 'Inside Straight', has gotten off a decent start and can't wait for the next book. This is the kind of book that makes be glad to be a reviewer, getting to see books early. Don't loose this winning hand.
GF Willmetts
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