[QuickTidal]

**NOTE: I've pulled my last post from the UK Reprint thread on this to use as a starter for a main thread to discus this series.**

QuickTidal, on 11 December 2013 - 01:57 PM, said:

Started Book 2, ACES HIGH, last night and read the first 60 pages or so.

More good stuff.

Spoiler

So we've moved on from governmental persecution to Alien Invasion plotline in the 1980's...where Jube (surprise, I didn't see coming) is actually an alien posing as a Joker and is a member of a network of observers...and some Swarm is on its way.

I'm glad to get a big fresh plotline like this to follow, and even the first section which is a Fortunato (read: sexytimes astral projection) tale...is much better than his first story was...for me anyways.

But I'd be lying if I said anyone interests me as much as Croyd....the guy's been around since the beginning, and has new powers all the time. It's great!

What I think is really great about this series, even in this new era, is the attention to detail to past events and people. I've heard that we revisit all kinds of things that happened on the sidelines of the series...the first of which is taking the Paperboy Joker (Jube) intro'ed way back in book 1 and flesh him out to give us some history. Layers man. These authors have the layers things nailed.

And for some reason I put this one down/stopped reading it at the time (probably for some other book that came out that I wanted to devour), and it went back into the ToRead pile...and it's taken me goddamned 5 years to get back into it. What an idiot I am.

Anyways, halfway through ACES HIGH now, and it's really jiving along great. The entire Modular Man / Egyptian Mason Cult / Bag Lady / Swarm Mother plot line that's been the majority of the book so far has been utterly excellent.

Croyd is still one of the most interesting characters, but I'm also really into the dynamic of Modular Man and his selfish asshole creator too.

Haven't met Water Lily yet, who graces the cover.

I have the next three volumes in the ToRead pile (JOKER'S WILD, ACES ABROAD, and DOWN & DIRTY) ready to go was well. With some 24 books in the series I have no idea how long this will take me to read, but I'm really enjoying the ride.

Also, can we talk about how gorgeous the new TOR covers for this series have been?

And if HBO wants to keep its sweet GRRM audience after GoT finishes...this is SOOOOOOO the series to adapt.

SIDEBAR: There is a new volume coming out that details the Wild Cards virus affect on Britain, and Mark Lawrence has a story in it!

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 02 November 2018 - 01:01 PM

[QuickTidal]

Finished!

Spoilers for all of volume II, ACES HIGH...

Spoiler

Liked this volume a lot. The Swarm War stuff wraps up a little too cleanly in the final story, and it felt like it might crossover more with the Mason/Astronomer storyline...but in the end I kind of liked that no matter what they did, the Swarm Mother didn't give flying fuck what they were attempting. I'm still not a Fortunato fan. I mean he's fine. And I get why he exists (as a counter to Astonomer's evil mind powers), but I still can't really get past the "sexy times = power ups" aspect, and for some reason he kept calling Tachyon a faggot over and over in the second to last story and I'm like ....back off that term man. I get that it was the late 1980's, but I thought by that point we'd already established it was damned derogatory? Anyways. Water Lily was super cool, but WAY too naive. She's a powerful Ace...so it's weird that the writer who created her kept her so tamped down under her obvious power VIA Naivety. Hopefully she gets more confident as things go forward.

All in all, the alien invasion plot line works WELL to not only push the overall Wild Cards story forwards, but to necessitate the need for new characters to be created.

Vol. III JOKERS WILD is on my ToRead pile, and hopefully will get to it in the near future.

[QuickTidal]

Since this last post I have read Vol III: JOKER'S WILD (Solid), Vol IV: ACES ABROAD (even better), and now I'm nearly half way into Vol V: DOWN & DIRTY which is proving to be even better.

I think the best thing about this series is that it's a mosaic of so many authors in the same world, so every book has such a varied feeling. So while Martin edits it, and usually has interlude-type stories in it, the lions share of the narrative are spread across many authors and this allows less chance for stinkers in the stories.

No Fortunato here (my least fave character in the whole thing for the first 4 volumes), and I've heard that now that he's had his Japan story in Vol IV, he comes back a single time more and then never again. Thank the gods.

I LOVE the gang war storyline happening in this one. It's just really visceral and allows them to involve a lot of the players in different aspects.

I'm bashing through this one pretty quickly, so I'll probably roll right on into Vol VI: ACE IN THE HOLE and finish out this story arc.

Beyond that I have Vol VII to X in the pile, so I'm going to be reading this series for a long while.

Heads up to fans though...the TOR re-release of the last volume of the main 12 books in the Bantam-era (A TURN OF THE CARDS, which is a standalone by one author; Victor Milan), and the second of the iBooks-era volumes (DEATH DRAWS FIVE) both come out in November.

After that I'm looking fwd to getting onto the TOR-published proper books, which I hear are a sort of fresh start.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 12 October 2021 - 12:40 PM