Inside Straight

Inside Straight came out a few weeks ago, the new Wild Cards novel, with my blurb on the back. I've never blurbed anything before, and I see now I should have actually believed they would use it and made myself write something cleverer, but anyway - it couldn't be more sincerely meant - I read the book straight through twice, in the space of a couple of days, seriously thought about reading it a third time.

The premise is pretty much genius - real-world superhumans compete on a reality TV show, American Hero. Lots of backstage drama, intertwining stories, action, relationships, &c - I could have read three more books like it and not stopped. (If anything when the book takes a more serious turn I rather missed the frothy fun, maybe that's me) Lots of different authors contributed (it's a "mosaic novel") under the editorship of the redoubtable George R. R. Martin, but it all feels of a piece.

For those who don't know Wild Cards, it's a shared fictional continuity - an alternate history that various authors can set their stories in, sharing characters and plot events. (Like Thieves World , but if I'm still explaining at this point then you probably don't know Thieves World either. It was the '80s.) The series went off the rails (and into a weird, sexy place?) sometime in the '90s, so this is something of a reboot, although not a retcon - all that backstory is in place, setting up the current generation - it feels well done.

And yes, blurbing a book feels like I'm being sucked into a corrupt, nepotistic underworld. Especially because I'm friends with Caroline Spector, who wrote some very good bits of Inside Straight.

But wait, I read the Wild Cards books way back when they first came out, a trillion years ago, so I feel I can legitimately recommend this installment - I have my own personal engagement with the series and the subject matter, which doesn't come from knowing anybody. Wild Cards was probably the first place I saw superpowers set in prose - it's not Marvel- or DC-style superheroes per se - there's a virus that gives people different abilities (or hideous deformities, or death), so it's somewhat sui generis. In any case, George R. R. Martin's moody "Winter's Chill" was one of the many prior works I stewed over while writing Soon I Will Be Invincible - a small fragment of its DNA.