Down and Dirty (Wild Cards) [Mass Market Paperback]

Mind you, not all is swell. We get an undesired cameback from Leanne Harper and edward Bryant. Any reasonable person who has read the series must learn to dread those two. Atleast we got rid of Lewis Shiner for this one, although I far prefer his Fortunato to the dreadful Bagabond and to Rosemarry and her straight out of a bad movie mobster friends.

So what did they have in plan for us? Well, the bad stories include newcomer's Cover tale of Leo Barnett or whatever his name is, the priest whose name in ACES ABROAD raised as many cries of outrage as McDonalds would in a French restaurant. The story is quite bad, and Barnett is an annoying type who is not the material of great villians. Harper's story isn't quite as bad as some of her other stuff, and Bryant resorrects Buddy Holly - yeah, that one. I'm a moderate Holly fun, and a big Rock fun, so I survived that story.

OK, now for the good stuff. A quarter of the book takes place between the end of Wild Cards 3: Jokers Wild, and the end of WC4: Aces High. While Tachy and company are abroad, the main plot line is of the gang war between Kien's bunch and Rosemary's mobsters.

One of the reasons this is such a great story is that it completely devided to stories: no less then 5 authors(Martin, Snodgras, Miller, Harper, and even, to my great surprise, Zelazny) - half of the contributers - devide their stories into sections.

The first quarter sees Rosemary's secret revealed (who cares?), and gives us great new insight to Croyd, the Sleeper. If the first Croyd story was tragic, and the second, Ashes to Ashes, comic - then this is about the dangerous side of Croyd Cressen, or as the the Aces Jingle( isn't that a cool idea?) goes: "sleeper waking, food taking/ sleeper speeding, people bleeding" We also see cameo appearences by Demise, Bludgeon( I thought he was dead), and later Golden boy( I wish he was dead).

In the second quarter, the aces return from their around the world trip, and we get some cute stories. Cadigan and Leigh follow stories from Aces Abraod. Cadigan tells us another tale fo Water Lily, focusing on Hiram Worchester, while Leigh continues the adventures of Kahina and puppetman. Leigh is one of my favorite WILD CARD authors, and if his piece here isn't as good as his previous one, its because he can't really push too much. The story involves Chrysalis discovering Puppetman's true identity, while he's running for presidancy.

In the last half, occuring all during one month, we see new plot line, introduced briefly earlier: a new version of the Wild Card virus. This allows for some of Snodgras's best story telling, as she writes her best story since Degredation Rites. Some plotlines I though were drearly, namely Tachyon's grandchild - seem to flurish under her capeable hand.

I still miss the enigma of Tachyon when he has been first introduced. I fear he has become too well known, lost his mystery. I would have liked some of the excitment back.

The two plotlines ar resolved in a rather nice, subdued fashion, that tells us that there will be consequences.

But let us not forget George R. R. Martin's All The Kings Horses. We have a return to the Great and Powerful Turtle - a return of sorts, at least, as Tuds goes through somewhat of a mid life crises. The turtle is an enormously difficult character to write for ( which is probably why Martin only wrote three stories abouthim so far) and Martin uses him to exploar realities of life - as well as the question 'What is it really like to be a superhero?'