High Stakes
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Average rating2.5
Perfect for old fans and new readers alike, High Stakes (Wild Cards) delves deeper into the world of aces, jokers, and the hard-boiled men and women of the Fort Freak police precinct in a pulpy, page-turning novel of superheroics and Lovecraftian horror bu George R. R. Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass. After the concluding events of Lowball, Officer Francis Black of Fort Freak, vigilante joker Marcus "The Infamous Black Tongue" Morgan, and ace thief Mollie "Tesseract" Steunenberg get stuck in Talas, Kazakhstan. There, the coldblooded Baba Yaga forces jokers into an illegal fighting ring, but her hidden agenda is much darker: her fighters' deaths serve to placate a vicious monster from another dimension. When the last line of defense against this world weakens, all hell breaks loose, literally.... The Committee in New York sends a team of aces to investigate. One by one, each falls victim to evil forces--including the dark impulses within themselves. Only the perseverance of the most unlikely of heroes has a chance of saving the world before utter chaos erupts on Earth. Edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin, High Stakes features the writing talents of Melinda M. Snodgrass, John Jos. Miller, David Anthony Durham, Caroline Spector, Stephen Leigh, and Ian Tregillis. The Wild Cards Universe The Original Triad #1 Wild Cards #2 Aces High #3 Jokers Wild The Puppetman Quartet #4: Aces Abroad #5: Down and Dirty #6: Ace in the Hole #7: Dead Man’s Hand The Rox Triad #8: One-Eyed Jacks #9: Jokertown Shuffle #10: Dealer’s Choice #11: Double Solitaire #12: Turn of the Cards The Card Sharks Triad #13: Card Sharks #14: Marked Cards #15: Black Trump #16: Deuces Down #17: Death Draws Five The Committee Triad #18: Inside Straight #19: Busted Flush #20: Suicide Kings The Fort Freak Triad #21: Fort Freak #22: Lowball #23: High Stakes The American Triad #24: Mississippi Roll #25: Low Chicago #26: Texas Hold 'Em At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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30 primary books49 released books#23 in Wild Cards
Wild Cards is a 49-book series with 30 primary works first released in 1986 with contributions by George R.R. Martin, Melinda M. Snodgrass, and Victor Milán.
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Not, to my mind, one of the strongest entries in the normally high quality Wild Cards series. It's the third part of the ‘Fort Freak' triad, following on directly from the end of the second volume in that set and, as usual for the third volume in a WC triad, a tightly woven mosaic novel, rather than a collection of short stories. At any rate, it won't make sense without the preceding book, Lowball.
That's not really the problem, though, especially since the preceding two books were quite good. Rather, there are two issues. For one, the editing is weaker than usual, with a number of contradictions in the book that don't seem to have been caught, despite some of them being quite glaring. This really doesn't help, and, if you're going to do a mosaic novel, it's the sort of thing you really need to get right (and WC normally does).
Then there's the tone. This is horror, as the Committee, among other characters, face off against Lovecraftian monsters. But, unlike Lovecraft, we get gore and plenty of it, much of it seemingly for the sake of it, until long after it loses any ability to shock or horrify. It's quite simply overdone, and, while the book does pick up at the end and build to a dramatic climax, it drags a bit on the way there.
It's not terrible, and there are a number of good points within it, but neither does it live up to the promise of its predecessors.
Definitely the worst of the lot. So many errors and time skips that make no sense. So many characters that were just kind of there after so much backstory in the previous 2 books. I've always described the entire series as reality with superheroes, but this killed all of that. There was so much boring cliche fantasy/sci-fi that it might as well be a crappy standalone novel.
