Wild Cards: High Stakes

English language

Published by GOLLANCZ.

ISBN:: 978-1-4732-2198-7

(1 review)

Officer Francis, vigilante joker "The Infamous Black Tongue," and ace thief Tesseract are forced by a cold-blooded Baba Yaga into an illegal fight ring as part of her effort to placate a vicious monster from another dimension.

2 editions

dare reviewed High stakes by George R. R. Martin (A wild cards mosaic novel)

Too much carnage

3 stars

Content warning Spoiler warning

Something I'd never thought I'd say: There's such a thing as too much carnage.

It's the end of another Wild Cards story arc, and our heroes end up battling a Lovecraftian cosmic horror. It kind of works... but the story is the size of an elephant, and at around 300 pages you start to become numb from all the terrible things going on. There's only so much blood, pus, gristle and insanity a reader can handle before they all start to melt together.

There were bright spots -- Mollie's insanity was truly horrifying, and Billy Ray keeps on being so very awesome. Still, I was ultimately kind of unmoved by it all. It's a shame, as I still love the world and the turns it's taken (been a fan since 1989 I think), but this one is probably not going to get a re-read.