Unlock The Secrets Of Ace In The Hole (Wild Cards, #6) Brought To You By George R.R. Martin Accessible Through Physical Edition

think this might be my favourite Wild Cards book so far!
For the first time, this one is written as one long novel rather than a short stories or a collection of stories and I think it worked great.

Ace in the Hole focuses solely on Greg Hart man's aka Puppetman nomination campaign and only features a few characters but I think that actually enriches the story and gives us some precious time with some of our favourite characters Tachyon, some we didn't know much about Demise, and some returning to action Golden Boy.

There's great action and twists throughout as the tension builds to a great and unpredictable finale,
Also, big shout out to Mackie Messer who is truly creepy and terrifying!
Can't wait to see where the series goes from here as there will be a massive fallout surely.
. . Since a strange alien virus created the superhuman beings known as Aces and Jokersyears ago, they have struggled for respect and recognition, Now, they are key players in a presidential convention torn by hatred and dissent as assassins stalk the halls of the convention and one of the candidates plans to use his secret Wild Card power for evil.
A journey of intrigue and adventure written by five of science fiction's most imaginative talents, The Wild Card series is quickly becoming my goto for pleasure reading, The characters are wellfleshed out, the premise is interesting, and it does a good job of keeping the audience on its toes, That being said, there are dozens of books a reader will need to go through to get the full experience and this novel operates under the presumption that the audience knows the insandouts of every character and backstory.
The ending is a frantic melee told from multiple perspectives and it kept me engaged until the very end, I'd definitely recommend this to fans of the series or to people looking to read a good dozen books six on the main series with numerous spinoffs, Will review soon at sitelinkwww, fantasyliterature. com Very dark and it took a while to get going, but the last half was riveting, While I honestly can't stand anything Game Of Thrones' related, Georges R, R. Martin manage to be one of my favorite author by the sheer force of being on the cover of :
one of my alltime favorite book, sitelinkThe Armageddon Rag,
one of my favorite book cycle: Wild Cards.

I still have a lot to read, but Ace in the Hole has a special place in my heart, We now know the characters and the stakes, we can now thrive with the characters while they try to stop Puppetman from becoming the next president of the US which seems a losing battle and they ask themselves quite philosophical and ethical question on life, Aces and their duty.

I did not think I was going to enjoy a book dealing with a political convention, Although, I found I really enjoyed this book, what with the assassins and intrigue, It was more like what is happening behind the scenes at the convention, And who is really pulling the strings, Not going to lie, this book didn't have me in the first half, partially because I wasn't wild about the "one big narrative" structure as opposed to the shorter vignettes in prior books, and maybe partially because I was lacking some minor context having forgotten to read Down and Dirty before this volume, but when things ramp up about halfway through the book, they REALLY ramp up.
A small damper here is the more dated style of writing, as they have to remind us that Mack the Knife is a VERY BAD PERSON but having him drop aboutor so nbombs per sequence, but other than this, this is an excellent thriller that brings the Puppetman trilogy to a solid conclusion.
A story lives and died by it's character development, and the Wild Cards have that in spades, Hahaha unintended card pun.

Set in thes, and it reads very much like a movie of that era, The AU super hero series is absolutely engrossing, These characters are becoming old friends of mine, and I cant wait to see what mischief they will stride into next, You never can predict where the story will go next because the writers are pros at knowing what you expect and giving you just the opposite, A thriller in the best sense of that word, Gregg Hartmann is on the verge of winning the nomination for President of the United States at theDemocratic National Convention in Atlanta, He has all the usual political problems to contend with Rev, Leo Barnett is a strong challenger with growing support in the Bible Belt southern states, Michael Dukakis and Al Gore want to parlay their minority delegates into a Vice Presidential spot on the ticket, and Jesse Jackson does not want the a jokers' rights plank to supersede his platform focused on improving the lives of AfricanAmericans.


To complicate the situation, Gimli is back, somehow, This old adversary from theriots and Berlin was thought dead in last year's Typhoid Croyd outbreak, but he has returned with new telepathic powers, Gimli can now block Puppetman from controlling people, Gregg cannot manipulate his opponents or members of the media, Worse, he cannot let Puppetman loose to satiate his lusts for pain and bloodshed, If he does not find an outlet soon, Puppetman will take over the host personality completely and feed on Gregg instead

This is the third book in the Puppetman quartet, and following the normal Wild Cards pattern, it is a mosaic novel with different authors writing each point of view character.


Several aspects of this novel worked well:

Hartmann/Puppetman is the series' best villain so far, The scenes written by Stephen Leigh are graphic and engrossing, Hartmann's desperate machinations to save his life and career as Gimli's noose tightens are a lot of fun, Plus, the secret of how Gimli returned is a unique twist,

The cameos by reallife political and media personalities lend verisimilitude that was lacking in some of the previous books, It helps to be familiar with the Democrat's labyrinthine system of delegates and superdelegates, There's also a little bit of political commentary from the authors: Jesse Jackson comes off as noble, Michael Dukakis as intelligent but dull, and Al Gore as greedy.
Having Jesse Jackson become a puppet was a cool twist

Two Wild Card assassinsDemise ace and Mackie the Knife joker are back from previous installments, stalking the convention.
Walton Simons delivers his best writing with the Demise scenes, Their faceoff in the Ace in the Hole's climax is perfect,

Jack Braun takes center stage with his first point of view story, highlighted by the return of Envoy, One of the running themes of Jack's character arc is that, despite having unlimited strength, he almost always manages

to fail at life,

Tachyon makes interesting dubious moral choices, He interferes with a US government election by using his mental projection powers to force delegates to change votes against their will, He seduces the adult daughter of his great love, Blythe van Rensselaer, He chooses not to kill Puppetman even when doing so would surely prevent greater destruction, His pride and arrogance leads him to manipulate people and keep dangerous secrets with devastating consequences to himself,

Unfortunately, a few things in the book were disappointing:

Several series characters have suddenly abandoned their day jobs to become full time political strategists for the Hartmann campaign.
This seems both too convenient and implausible, A twentyyear US senator would certainly choose a more experienced team for a presidential run, Tachyon and Braun never seemed adept or even interested in politics before, Hiram is still in thrall to Ti Malice he was barely holding on to his restaurant in the last book, so it stretches credulity to portray him as now being an effective campaign leader.


Pacing is slow, especially the political scenes, It improves in the back half of the novel,

ExKGB operative Polyakov is still hunting Hartmann, but Melissa Snodgrass's story line for him falls flat, Polyakov comes across as incompetent when he tries to use Sara Morgenstern rather than Blaise, even though he has spent a year cultivating a relationship with the already powerful and psychotic young telepath.
This just lacks the spy craft of the two previous Polyakov stories, David Levine's "Powers" and Michael Cassutt's "Legends",

More joker riots really

The climactic fight scenes at the Omni Center cycle swiftly back and forth among all the POV characters, Because each scene is handled by a different author, the sequence feels more choppy than thrilling, Some scenes feel out of order, This would have worked better just to tell the whole chapter from a single character's viewpoint,

Chrysalis' death is handled awkwardly, It is introduced in the first chapter and then essentially ignored, The investigation of her murder will be the subject of the next book,

In summary, I'd say this book is not one of the highlights of the series, yet it still manages to entertain, This one started off a bit slow, with lots of details around the campaign for president, some of which I found a bit boring, but then it kicked into high gear about halfway through.
Lots of action, and some spectacularly gory violence, with a substantial number of main character deaths, Definitely pulp, and not highbrow, but pretty intense fun, This book makes up for volumeof the series, It's storyline is like a tragedy, and not everybody gets to live happily ever after, It's set during the Democratic Convention in Atlanta in ', where Senator Hartmann is trying to win the nomination against the far right candidate Reverend Barnett,

The chickens come home to roost, as the histories of all the biggest players in the series come barrelling down out of history and demand their due, while the aces and jokers desperately try to get the right candidate nominated.
Hartmann's secret slowly gets out, and as he rallies his forces the body count and the tears mount,

A gripping book that reads almost like a political thriller, this may be the best of the series, As per usual, I started out very skeptical towards this book, Even now, after the heartwrenching finalpages, there are plotpoints that I look back on and wince, But that is only to be expected, I suppose, when the concept of the book is that seven or eight of the series's most unstable and volatile characters have gathered at a conference that will decide the future of the United States.
And hey when the only character with something even remotely resembling a functional moral compass is the triggerhappy, undead assassin, it says something about where the others are at.


That being said, this book is cleverly stitched together, overcoming the usual awkwardness that the Wild Cards mosaic novels present, The characters are all wellwritten, and incredibly twisted to a man, And even if Tachyon's Strange relationship with Blythe's daughter, and his apparent inability to talk to Jack and stop the unfolding madness was irritating, it was hardly out of character, And the same is true for the others, Because there are no good people in Wild Cards, They're all messed up, complex, morally gray products of the twisted, callous society that grew in the wake of the Wild Cars virus, And that's reflected in their character arcs as well as in this story,

The high point of Ace in the Hole is, as the title suggests, the way it explores the character of Gregg Hartmann, Puppetman has been around since the very first book, but in the previous volumes, he's been working from the sidelines, and we've only gotten small hints of his deceptive, manipulative influence spreading across the nation.
His story reaches what I assume to be its climax in this novel, and it doesn't disappoint, For a while it seemed as if his character might get lost among the other prominent players present in the story, but his arc reached a beautiful, fitting conclusion at the end of it all, even if the implication that a US presidential candidate might face actual consequences if his crimes were made public is almost laughable in.


As did that of the Four Aces, which is impressive, considering that at least half of them have been dead for a good couple of decades.
The irrevocably splintered group is brought back together, after a fashion, in the novel's final pages, and its every bit the heartbreaking, raw, real ending that their story deserves.
That's not to say that the individual member's stories are done though: as the novel's very last line states, as a fitting conclusion to a wonderful story "The elevator, with its cargo of ghosts and survivors, continued its lunge for the sky.
".