The long-running Wild Cards series began in 1987 with a comic-book-style premise: in 1946, an alien race releases a terrible virus onto the surface of the Earth. This Wild Card virus kills 90% of the people it infects. Nine percent of its victims mutate into horribly deformed creatures called Jokers. The other 1% gain superpowers; they're known as Aces.
Lowball, the 22nd book in the series (edited by Melinda M. Snodgrass and George R.R. Martin), is an entertaining novel made up of eight linked short stories that keep the action coming. The separate tales, all set in the same universe as earlier books, weave together to form the overarching plot of the novel: Jokers are going missing from New York and ending up on the other end of the globe, forced to fight one another in gladiatorial combat, a deranged spectacle put on for a wealthy elite of uninfected individuals (known as Nats). Newly promoted Detective Franny Black's story (written by Snodgrass) dovetails with that of his troubled new partner, Detective Michael Stevens, in Mary Anne Mohanraj's chapter. David Anthony Durham's snake-bodied gladiator Marcus tries to maintain his humanity, and government agent and former stuntman Jamal Norwood must find a way to rescue the missing Jokers in Michael Cassutt's contribution.
New readers and fans of the long-running series will both love the fast-paced plotting and the ever-expanding history of the Wild Card virus on this alternate Earth, where even the superheroes are human. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor