Busted Flush- A Wildcards Novel, edited by George R. R. Martin

It has been over 60 years since Doctor Tachyon crash-landed on Earth, bringing with him Xenovirus Takhisis 1A, also known as the Wild Card Virus. This virus had three major outcomes- you could die (Draw a Black Queen), be physically mutated in a horrible fashion (Draw a Joker) or gain spectacular powers (Draw an Ace). Later, Aces with negligible or fairly useless powers were called "Deuces", but too many people had died or been mutated for people to feel comfortable with the people exposed to the virus.

Aces quickly rose to the status of Superheroes, and were responsible for many good acts that helped people and saved lives. But now, many of the heroes work for their respective Governments. One such group is the committee, which boasts a wide assortment of powers, many of them recruited from a long-running reality TV program. The Comittee was begun by a hero named John Fortune, fated to be the next incarnation of the God Ra, but when he was cured of the Wild Card Virus by his father, he lost his Ace Powers. Now, only the presence of a magical scarab gives him any powers at all. The scarab was meant to bond with him and increase his powers, but the intelligent scarab feels cheated of her destiny.

As the members of the Committee head out around the world to deal with brushfire wars, they are opposed by Aces working for other powers, including the Former Cap'n Trips, now somehow permanently become one of his personas, the Revolutionary, a Marxist Hero. But he is no longer the Icon of Peace and Righteousness he once was, and his Peace Medallion no longer works, a sign of how Meadows lost his way. Increasingly violent and ruthless, he seems to have gone mad, and his former Alter Ego, Mark Meadows, now seems to be trapped in his psyche. The only way we can tell that he is still Meadows is that he still loves (in a parental way) Sprout, his 30-year old, but mentally four year old daughter. A thoroughgoing Marxist, he now beats up the armies of the opposition and democracy.

One group of the Committee meets with him, but they are completely turned off by his attitude and the way he wages war on normal soldiers. Meanwhile, in the US, a new ace arises, a 13 year-old boy named Drake who explodes with the power of a nuclear explosion, but not the radiation. He is collected by the military and taken to a secret base to be evaluated.

There, he meets the Joker known as Niobe. Niobe has a power of her own: after having intercourse with anyone male, she gives birth to eggs that become homonculi children, with all of her children being an Ace, Joker or Deuce. However, they only last a few weeks. Niobe is being asked/forced to bear children in the hopes that they will live longer. But when she finds out that they intend to force her to bear hundreds of children in hopes of using them as disposable war troops, she decides to break out of the BICC facility, and take Drake with her.

The breakout not only releases Niobe and Drake, but some of the more dangerous residents of the facility, such as the Racist, and Sharky, a man with the appetite, teeth and digestive system of a Great White Shark. But as Niobe and Drake flee across America, can Drake keep in his explosive ability, or will this chubby kid take out America with one temper tantrum?

Not a bad story, although since it's a mosaic novel, each chapter is written by different writers. So in a book with, say, 50 chapters, you might have 10-12 written about each major character or group of characters (because some chapters are written for groups of characters.

It's interesting to see how the Wild Cards Universe has changed, going from a "Gee, Wow, Superheroes!" type story to one which is much more gray, gritty and mired in the politics of the modern day. Even reality shows make an appearance in the story, and indeed, some of the Aces in the Comittee were recruited from Reality TV.

Gone, though, are the focus on the struggles between Jokers and Aces, and now the story is about Politics and the use of Aces as tools against governments and homegrown problems. It has a very modernistic feel to it, but I found it less interesting than the earlier stories. With the graying of the worldview, so have the characters of the heroes, and some of them you cannot tell who is a hero and who is a villain any more, which I found rather sad.

This is an okay novel if you are familliar with the Wildcards series, and more importantly, the new, more modern Wildcards series. But I can't suggest it as your first visit to the Wildcards Universe, and I found the story only intermittently interesting. Not bad, but not all that good, either.