George RR Martin (Ed) and others: Mississippi Roll - A Wild Cards Book

[jacey]

I hadn’t read any Wild Cards books before, but the blurb on this said it was a good jumping in point for new readers, so here goes. It’s the story of Mississippi riverboat, the Natchez in the not too far distant future, but a future in which humanity has been changed forever by a plague which either kills or turns the survivors into Wild cards – jokers or aces. Each affliction might be different. Aces tend to be the ones with superpowers whereas jokers might have not much in the way of talent, but a fox’s ears and tail or maybe half of them has turned into a fish. You get the idea. Edited by George RR Martin, the writers are Stephen Leigh, David D. Levine, John Jos. Miller, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Cherie Priest, and Carrie Vaughn. Each writer takes a a particular character and sees them through their part in the story. So… the story. The central characters in this ensemble piece are Steam Wilbur, the ghost of the builder and forst captain of the Natchez, and the Natchez herself. Steaming up the river with an illicit cargo of illegal joker immigrants, followed by a vindictive immigration officer and the Natchez’s current owner whose stated intent is to anchor her in port and strip out her boilers, turning he into a casino, but in reality has much darker plans. Without the boat’s steam, Steam Wilbur loses any means of acting upon the world (and he can’t leave the boat). So this is the story of how the ensemble cast fights a triple threat to Wilbur, the boar and the immigrants. I thoroughly enjoyed this and now I can’t decide whether to wait for the next one or whether to go back and start reading from the beginning.