Rather than the collection of short stories found in Wild Cards and Aces High, Jokers Wild is instead a mosaic novel, with the storylines all mixed into a single novel length story, with less clear distinction between the characters and their storylines.

I’m … not thrilled with it.

In the previous case, if you didn’t like a particularly story, it wasn’t long before you moved on to something completely different. Here, it just keeps coming back again and again. Particularly when Jokers Wild primarily deals with Fortunato/Astronomer and the Egyptian Masons, which I’ve mentioned before wasn’t my favorite plotline.

Really, there wasn’t much that I cared overmuch about in this book. Seeing Bagabond’s dealings with the animal and human worlds was interesting enough. Wraith remains a ridiculous character (a cat burglar who can phase through walls–but only when nearly naked), but her story was fairly interesting. And Hiram Worchester has a lot of potential. So there’s something going for it.

Still. I’m hoping for more in Aces Abroad.