Publisher's Weekly Review
In the upbeat 26th installment (after Mississippi Roll) of the anthology series exploring an alternate history where an alien virus accidentally released in 1946 transforms its survivors into supervillainous jokers, superheroic aces, or a combination thereof, eight authors introduce a new wrinkle: time travel. An accident during a high-stakes poker game leaves many of its participants-including shape-shifting assassin Lilith, half-tiger bodyguard Khan, and power-mimicking Abigail-stranded in various moments in Chicago's past. It's up to the immortal John Nighthawk and the fan-favorite Sleeper-currently capable of temporal manipulation-to rescue them before history is irrevocably altered. Every chapter is solidly entertaining; standouts include Saladin Ahmed's "Meathooks on Ice," Christopher Rowe's "The Apotheosis of Todd Taszycki," and Mary Anne Mohanraj's "A Beautiful Facade," all of which allow their protagonists plenty of room for growth and change. Longtime fans will enjoy surprise appearances by previous notables, sometimes in drastically altered circumstances, and this entry also works well as a standalone. It's a treat for any fan of superhero stories. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A genre-hopping, time-jumping, crowd-pleasing chain novel under the curation of old master Martin, he of Game of Thrones fame.Low Chicago is a card game, but it's also a fine description of the demimonde-haunting characters who turn up at the Palmer House at the beginning of this octoauthorial extravaganza. One is John Nighthawk, "a smallish black man in a dark pin-striped suit with a discreet kidskin glove on his left hand." A discreet glove? Well, roll with it. Nighthawk, who's spent time on the road and time in the big city, has had unusual powers since 1946. Others gathered around the card table include an actor who starred alongside John Wayne and a gigantic mutant half of whom is "an anthropomorphic version of a Bengal tiger." You'd think that someone with such distinctive markings would call attention to himself in the Loop, but when said someone is under the aegis of a gangster named Giovanni Galante and a moll named Cynder, "an ace with a potent flame-wielding ability," people tend to look the other way. When the story gets into time travel in earnest, it's sometimes a little hard to keep track of where we are and why we're there with, say, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy at one minute or, at another, a fellow bent on rubbing out a teenage Galante before Galante himself kills for the first time ("Mob guys got some kind of fucked-up ritual where you kill somebody when you turn sixteen?"). Indeed, the characters themselves don't seem to know themselves, as when said half-tiger finds himself wondering "whether to answer sixteen years ago or in seventy-two years" when asked when he acquired his curious appearance. Not all the pieces hang together, and some are better than others, but the authors do a respectable job overall of tangling with the ineffable.Is it sci-fi? A viral thriller? Yes and no, and while not for every taste, a pleasure for the experimentally minded. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The Wild Cards universe, in which an alien virus created the superpowered aces and the physically mutated jokers alike, is no stranger to bizarre and astounding phenomena. At a Chicago poker game stacked with powerful aces, one attendee's unpredictable powers fling the players haphazardly through time, along with their bodyguards and anyone in the crossfire. Now, the immortal John Nighthawk and Croyd Crenson, the ever-changing Sleeper, must find and retrieve the scattered players, some of whom are more willing to return than others. Bringing together a strong group of authors, ranging from long-time Wild Cards contributors Melinda Snodgrass, Kevin Andrew Murphy, and John Jos. Miller to fresh recruits Saladin Ahmed and Mary Anne Mohanraj, Low Chicago weaves a story that travels from the neat present to the troubled 1968 Democratic convention to 1920s gangland and even Chicago's prehistoric past. The twenty-fifth Wild Cards novel should not only satisfy long-time fans of the series but also provide newcomers to it an engaging and exciting entry into its world.--Keep, Alan Copyright 2010 Booklist
