Suicide Kings (Wild Cards, #20)

The conclusion of the “trilogy” of books that began with Inside Straight, this follows the usual format of merging all the remaining plotlines into a single cohesive novel, rather than a set of interlinked short stories. As is also often the case, it's the best of the three.

Here, the focus is on child soldiers in Congo, and on the Committee and its allies uncovering a monstrous crime against humanity in the region. In the grander scheme of things, it's the final showdown with the Radical, which has been brewing for some time now. Of course, anyone who's been reading the series since the beginning knows exactly who and what the Radical really is, although at times the book seems to toy with the notion that you might have come in late (say, after George R.R. Martin became famous) and still be uncovering the mystery along with the characters. To be fair, it probably works equally well either way.

While Martin presumably had little to do with the book apart from writing the afterword (he seems to be busy with something else these days), elements of his style are still apparent. Some fairly nasty things happen, often to decent people, and not everyone makes it out alive. The Wild Cards are often weaker when they move out of America, but in this instance, that's not really the case - although I can't rule out the possibility that it's just that I don't know Africa as well as I know, say, Britain.

The brutality of the background, with its child soldiers and mass graves, offsets the superheroics, but it's the characters that shine the most. We have the love story between Rustbelt and Gardener, as they travel into their own “heart of darkness”, including some of the most tense parts of the novel. There's the messed up relationship between Bugsy and Cameo/Simoon/Nick, and Noel's “one last job” - although the latter perhaps takes a little bit too long to get going. Hoodoo Mama also returns from the previous novel, memorably speaking in almost nothing but swearwords, yet nonetheless getting some depth as the sheer amount of death around begins to overwhelm even her. Plus, of course, the Amazing Bubbles, and the Radical, whose grip on sanity is slowly slipping as the story progresses.

All in all, I really enjoyed this, and, if it isn't quite perfect, it's close enough for five stars.