Wild Cards III: Jokers Wild

By: George R.R. Martin

Narrated by: Pam Grier, Felicia Day, Stephen McHattie, Molly Quinn, Ron Donachie, Ray Porter, Prentice Onayemi

Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

Back in print after a decade is Wild Cards III: Jokers Wild, featuring fiction by George R. R. Martin, Roger Zelazny, Walter Jon Williams, and others.

On September 15, 1946, the Wild Card virus was released, spreading a wave of mutations around the globe. "Aces" were endowed with extraordinary powers while "Jokers" were cursed with bizarre mental or physical disabilities. September 15th is now Wild Card Day. With each passing year, the festivities become larger and more fevered. And 1986 - the 40th anniversary - promises to be the biggest Wild Card Day ever.

But in New York City, not everyone is celebrating: The Astronomer, a twisted, powerful genius, has been planning his own special festivities for Wild Card Day...a day of revenge against those who have opposed him....

Narrator cast list:

• Felicia Day for "Bagabond"
• Ron Donachie for "Hiram Worchester"
• Pam Grier for "Roulette"
• Stephen McHattie for "Demise"
• Ray Porter for "Sewer Jack"
• Prentice Onayemi for "Fortunato"
• Molly Quinn for "Wraith"

©2014 George R. R. Martin (P)2016 Random House Audio

Not all narrators are up to it

It's tough for anyone to sound really great when there are chapters narrated by Ray Porter that keep reminding you what an excellent narrator sounds like. Some of the rest of pretty good but a few are just a bad match for this genre.

Not the same voice actor :/

Love these books and stories. Was disappointed to see a departure from our normal voice actor who was incredible. Now don’t get me wrong I love Jackie brown but I can’t stand listening to her. Other than her parts 5 stars.

Old but still good

The voice narration was excellent. I hope the readers enjoyed doing them as much as I did hearing them.

good book

Hard to follow 5 different voices storie got jumbled but good book all in all

An interesting take on the superhero genre

This universe is slightly to the left of ours and acknowledges the the cultural impact of actual superpowers on history. It also gives a distinct sense of the time it was written and the sense of New York. There are some graphic sex bits and tropes I could have done without, but nothing that prevents it from being a good time.

Great book but they brought crazy cat lady back.

I really hated that cat lady from the first book. I thought the trust would have quietly done away with the story line. She's about a third of this book. She reads like a cheap teen drama. I love this series so much, but I'm so afraid I'm going to get ambushed by more of this twilight bs. I read this series for the superhero space battles not to find out if some dirty, crazy, unemployed woman will be able to find love despite her angst. Nothing she does matters. Her violent outbursts are irrational yet read as if the author doesn't get how crazy the character sounds. Her Author's writing style is classless and ugly. It's as if Martin had found a true crazy person off the streets of NYC and let them write the segments. Afterwards he corrected for spelling and grammar, but that's it! He mixed it up in this incredible book so that his fans would have to stare right into it's eyes and let it fill them with all the angst and melodrama that created it.

Easier to follow then just one narrator

I will start with a comparison. In GoT, every character has an entire chapter and their names are announced at the beginning of the chapter. One narrator worked in this scenario.

In Wild Cards one and two however, characters are not announced. In audio book format: this fact can make it very hard to follow which character is being followed. I’d zone out for 15 seconds, and then when I focused again- the character that I thought I was following would be in an entirely different scenario (a different character). In this audiobook, however, the character was easy to discern due to the allocation with a narrator. I applaud it

Would have been better with Luke Daniels

I was a huge fan of Luke Daniels' narration in the first two books. His characterization was fantastic and I still heard Doctor Tachyon with his voice. He was just great and because of that I can't rate the performance higher than 2 stars.

While I normally hate audio books that have multiple readers I do have to say this was not the worst. Each character's perspective is read by a different narrator. Most of the time this works out until scenes overlap and you have Pam Greer's interpretation of Tachyon and Fortunato directly followed by Prince Onayemi's interpretation of those two characters, and even a third narrator near the end. I thought I was going to hate it but in the end it was okay. Prince Oanyemi and Felicia Day shine.

As for the story I really enjoyed it. It was interesting to have a number of overlapping plots across one day told from different perspectives. I can't imagine how GRRM kept everyone straight. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Though I'm debating if I'll just buy the next volumes just to read myself rather deal with another cast's version of the characters' voices.

Over Narrated

I, for one, don't like having multiple narrators in a book. It's tough to follow.

While I enjoyed this volume it was also probably the worst in the series so far. I feel like some of the charm has vanished from the books set farther back in history.

The first triad concludes. But still not the end.

The third installment of The Wild Cards series was another treat. The first major story arc has concluded and now players are being set in motion for the next go round. Although this Audiobook changed the Narrator from Luke Daniels to a Muilt Cast reading it was not as hard to enjoy the book as when narrator normally changes in a series, it helped add more depth to the series reading making it a true Mosaic Noval again as intended. Maybe Luke will be back in future reading's. The stories blended in and out and did not miss a beat. Keeping us wanting more and caring about these peoples lives. More mystery and intrigue await us as the Wild Card's Universe expands.