What do you think?
Rate this book
Wild Cards #15
Black Trump
Finally flushed into the open by the heroism of a joker and an uninfected lady reporter, the Card Shark conspiracy faces destruction. But a cornered animal is a dangerous animal, and the Sharks still have one final card to play: the Black Trump. The ultimate biological weapon. The Black Trump simply kills all those with the wild card virus written into their genes, joker or ace -and its success rate is one hundred percent. In New York's teeming Jokertown, in the Joker's Quarter of old Jerusalem, in the Free People's State of Vietnam where the ace Mark Meadows rules in a sixties vision of love and peace, the bombs are ticking...and time is running out.
538 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1995
12 people are currently reading
1196 people want to read
About the author
George R.R. Martin
1,504 books120k followersGeorge Raymond Richard "R.R." Martin was born September 20, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey. His father was Raymond Collins Martin, a longshoreman, and his mother was Margaret Brady Martin. He has two sisters, Darleen Martin Lapinski and Janet Martin Patten.
Martin attended Mary Jane Donohoe School and Marist High School. He began writing very young, selling monster stories to other neighborhood children for pennies, dramatic readings included. Later he became a comic book fan and collector in high school, and began to write fiction for comic fanzines (amateur fan magazines). Martin's first professional sale was made in 1970 at age 21: The Hero, sold to Galaxy, published in February, 1971 issue. Other sales followed.
In 1970 Martin received a B.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, graduating summa cum laude. He went on to complete a M.S. in Journalism in 1971, also from Northwestern.
As a conscientious objector, Martin did alternative service 1972-1974 with VISTA, attached to Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation. He also directed chess tournaments for the Continental Chess Association from 1973-1976, and was a Journalism instructor at Clarke College, Dubuque, Iowa, from 1976-1978. He wrote part-time throughout the 1970s while working as a VISTA Volunteer, chess director, and teacher.
In 1975 he married Gale Burnick. They divorced in 1979, with no children. Martin became a full-time writer in 1979. He was writer-in-residence at Clarke College from 1978-79.
Moving on to Hollywood, Martin signed on as a story editor for Twilight Zone at CBS Television in 1986. In 1987 Martin became an Executive Story Consultant for Beauty and the Beast at CBS. In 1988 he became a Producer for Beauty and the Beast, then in 1989 moved up to Co-Supervising Producer. He was Executive Producer for Doorways, a pilot which he wrote for Columbia Pictures Television, which was filmed during 1992-93.
Martin's present home is Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (he was South-Central Regional Director 1977-1979, and Vice President 1996-1998), and of Writers' Guild of America, West.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/george...
Martin attended Mary Jane Donohoe School and Marist High School. He began writing very young, selling monster stories to other neighborhood children for pennies, dramatic readings included. Later he became a comic book fan and collector in high school, and began to write fiction for comic fanzines (amateur fan magazines). Martin's first professional sale was made in 1970 at age 21: The Hero, sold to Galaxy, published in February, 1971 issue. Other sales followed.
In 1970 Martin received a B.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, graduating summa cum laude. He went on to complete a M.S. in Journalism in 1971, also from Northwestern.
As a conscientious objector, Martin did alternative service 1972-1974 with VISTA, attached to Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation. He also directed chess tournaments for the Continental Chess Association from 1973-1976, and was a Journalism instructor at Clarke College, Dubuque, Iowa, from 1976-1978. He wrote part-time throughout the 1970s while working as a VISTA Volunteer, chess director, and teacher.
In 1975 he married Gale Burnick. They divorced in 1979, with no children. Martin became a full-time writer in 1979. He was writer-in-residence at Clarke College from 1978-79.
Moving on to Hollywood, Martin signed on as a story editor for Twilight Zone at CBS Television in 1986. In 1987 Martin became an Executive Story Consultant for Beauty and the Beast at CBS. In 1988 he became a Producer for Beauty and the Beast, then in 1989 moved up to Co-Supervising Producer. He was Executive Producer for Doorways, a pilot which he wrote for Columbia Pictures Television, which was filmed during 1992-93.
Martin's present home is Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (he was South-Central Regional Director 1977-1979, and Vice President 1996-1998), and of Writers' Guild of America, West.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/george...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 7, 2018
The end of the original Wild Cards sequence from the '80s and '90s is genuinely a nice conclusion to the original run. To start with, it closes out the Card Sharks. It slightly lazily plays the MacGuffin game by splitting the Black Trump in three, but that gives our various main characters each an opportunity to shine and even some checkpoints on the route to the end.
Black Trump also provides a great capstone for the stories of both Mark Meadows and Gregg Hartmann. We close out plots that date back to the first Wild Card book offering some great finality (and another reason that this is a great end for the original sequence).
As for our other heroes: Jay is great, as always, and gets some nice globe-spanning adventures. Zoe never caught my interest, and her story gets kind of anti-climaxes at the end. And finally, Billy Ray gets a chance to be himself and a hero.
Despite my not loving the Zoe parts of this plot, it's overall a strong book, and if this had been the final Wild Card book (as it was for five years), that would have been fine.
Black Trump also provides a great capstone for the stories of both Mark Meadows and Gregg Hartmann. We close out plots that date back to the first Wild Card book offering some great finality (and another reason that this is a great end for the original sequence).
As for our other heroes: Jay is great, as always, and gets some nice globe-spanning adventures. Zoe never caught my interest, and her story gets kind of anti-climaxes at the end. And finally, Billy Ray gets a chance to be himself and a hero.
Despite my not loving the Zoe parts of this plot, it's overall a strong book, and if this had been the final Wild Card book (as it was for five years), that would have been fine.
February 1, 2026
2.5 stars
On paper, this WILD CARDS book (and the trilogy it concludes) should be one of my favorites. So many of my absolute favorite characters, some of them dating back to the very earliest stories, are placed front and center, in this breakneck race to save the wild carders (and, as it turns out, everyone else as well) from perhaps the most sinister evil they have faced to date.
But not even Gregg Hartmann, not even Jay Ackroyd, not even Billy Ray, not even the one and only Croyd Crenson himself, can save this thought experiment that should have ended with CARD SHARKS.
It’s jumbled, it’s messy, it’s full of loose ends that lead nowhere, and almost all the characters (again, some of this series’s very best) inexplicably either get stuck rehashing the same tired character beat over and over again (Gregg) or simply show up, kick ass, and don’t develop in any meaningful way whatsoever (Jay). In fact, the only character that has even the semblance of an arc in BLACK TRUMP is Carnifex, although it largely boils down to him (painstakingly) coming to the realization that perhaps punching first and asking questions later will not quite cut it when everyone in his life (boss, love interest, president of the United States) is revealed to belong to a global elite of genocidal maniacs.
But, credit where credit is due, Billy Ray is the star of this book, and he’s the only character who consistently brings both solid character writing/exploration and interesting plot points to the table.
But even Ray’s storyline feels more like a wacky B-plot than the true core of this story, which, unfortunately, is also true for all the others. It takes up until the 80% mark, and even that’s generous, before anything the characters do starts to feel like it has any real narrative weight. They are all just on their own personal journeys, traveling the world, doing whatever strikes their fancy at any given moment, and it culminates in a half-baked story that has not decided, at all, on what it’s trying to say. You know it’s bad when the most interesting things happening are the references to other, absent, characters.
But it is still WILD CARDS. It’s still outrageous, still funny, still an insanely well-crafted world that feels gritty and real even when the stories taking place in it are not. And there is an undercurrent through it all that keeps me hooked, now as ever, with the tantalizing hope that some day we’ll get more than just snippets of one of the most fascinating conflicts/worlds/concepts I’ve ever encountered in fiction.
BLACK TRUMP, though, was not that day.
But it was, like always, an absolute delight (except when it wasn’t) to read.
“Maybe it’s just because of the Fists, but I have the feeling that the violence is never quite buried here, that if you just scratch the surface of the city, it’ll all come leaping out.”
Gregg smiled. “I think you’re right,” he said.
On paper, this WILD CARDS book (and the trilogy it concludes) should be one of my favorites. So many of my absolute favorite characters, some of them dating back to the very earliest stories, are placed front and center, in this breakneck race to save the wild carders (and, as it turns out, everyone else as well) from perhaps the most sinister evil they have faced to date.
But not even Gregg Hartmann, not even Jay Ackroyd, not even Billy Ray, not even the one and only Croyd Crenson himself, can save this thought experiment that should have ended with CARD SHARKS.
“If you don’t like action movies,” J. Bob said serenely, “you’re really going to hate this.”
It’s jumbled, it’s messy, it’s full of loose ends that lead nowhere, and almost all the characters (again, some of this series’s very best) inexplicably either get stuck rehashing the same tired character beat over and over again (Gregg) or simply show up, kick ass, and don’t develop in any meaningful way whatsoever (Jay). In fact, the only character that has even the semblance of an arc in BLACK TRUMP is Carnifex, although it largely boils down to him (painstakingly) coming to the realization that perhaps punching first and asking questions later will not quite cut it when everyone in his life (boss, love interest, president of the United States) is revealed to belong to a global elite of genocidal maniacs.
“I’ve never seen anyone who could fight like you.”
Ray looked at him a moment. “I was born with it, kid. That’s all. Some people are, some aren’t. I just was.”
But, credit where credit is due, Billy Ray is the star of this book, and he’s the only character who consistently brings both solid character writing/exploration and interesting plot points to the table.
“I can forgive you for trying to kill me. What the hell, I’ll bet a lot of people would like to have the guts to try it themselves. Maybe I can even forgive you for being a Shark and doing what you did to all those innocent people. I don’t know. But my forgiveness is sort of beside the point. There’s a lot of people you have to answer to, April. And you’re going to.”
But even Ray’s storyline feels more like a wacky B-plot than the true core of this story, which, unfortunately, is also true for all the others. It takes up until the 80% mark, and even that’s generous, before anything the characters do starts to feel like it has any real narrative weight. They are all just on their own personal journeys, traveling the world, doing whatever strikes their fancy at any given moment, and it culminates in a half-baked story that has not decided, at all, on what it’s trying to say. You know it’s bad when the most interesting things happening are the references to other, absent, characters.
“After seven generations, the only wild cards left will be the ones isolated from the rest of humanity. Out on the mountaintops and stuff.” Like Fortunato. Can he avenge us? Will he bother?
But it is still WILD CARDS. It’s still outrageous, still funny, still an insanely well-crafted world that feels gritty and real even when the stories taking place in it are not. And there is an undercurrent through it all that keeps me hooked, now as ever, with the tantalizing hope that some day we’ll get more than just snippets of one of the most fascinating conflicts/worlds/concepts I’ve ever encountered in fiction.
“The Rox is gone,” Gregg told him.
“Yep, that’s what they say. The question’s still there, though.”
BLACK TRUMP, though, was not that day.
“Call me paranoid, but I think the best policy right now is we trust nobody except other wild cards, and I’m not so thrilled about them.”
But it was, like always, an absolute delight (except when it wasn’t) to read.
“We can’t die yet,” Jay said. “We haven’t seen The Jolson Story.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 22, 2016
A very dramatic wrapup to this cycle. Odd to read the conclusion twenty years after the first two-thirds (Also weird that it commands such a high price on the used book market. It's a good read, but not worthy of a forty-something dollar price tag. Happy I found it on Craigslist at a reasonable price).
January 7, 2014
This cycle is by far my favorite of the series thus far. And this third book of the 'Card Shark' trilogy is amazing. There are no boring parts, no characters you want to stop visiting to get back to others. And, I have to say, Jay Ackroyd has become my favorite ace.
July 23, 2021
The global Card Sharks conspiracy has been exposed… Key conspirators have been killed, captured, or are being hunted by SCARE… Most of the Black Trump virus cultures have been destroyed…
However, a few savvy Card Sharks are still alive, on the lam, with just enough virus to possibly trigger a devastating outbreak that will kill every Wild Carder on the planet… And the jokers who know about the Card Sharks are being rounded up by the US government and jailed on Governor's Island in the name of preventing a public panic…
Zoe Harris is recruited by the pro-Joker terrorist Black Dog (in his first appearance since Aces Abroad) to steal a nuclear bomb. If Nur al-Allah releases his strain of Black Trump in Syria, then the Twisted Fists will blow up the Dome on the Rock in Jerusalem…
Gregg Hartmann and Hannah Davis chase Pan Rudo to Ireland and seek the assistance of 119-year old ace Sir Winston Churchill, whom the wild card virus has gifted with long life. Unfortunately, Carnifex is hot on their trail…
Popinjay, Finn, and Mr. Nobody fail to spring Clara van Renssaeler from prison, so they jet off to Australia for the next best target, her father...
Mark Meadows and his daughter are abducted in Vietnam and absconded by boat to Burma. Mark is forced to improve the Black Trump's efficacy, else the Card Sharks will kill Sprout in retribution….
I had a really difficult time getting into this book. It lacks the alt-history world-building of Card Sharks (except for the bits about Churchill). It is missing the gonzo craziness of "Feeding Frenzy" and "A Dose of Reality" from Marked Cards. A lot of the writing is just lazy. Characters jet off to exotic locations on the merest whim, then they invariably stumble across convenient clues and into key conflicts.
The new jokers are uninspired: an Irish terrorist transforms into a green leprechaun; a pub owner transforms into the literal tables and chairs in his establishment (so he can pinch girls' bottoms); a boy who looks like Peter Pan has a cadre of spying Tinkerbells (which he swats like flies when he gets frustrated).
The book is riddled with mistakes. Some are silly (how does Finn the centaur ride in the back seat of a minivan?), some are continuity gaffes (Hannah Davis is depicted as being in two places at the same time), some are contrived plot devices (The bad guys go to great lengths to kidnap Mark Meadows for his scientific expertise, which makes little sense because he is a chemist not a virologist) and some are implausible coincidences (two strains of the Black Trump virus in Syria and Burma mutate in exactly the same manner at the same time).
One plot point really rankles: Hartmann's Puppetman powers return in his new joker body even though it was established in the Jumper trilogy that ace abilities follow the physical body, not the consciousness. I was perfectly happy with how Puppetman's arc was resolved in Ace in the Hole. Bringing him back felt like a bad sequel idea. The writers wanted to give Hartmann a redemption arc. For the only time in his life, he suppresses his Puppetman urges long enough to prevent Jerusalem from being nuked. However, even this part of the story is bound up with silly logic. Quasiman shows up with a single canister of vaccine after the Black Trump outbreak has already occurred. Within hours, the UN somehow manages to mass produce enough of it to start inoculating millions of citizens, thus making total destruction of the city unnecessary and paving the way for Hartmann's final sacrifice.
The story improves somewhat in the back half. The scenes in Westminster Abbey are particularly fun. The long-awaited resurrection of Radical does not disappoint. Even so, this is an overall disappointing end to an otherwise strong triad.
At this end of this book, Zoe is embittered and plans to kill the aces who did not help fight the Card Sharks, including Golden Boy and Turtle. We'll see if anything comes of this in the future volumes…
The publisher Baen Books dropped the Wild Card series after this volume, and to date none of the volumes in this triad have been reprinted.
Next up: Deuces Down
However, a few savvy Card Sharks are still alive, on the lam, with just enough virus to possibly trigger a devastating outbreak that will kill every Wild Carder on the planet… And the jokers who know about the Card Sharks are being rounded up by the US government and jailed on Governor's Island in the name of preventing a public panic…
Zoe Harris is recruited by the pro-Joker terrorist Black Dog (in his first appearance since Aces Abroad) to steal a nuclear bomb. If Nur al-Allah releases his strain of Black Trump in Syria, then the Twisted Fists will blow up the Dome on the Rock in Jerusalem…
Gregg Hartmann and Hannah Davis chase Pan Rudo to Ireland and seek the assistance of 119-year old ace Sir Winston Churchill, whom the wild card virus has gifted with long life. Unfortunately, Carnifex is hot on their trail…
Popinjay, Finn, and Mr. Nobody fail to spring Clara van Renssaeler from prison, so they jet off to Australia for the next best target, her father...
Mark Meadows and his daughter are abducted in Vietnam and absconded by boat to Burma. Mark is forced to improve the Black Trump's efficacy, else the Card Sharks will kill Sprout in retribution….
I had a really difficult time getting into this book. It lacks the alt-history world-building of Card Sharks (except for the bits about Churchill). It is missing the gonzo craziness of "Feeding Frenzy" and "A Dose of Reality" from Marked Cards. A lot of the writing is just lazy. Characters jet off to exotic locations on the merest whim, then they invariably stumble across convenient clues and into key conflicts.
The new jokers are uninspired: an Irish terrorist transforms into a green leprechaun; a pub owner transforms into the literal tables and chairs in his establishment (so he can pinch girls' bottoms); a boy who looks like Peter Pan has a cadre of spying Tinkerbells (which he swats like flies when he gets frustrated).
The book is riddled with mistakes. Some are silly (how does Finn the centaur ride in the back seat of a minivan?), some are continuity gaffes (Hannah Davis is depicted as being in two places at the same time), some are contrived plot devices (The bad guys go to great lengths to kidnap Mark Meadows for his scientific expertise, which makes little sense because he is a chemist not a virologist) and some are implausible coincidences (two strains of the Black Trump virus in Syria and Burma mutate in exactly the same manner at the same time).
One plot point really rankles: Hartmann's Puppetman powers return in his new joker body even though it was established in the Jumper trilogy that ace abilities follow the physical body, not the consciousness. I was perfectly happy with how Puppetman's arc was resolved in Ace in the Hole. Bringing him back felt like a bad sequel idea. The writers wanted to give Hartmann a redemption arc. For the only time in his life, he suppresses his Puppetman urges long enough to prevent Jerusalem from being nuked. However, even this part of the story is bound up with silly logic. Quasiman shows up with a single canister of vaccine after the Black Trump outbreak has already occurred. Within hours, the UN somehow manages to mass produce enough of it to start inoculating millions of citizens, thus making total destruction of the city unnecessary and paving the way for Hartmann's final sacrifice.
The story improves somewhat in the back half. The scenes in Westminster Abbey are particularly fun. The long-awaited resurrection of Radical does not disappoint. Even so, this is an overall disappointing end to an otherwise strong triad.
At this end of this book, Zoe is embittered and plans to kill the aces who did not help fight the Card Sharks, including Golden Boy and Turtle. We'll see if anything comes of this in the future volumes…
The publisher Baen Books dropped the Wild Card series after this volume, and to date none of the volumes in this triad have been reprinted.
Next up: Deuces Down
January 23, 2023
OK. Nice finish to the current trilogy.
Still confused about the Greg Hartmann situation:
Still confused about the Greg Hartmann situation:
March 16, 2018
Wow. 13, 14 and 15 tell one hell of a thriller! And yes, of course, the good guys triumph, but it never felt forgone, nor is it certain who will or won't survive. Some long-standing characters end here, but I won't spoil it.
If you like the Wild Cards stories, you need to read these.
If you like the Wild Cards stories, you need to read these.
February 20, 2024
Jumping further ahead and in the middle of an arc and still not lost. That’s a hallmark of a good book in a series! Ackroyd and Croyd front and center with an actual redemption for Hartmann! One heck of a finale!
February 21, 2026
I loved the first two books of this trilogy, but this didn't stick the landing for me. Mainly because most of the stuff in Jerusalem was flat. You can't pay me enough to give a shit about Zoe. She even made a lot of the Croyd chapters drag, and he's one of my favorite characters!
December 27, 2021
A brilliant end to this trilogy
January 29, 2026
It has a 4 star ending, but it takes way too long to get there.
May 17, 2015
This fifteenth Wild Cards book was the third (and last) that Baen published. It brings excellent closure to the Card Sharks trilogy, and is one of the best of the whole series. It has a clever count-down chapter numbering sequence, and the sections are all well put together, especially those featuring Stephen Leigh's and Victor Milan's characters. Barclay Shaw contributed another lovely cover, too.
August 31, 2014
A nice tight cohesive narrative with plenty of drive.
October 20, 2016
Best of the series so far....
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews