I had heard that the books in the Wild Cards series work as stand-alone stories, hence the decision to start at number 21 (the first one I happened to stumble across in a charity shop). That definitely seems to be true; I found I didn't need any background knowledge about the series that wasn't supplied in the blurb. I get the impression that some of the characters must have appeared in previous books - something about how they're referred to makes me think they're not jut established people in the city, but established characters in the universe. Past events are referenced in a way that makes me think long-time readers will recall reading about them first-hand.

The book itself had some great points and some issues. I loved the idea of it - a novel constructed out of multiple authors work is an intriguing idea, and it has some advantages. When you follow different characters doing different things, the whole atmosphere changes entirely. There was also a lot of creativity on show, not just with the character's appearances and characters, but in how they interact with their world.

The problems I found were that some writer's styles suited me better than others, and switching between them within the same story made that stand out. Also, while there was some really creative ideas in the book, there were also a few cliches, and not cliches used for effect, or built upon - just cliches for the sake of it. Perhaps this is the downside to multiple people working on the same story: some elements get boiled down to the lowest common denominator.

I will pick up other Wild Cards books as and when I see them, because I enjoyed this one enough to be curious. I'm not about to go and order books 1-20 straight away though.