Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

Gallery/Saga Press, 320 pages, $16.99 (c2012)

Chuck Wendig never met an ordinary sentence he couldn’t torture.Which is also what he does to his characters. It’s a thing. There’s no doubt Chuck Wendig could write a story with sentences that don’t plead for release with every word. He is in fact one heck of a writer. But the gore and violence in this book is not for everyone. Not that Chuck Wendig wrote it for general acceptance and acclaim. Also, why use one word when one word and a curse word will do. Chuck Wendig knew what he was doing when he wrote “Blackbirds.”

Chuck Wendig’s protagonist has put the “agony” in protagonyst. Even the name, Miriam Black, sets Chuck Wendig’s readers up for the fall. Miriam sees into the void. She can “see” how people die just by touching them. This “talent” has ruined Miriam’s life. She does not want to be the keeper of the universe’s ultimate secret. So she runs and cons and conspires and uses and runs some more. What she is running from she cannot lose, because, of course, the power is in her. There really is no explanation of the power. God does not descend and bless/curse her. As far as Miriam is concerned, this is one effing useless power.

Miriam hitches rides as she runs away. Sometimes she is there at the moment of someone’s death. Then she robs the body. Hey, a girl has got to eat. But she herself does not commit murder. Eventually, however, she finds she may be the catalyst that causes the deaths of people. Oops. Even though she has practiced the fine art of not giving a shit, there comes a time when perhaps she might want to consider another course of action.

As you might expect, there are drugs, guns, villains, dead bodies, innocent victims, torture, copious amounts of blood, segregated body parts. “Blackbirds” is the first of the so-far six books in the Miriam Black series. (I guess “spoiler alert” for the fact that Miriam survives her first adventure.) This series was designed for a cult following.

P.S. Both Chuck and Nick of MBTB loved this book.