Blackbirds

Beyond the stunning beautiful cover art...the story started out great, but has a major flaw in the main character. Without giving too much away, would Miriam REALLY stay with such an absolute jerk? Even when threatened with what he did? I doubt it. If Miriam is really this femme-fatale-road-weary-general-badass, I seriously doubt she'd let anybody push her around. It felt like a cop-out on behalf of the author...like he couldn't figure out a more plausible motivation. Beyond that, I found Wendig's writing style enjoyable and the narrator was wonderful.

I have been following Chuck Wendig for a few years now, and I have come to enjoy his writing style immensely. The story of Blackbirds is dark, following the story of a troubled young woman who can see when you die, and can't do anything to change it. The writing is fluid, the characters are interesting, and the plot is riveting.

My only critique is that the main character sounds much like Chuck, or at least sounds like the voice he presents during interviews and on his blog. This is not a bad thing, per say; but, it distracted me from remembering that the character was in fact a troubled woman, and not the middle aged self proclaimed pen monkey that entertains almost daily.

I imagine Chuck Wendig's pre-writing chats with himself went something like this, "How can I create the hottest, most bad-ass chick and put her into a story? I want to write a lead character that I'd totally want to be with."

So, with a healthy dose of Chuck Palahniuk's overwritten gross-out style and a basic template for a main character that is essentially nothing more than a potty-mouthed Stieg Larsson protagonist, we get Blackbirds. And with it, Chuck Wendig's dullard dream date, Miriam Black.

Not that this is only frat boy fiction--Wendig knows the word "macadam," after all, and uses it three times. Yes, this novel has aspirations beyond just giving us a hollow shell of a female lead who does very little other than rob people and talk tough. It courageously takes us into a world of stereotypical secondary characters (nearly all of whom are mawkish and cut-and-pasted from someone's tired rogue's gallery) and even ventures into the taboo territory of sexual violence against women and short, stocky lesbians.

Blackbirds has it all--including a massive plot gaffe towards the end of the book where Miriam is touched by an assailant and should be able to read his/her death but does not.

The shear amount of profanity, and coming from someone from the Bronx, that's saying something. Sometimes the gore was a little excessive too.

Cut out some of the cursing. The sexual content was ok because it had a point, it showed the fulcrum in a relationship. If it hadn't been included, the dynamic of the relationships would have had less impact. As for the excessive gore, why use 20 words when 2 would be sufficient.

Not much, she did a pretty good job.

none, they were all necessary to the plot.

maybe I'm just not cut out for the horror genre, the only author I've been able to really tolerate is Stephen King. If you're a fan of gore and horror, this is a really good book.