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wyrmdog's review against another edition
5.0
Some books entertain, some books enlighten, some books just disappoint. But there are some books that just kick dirt in your face and dare you to do something about it. They are rare jewels of shock and awe that do things other books seem loathe to even contemplate.
The only other authors I know that tread the same ground as Chuck Wendig's Miriam Black series are Tade Thompson, Mo Hayder, and to a far lesser extent, Stephen Hunt, authors who in the course of laying down their stories look at where they're going and though they can see the road cutting straight through the wilds ahead, dive out the car door and tumble into the thorns and the horror that lurks in the shadows of all our minds. How horrible could it be? Chuck et al. will show you.
Where Hayder harrows with relentless purpose and Hunt cooks with ALL the ingredients, Thompson and Wendig shake you and show you someone horrible and make you love them. Miriam Black is abusive, broken, crass, caustic, and self-destructive, given to grand gestures to define her goodness while all else elides every glimmer of hope into her awful character. Still we love her because those grand gestures ultimately matter to someone.
Mockingbird is unsentimental and makes sure that every act of altruism is accompanied by an act of emotional aggression or detachment. Wren exists to show Miriam at her best; Louis to show us that no matter the good she does, she is still a parasite.
I felt that Blackbirds was probably lightning in a bottle. Hayder's uneven success and Hunt's declining insanity serve to illustrate how hard it is to keep up the sort of genius that flows into every page of the Miriam Black series so far. I almost didn't pick this up, fearing for a creeping mundanity that would sap the joy right out of it. How happy I am to be wrong.
Mockingbird looks back at Blackbirds only when Louis on the page, and elsewise trudges onward to new, darker corners where lurk more nightmares and more hope. Leaning into the supernatural more heavily than its predecessor and going further and faster off the rails, Mockingbird is a horrifying good time.
The only other authors I know that tread the same ground as Chuck Wendig's Miriam Black series are Tade Thompson, Mo Hayder, and to a far lesser extent, Stephen Hunt, authors who in the course of laying down their stories look at where they're going and though they can see the road cutting straight through the wilds ahead, dive out the car door and tumble into the thorns and the horror that lurks in the shadows of all our minds. How horrible could it be? Chuck et al. will show you.
Where Hayder harrows with relentless purpose and Hunt cooks with ALL the ingredients, Thompson and Wendig shake you and show you someone horrible and make you love them. Miriam Black is abusive, broken, crass, caustic, and self-destructive, given to grand gestures to define her goodness while all else elides every glimmer of hope into her awful character. Still we love her because those grand gestures ultimately matter to someone.
Mockingbird is unsentimental and makes sure that every act of altruism is accompanied by an act of emotional aggression or detachment. Wren exists to show Miriam at her best; Louis to show us that no matter the good she does, she is still a parasite.
I felt that Blackbirds was probably lightning in a bottle. Hayder's uneven success and Hunt's declining insanity serve to illustrate how hard it is to keep up the sort of genius that flows into every page of the Miriam Black series so far. I almost didn't pick this up, fearing for a creeping mundanity that would sap the joy right out of it. How happy I am to be wrong.
Mockingbird looks back at Blackbirds only when Louis on the page, and elsewise trudges onward to new, darker corners where lurk more nightmares and more hope. Leaning into the supernatural more heavily than its predecessor and going further and faster off the rails, Mockingbird is a horrifying good time.
raven_morgan's review against another edition
5.0
I was a bit "eh" about the first book in the series - great concept, but it never quite hit the right spot for me for the first two thirds of the book. This one blew me away, and I read it in a day.
davecapp's review against another edition
5.0
Book 2 of Miriam Blacks saga is a high intensity roller coaster ride. This book is geared towards those who enjoy a female protagonist with a serious edge (to say the least), who takes whatever comes at her as a frontal assault. Miriam takes no prisoners, but in the world she's thrown into she really has no choice. A cross between horror and mystery, the only way these books could be even more compelling would be if Jack Reacher (Lee Childs) showed up to help her out.
marklpotter's review against another edition
3.0
I really love and hate Chuck Wendig! Miriam Black is one of my favorite characters and this is a great series. I love Chuck because he crafts well thought out stories, plot twists you don't see coming a hundred pages in advance, and does the gritty, reluctant, heroine trope like no other. He writes books like I like my bars, stinking of whiskey (or tequila in Miriam's case) and desperation.
However he does go a little over the top on the gritty aspect. I don't give a shit about the vulgarity, words don't shock me. I don't mind gore at all. But it seems that sometimes Chuck goes just a little too far in trying to show how bleak this world really is. It's a minor complaint to be honest but it's still there. This series is not for the faint of heart.
I'm a little sad about things played out with Louis but mostly because I saw it coming. It wasn't a plot twist, it wasn't a shock, but it was telegraphed and it wasn't how I wanted that to play out. I know that's what had to happen but I can still not like that it did.
Another thing I really love about Chuck Wendig is the way he writes magic. It doesn't permeate this world, although there is more in Mockingbird than in Blackbird, but it's still the main driver of the story. We learn more about how Miriam's gift works in this installment, although not much It's really well done. There's a mystery to it that I like and the trope of the main character not really understanding their power isn't done in a manner that makes it seem like a pure plot device.
Overall I've really enjoyed this series so far but it's a grueling read and Wendig doesn't pull any punches.
However he does go a little over the top on the gritty aspect. I don't give a shit about the vulgarity, words don't shock me. I don't mind gore at all. But it seems that sometimes Chuck goes just a little too far in trying to show how bleak this world really is. It's a minor complaint to be honest but it's still there. This series is not for the faint of heart.
I'm a little sad about things played out with Louis but mostly because I saw it coming. It wasn't a plot twist, it wasn't a shock, but it was telegraphed and it wasn't how I wanted that to play out. I know that's what had to happen but I can still not like that it did.
Another thing I really love about Chuck Wendig is the way he writes magic. It doesn't permeate this world, although there is more in Mockingbird than in Blackbird, but it's still the main driver of the story. We learn more about how Miriam's gift works in this installment, although not much It's really well done. There's a mystery to it that I like and the trope of the main character not really understanding their power isn't done in a manner that makes it seem like a pure plot device.
Overall I've really enjoyed this series so far but it's a grueling read and Wendig doesn't pull any punches.
joshgauthier's review against another edition
4.0
Dark, brutal, disturbing, yet achingly human and always with a glimmer of hope and goodness down amidst the muck and mire. The saga of Miriam Black begins to grow into something larger and far more mysterious than her own life on the fringes of society. Wendig crafts a powerhouse of a novel, and I feel like Miriam Black's story is really only just beginning.
ckcombsdotcom's review against another edition
4.0
Reading Chuck Wendig stories is like jumping on a wild roller coaster ride without any safety gear and without any assurances that you'll get to the end in one piece. I love it, I always have fun reading his stories and falling for his very very fallable characters.
krgreen's review against another edition
5.0
I didn't mean to start reading this book - I was in the middle of some others, but Chuck's fast-paced story drew me back into the world of Miriam Black the moment I opened it. The main characters still feel solid, her powers feel not-too-far-displaced-from-reality and his writing style creates a very easy read. This book seemed darker than the first, and had more twists and connections than the first, but these were executed seamlessly.
Once more, I don't tend to read books with swearing or murder, and yet could not put this down. There's a slight sense of cliff-hanger at the end, more-so than in book one, which will definitely bring me to reading the third instalment at some point.
Once more, I don't tend to read books with swearing or murder, and yet could not put this down. There's a slight sense of cliff-hanger at the end, more-so than in book one, which will definitely bring me to reading the third instalment at some point.
trudilibrarian's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars
I can gobble the Miriam Black books down as if they were piping hot, greasy cheeseburgers with a triple chocolate shake on the side. Yum! Yeah, you really have to suspend disbelief, there might even be a few dubious plot holes, but goddamn, as a dark heroine with a grim gift Miriam kicks ass. She's a viper, a scrapper, a take-no-prisoners and no bullshit kind of gal, morally dubious, who is just beginning to figure out what the right thing to do is.
In this second installment, Miriam's visions get her tangled up in something much more sinister and unholy than she could ever imagine. Shacked up with Louis from Book 1 in a trailer park, Miriam feels trapped and suffocated. Her feet are getting itchy and she wants to hit the road again, to resume the shiftless (and violent) life she was living before she and Louis met.
As a favor to Louis, Miriam visits a private school for wayward girls to determine whether the hypochondriac English teacher is really dying from cancer. While on this errand Miriam learns that one of the students is going to die a horrible torturous death six years from now at the hands of a masked man with a sparrow tattoo. Miriam's inadvertent discovery puts her onto the trail of a serial killer, placing her own life in serious peril. With her usual potty mouth, rude inappropriate humor, and feisty fighting skills, Miriam makes several return visits to the private school, and with each visit uncovers more girls who will meet bloody, untimely deaths unless she can figure out a way to stop it, squarely spitting in Fate's eye once more.
I really warmed up to Miriam in this sequel. We get to see more of her vulnerable side, and get to learn more about her past, her relationship to her mother, and the tragic events that bestowed her precognitive curse on her in the first place. As a character, Louis is much more fleshed out this time too. He's still a little bit of a "big teddy bear with the heart of gold" stereotype, but he's starting to find his voice, and his motivations are starting to ring true.
I will definitely be keeping my eye out for more Miriam Black adventures. This is another Angry Robot book. Check them out. They are awesome.
***My review for Book 1 Blackbirds
I can gobble the Miriam Black books down as if they were piping hot, greasy cheeseburgers with a triple chocolate shake on the side. Yum! Yeah, you really have to suspend disbelief, there might even be a few dubious plot holes, but goddamn, as a dark heroine with a grim gift Miriam kicks ass. She's a viper, a scrapper, a take-no-prisoners and no bullshit kind of gal, morally dubious, who is just beginning to figure out what the right thing to do is.
In this second installment, Miriam's visions get her tangled up in something much more sinister and unholy than she could ever imagine. Shacked up with Louis from Book 1 in a trailer park, Miriam feels trapped and suffocated. Her feet are getting itchy and she wants to hit the road again, to resume the shiftless (and violent) life she was living before she and Louis met.
As a favor to Louis, Miriam visits a private school for wayward girls to determine whether the hypochondriac English teacher is really dying from cancer. While on this errand Miriam learns that one of the students is going to die a horrible torturous death six years from now at the hands of a masked man with a sparrow tattoo. Miriam's inadvertent discovery puts her onto the trail of a serial killer, placing her own life in serious peril. With her usual potty mouth, rude inappropriate humor, and feisty fighting skills, Miriam makes several return visits to the private school, and with each visit uncovers more girls who will meet bloody, untimely deaths unless she can figure out a way to stop it, squarely spitting in Fate's eye once more.
I really warmed up to Miriam in this sequel. We get to see more of her vulnerable side, and get to learn more about her past, her relationship to her mother, and the tragic events that bestowed her precognitive curse on her in the first place. As a character, Louis is much more fleshed out this time too. He's still a little bit of a "big teddy bear with the heart of gold" stereotype, but he's starting to find his voice, and his motivations are starting to ring true.
I will definitely be keeping my eye out for more Miriam Black adventures. This is another Angry Robot book. Check them out. They are awesome.
***My review for Book 1 Blackbirds
phillyhart's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0