Chuck Wendig’s Mockingbird Sings a Dark Song
Poor Miriam Black can’t seem to catch a break—as if her ability to know how you’re going to die isn’t enough of a problem. In Mockingbird—the second installment of Chuck Wendig’s dark fantasy series—the cursed anti-social heroine is once again thrust into a round of life-or-death danger. The violence isn’t ideal for our protagonist, but it’s certainly great news for readers, as Saga Press continues in its plan to reissue the series in the run up to the debut of the fourth book next year (number three, The Cormorant, is slated to drop in early 2016).
Ships in 1-2 days.
When expletive-fueled twenty-something Miriam was a teen, her life took an unpleasant turn, and as a supernatural result, she can simply touch someone and know not only how, but when they’ll die. That’s a heady mojo, and Miriam spent many years as a pseudo nomad, drifting and grifting from one roadside dump motel to the next, on the run from herself, and targeting the soon-to-die in order to make off with their cash.
Mockingbird is set a year after the events of the first book, Blackbirds. Miriam has come close to settling down, but that doesn’t mean she’s a happy camper. She’s ditched her Blackbird Black dye job, and is sporting Fuchsia Flamingo (“the kind of pink you might see in the heart of a mushroom cloud”), but the vivid new hue hasn’t changed her bad girl exterior, and she remains a rebellious bundle of unsociable energy. She has, however, come to terms with a key twist in her existing know-how-and-when-someone-will-die abilities, though it doesn’t make her personal choices less stressful. Nor do those nightmarish visions of talking birds…
Ships in 1-2 days.
As Miriam struggles to exist like a regular human, unforeseen events come to a head, disrupting her stab at normalcy. A bird-masked killer with a swallow tattoo is beheading teenage girls, and that’s only the start of Miriam’s troubles. There’s a sliver of personal self-discovery in store for our anti-heroine, but she never sheds her caustic sense of humor and cornered-animal instincts.
There’s one speed to the way Wendig tells a story, and it’s fast. Very fast. Greased-cheetah-on-speed fast. His books carom wildly from one short, punchy chapter to the next. Miriam Black is wonderfully, unlikeably likable, a mouthy loner, damaged goods, a fireball with impeccable comic timing. Mockingbird expands upon the rules of her special touch, and it makes for another heads-will-roll supernatural thriller.
Mockingbird is available October 20.





