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The Cormorant Is a Deep Dive into a Dark Place
In the annals of wildly likable female antiheroes, the name Miriam Black should be up in lights, right next to Scarlett O’Hara and Lisbeth Salander. These are women who certainly do things on their own terms, no matter who is standing in the way. Chuck Wendig’s rebellious, sociopathic heroine, who happens to be able to see your death at a touch, has been our scrappy tour guide through three dark fantasy adventures to date, the most recent of which, The Cormorant, is the final book in the series to be reissued by Saga Press after a change in publishers. Those of us who were late to the party are finally all caught up, which is great. Not so great: we’ll be waiting along with everyone else for volume four, Thunderbird, slated for release in 2017. This series. You’d think we’d be used to the pain by now.
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The Cormorant finds Miriam much changed from the bitter firebrand Wendig first unleashed in Blackbirds. While still just as ready to kick ass as the need arises (and it arises with frightening regularity), she has been dragged through an emotional meat grinder over the course of the series, and it has changed her worldview quite a bit, especially when it comes to utilizing her very special supernatural talent.
We all know that with great power comes great responsibility, and knowing when everyone is going to die is the sort of thing that’s going to weigh on you quite a bit. For a long while, Miriam used her dark talent to live a carnage-filled grifter lifestyle, but the deadly events of Mockingbird rattled her to the core. In The Cormorant, she is forced to come to terms with her abilities, not to mention her deep-seated mommy issues, when she is lured to Florida to tell a wealthy businessman how he’s going to die. The only problem is, her vision is much more complicated and deadly than usual, revealing a glimpse of a psychotic killer with gruesome plans for Miriam.
Mayhem ensues. Bodies pile up. Obscenities are spewed. All in all, a typical Miriam Black sort of adventure.
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But even with a comfortable splash of familiar gore, this volume reveals the deeper questions Wendig has been exploring throughout this series. Through all of the breathlessly paced action and gallows humor, he has allowed his character to grow and change, to drop some of the cynicism that makes her so captivating to read about, and only make her more compelling in the bargain. It’s hardly an easy journey; this installment in particular rips open her old wounds, and what pours out has the potential to deeply alter the way she looks at life and death.
We find Miriam is certainly much less selfless than she’s ever been (though that hardly makes her an ideal social companion, considering). Her vocal dislike of her fellow man hasn’t softened, and her glorious anti-social behavior is still on full display. But we also see the briefest glimmer of who she was before she was broken, and it shows that Wendig, that ultimate arbiter of her future, remains firmly in control of his craft.
We’ll have to wait and see what Thunderbird brings.