Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
Miriam Black knows when you’re going to die.
She’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, and suicides.
But when Miriam hitches a ride with Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days Louis will be murdered while he calls her name. Louis will die because he met her, and she will be the next victim.
No matter what she does she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.
Chuck Wendig’s blog, Terrible Minds, is one of the first writing blogs I started following when I started Isle of Books. I’m a huge fan of everything that comes out of the man’s mouth (which is wisdom saturated with a lot of cuss words, NSFW sexytimes, and violent/potty humor). After his novel, Blackbirds came out, he offered it on a discount (or maybe free?) for the e-book version so I of course downloaded it. I read this book a few days ago..in about a day. I read it on the iPad/computer and it felt very short to me. Apparently it’s like 300+ pages, but I flew through it.
Understand, you need only pop over to Wendig’s site and take a quick look around to get a taste of what the book is like. If you find yourself offended or turned-off by his blog, don’t bother reading the book. You won’t enjoy it. The book is very, very violent, dark, gritty, and sexual. As I read the second half of the book in one sitting, at times I was just kind of overwhelmed and bowled-over by it. It really pushed my boundaries as a reader and I usually don’t shy away from violence/dark/sexual stuff.
Alright, so if you’re still reading this review, here goes. Aside from the sheer readability of this book, it really made me think. Miriam has a conversation with someone in which she says (essentially) that most people think they’ll die of old ago when most people really die much younger than that.
Guys, that scared me. Scared me so bad I drew up a provisional will that is probably not legally binding, but whatever. I’ve randomly thought of doing this from time to time, but never actually did it until I read Blackbirds.
Last week I made up a list of Kick-Ass Heroines. Let’s put Miriam Black on there, shall we?
