Stories are fascinating because they are co-constructed experiences between teller and audience. Unless you are eating your own tale, your story takes shape not just from your words but also from its form in the minds of your audience. Each audience member contributes their own flavours to the stories. Sometimes, their visions correspond eerily similar to yours. Other times those visions diverge. I’m always fascinated when I read a story and find myself enjoying it…
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Seeing the future is never a good idea.
Setting aside the question of whether the future is fixed or malleable, our linear existence dooms any glimpses of the future. It provokes us into acting in strange, contradictory ways—and so even if the future isn’t predetermined, we tend to fulfil our own prophecies. Miriam Black is a good example of this: in Blackbirds, she sees how someone is going to die the first time she…
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Seeing the future is still never a good idea.
Over two years after I read the first book, I finally read Mockingbird, the second in Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black series. Miriam is trying to move on after the life-altering events of the first book, but she isn’t having much success. “Lying low” is a difficult concept for her, and soon enough she finds herself drawn back into the fine art of messing with destiny.
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Bait Dog follows on from Shotgun Gravy, which I gave a very cursory review. I can easily say I liked this better than Shotgun Gravy, not for its tone or characters or even content but simply because it had a deeper, more intriguing mystery. Chuck Wendig turns Atlanta Burns into Encyclopedia Brown: Pet Detective. She agrees to find someone’s missing dog because she needs the money; the bad guys from the first book…
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This story was very depressing. Like, bleak pits of despair depressing. Chuck Wendig takes all the good things in the world and beats them up for their lunch money, which he then spends on drugs and alcohol for underage victims of abuse. Sympathy is almost required for Atlanta Burns, but at the same time, it’s difficult to like reading about her life. Shotgun Gravy is a perfect exercise for readers who like their noire extra…