The Cormorant

This is pretty damn cool. Which is more or less the baseline for Miriam Black books, so when I say that this is not my favorite in the series, I want you to know there's no real insult there. It still puts it well above most of what I've read this year.

Some may think of Chuck Wendig as a very blunt writer. The crass language, the violence, the straight-forward muscle-motivated characters. He's not, though, he's a very clever writer. He makes his bull-in-a-china-shop protagonists into people who are relatable, fragile even. That said, The Cormorant is a much more blunt book than most of Wendig's stuff, despite the fact that Miriam goes one of her most emotional journeys. But when the stakes are that high, the punches aren't pulled. Miriam gets torn to shreds and so does just about everyone she touches. Superpowers show up that are even more overwhelming and terrifying than we've encountered before. And someone gets eaten by birds. Bones and all.

This is a nasty book. This is a mean book. It's ugly and bloody and angry. I enjoyed those parts of it. I didn't love love it though, and think that's because the emotional weight of this book is Miriam's relationship with her mother, and I think everything that needed to be said about that was already done well enough in the earlier books. The Cormorant just makes it clearer.

To me, Miriam's heart is Louis, and I am super excited that he's going to be back for the next book, at least I assume so by the ending. In all, there's no disappointment here, this is a true Miriam Black book to its core, but its maybe a little emotionally weaker than its predecessors.