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Gallery / Saga Press (1 February 2019)
“A is a much-deserved conclusion for one of horror's most imaginative heroines.” ― - Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter and game designer. He's the author of many novels, including but not limited to: Blackbirds, Atlanta Burns, Zer0es, and the YA Heartland series. He is the author of the upcoming Star Wars: Aftermath, and is co-writer of the the Emmy-nominated digital narrative Collapsus. He was a finalist for the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer. He currently lives in the forests of Pennsyltucky with wife, son, and red dog.
This is what it feels like, six months into losing Louis:
It feels like someone has pushed a corkscrew through her middle. It is a comically large tool, this corkscrew, like a cartoon prop, but it feels cold and sharp as it pushes its way through her body every morning, every afternoon, every evening, every hour and minute and second of every fucking day and every fucking night, coiling deeper in her before it reaches her margins and then rips its way back out in one brutal yank, uncorking her insides, spilling her guts, hollowing her out from belly button to backbone. The vacancy is palpable, a ragged hole like a cannonball blast through a tall ship’s sail, setting the craft adrift. It feels like her organs are exposed: her stomach, ripped out, unable to contain food; her heart ruptured and pouring blood; her lungs perforated, air whistling a mournful dirge through the ragged flaps of tissue with every miserable breath she pulls through them. Louis felt a part of her, once, and now he is gone. And she is reminded of that pain moment to moment—
Because she is carrying his child.
And that is the quite the ironic sensation, is it not? Louis is gone, and her middle feels ripped out—even as she experiences the opposite sensation of walking around with a squirming fullness around her belly. It’s as if the baby is not a baby but rather a black hole setting up shop inside her.
As she walks up to the Dead Mermaid Hideaway here in Hesperia, California, she feels the baby in there. Roiling around like a lone potato in a pot of boiling water. Little fucker won’t stop moving. Like the baby wants to kung-fu-kick its way out of the womb. The doc they found for her in Beverly Hills, Dr. Shahini—with her enviable golden skin and those bold black eyelashes like the wings of a swallowtail butterfly—said that Miriam’s body should release chemicals that make her welcome the presence of the child. The chemicals, she said, would help Miriam feel “at home” with the baby inside her, but Miriam told her, “Doc, my body doesn’t make those chemicals.” Because to this day, the baby feels like a parasite, an intruder—
(A trespasser)
—and mostly she just wants it gone. Gone because it reminds her of him. Gone because even in its fullness and agitation, it makes her feel hollow, empty, and painfully alone. And already she can hear Gabby chastising her inside her mind: It is not an it, Miriam; she is a her.
She’s your daughter, not an end table.
“Feels like a fucking end table to me,” Miriam grouses under her breath. “God, what a great mom I’m going to be.” Like that matters. Right now, until she figures out a way forward, this child will barely be born before it dies—robbed from the world at the moment of birth. From darkness to a brief flash of light, and then taken away again. Returned to the formless chaos from whence all things come. Life gone too quickly to where it usually goes slow: unmade into death.
All part of fate’s plan.
But Miriam is Fate’s Foe. She is the Riverbreaker.
Fate will not write the end of this story. She will.
Miriam swears to herself now, then, always: she will figure out how and why this kid—this parasite, this end table—is going to die, and she will save its life. Even if that means ending her own in the process. She owes that much to Louis. He is dead because she fucked up.
This baby will not suffer the same fate.
This baby will live.
Deep breath, Miriam. In. Out. The baby squirms inside her.
She takes out her cell and she texts Gabby: I’m here, Dead Mermaid Hideaway.
Gabby reponds: You’re there early
Miriam: No traffic.
Gabby: Early is good
Gabby: See Taylor yet?
Taylor Bowman, the preening lackwit, and also the reason she’s here. The doe-eyed pretty-boy is about to get himself murdered in the next—she checks her watch—37 minutes.
Miriam: I haven’t gone in yet.
Gabby: I wish I was there with you
Miriam: I’ll be fine. You’ve got a more important job. Any luck?
Gabby: None yet, will let you know
Gabby: What’s the place look like?
Miriam looks up and describes what she sees: Awning has a fake mermaid skeleton draped across it. It’s no lie. Someone has made a replica of a mermaid skeleton. It’s a pretty good replica, too—still has some fish scale on its bony tail, some fake webbing between the fingerbones. The red wig is maybe a bridge too far, but the clamshell bra seems a nice touch. She doesn’t bother describing the other signs plastered awkwardly around the doorway in: LADIES DRINKS = 50 CENTS OFF and LOOTERS GET DEAD and FAMOUS FOR OUR GHOST PEPPER MARGARITA, whatever the fuck that is.
Miriam adds: Shifty desert dive bar, except she doesn’t mean shifty, because autocorrect corrected shitty, so then she has to fix it in all caps: SHITTY desert dive bar duck you autocorrect, which just pisses her off more and leads her to type in thumb-punching rage, ducking motherducker fuck shift shit duck it.
Gabby: I told you, you should just put the profanity in your phone’s dictionary.
Miriam: It’s not my phone and that sounds like work. I’m going in. Will text you updates.
She slides the phone into her back pocket and heads inside the bar.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Book 6 of the Miriam Black series, VULTURES, is a fantastic send-off for one of the most fun, kickass, and memorable heroines in fiction. I wish this series didn't have to end, but at least it ends well. I'll probably re-read all six volumes back-to-back in the near future. So long Miriam, and thanks for all the thrills.
5.0 out of 5 starsWendig Brings Miriam's Saga to a Masterful End and Makes His Metaphor Explicit
Reviewed in the United States on 27 January 2019
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Miriam Black has struggled with her psychological damage, her psychic abilities and the ghost demon that haunts her, known as The Trespasser, through six books. Miriam has tried to save lives, fighting against fate to do so, hated herself when she failed and tried to heal herself and her relationships as the consequences snowball. At the end of the last book, we are stranded with Miriam's long time lover, Louis, dead, Miriam pregnant with his child and Wren, the rescued victim of Mockingbirds serial killer, the Trespasser possessed murderer of Louis. We open with Miriam grieving for Louis and haunted by the vision that her child will die soon after birth. Worse, The Trespasser's powers seem to be expanding and there is another serial killer on the loose.
Miriam Black has been often described as an anti-heroine, but I've disagreed with that assessment in my reviews of the series. Setting aside valid criticisms of how a waif sized Miriam handily manages attacks from bigger, stronger men, (why is it that male writers refuse, refuse absolutely to ever examine the physical threats that dictate a lot of women's experience in this world?) Miriam's emotional and psychological motivations are sound. Miriam, like so many of us is trying to understand and recover from trauma, trauma that has changed and dictated the course of her life, while coping with the continuing consequences of that trauma, including on her own behavior and choices and most importantly the main consequence of that trauma which is the opened channel in Miriam's mind for her psychic abilities. Throughout the series, Wendig has introduced other traumatized characters whose trauma has left them with similar gifts but in Vultures he makes the metaphor explicit by introducing two sometime allies, FBI agents Guererro and Anaya. It is these characters that Wendig uses to make his metaphor between trauma and being an Empath explicit and it works brilliantly and ties the entire series together. This theme also raises the series above the pulp urban fantasy genre that makes it so readable.
For those who haven't heard, or read, Empaths are people who feel the feelings of others in a variety of different ways. This kind of empathy is increased by life trauma in ways that aren't yet fully understood, even by those with the trauma and the capital letter Empathy, as opposed to empathy which is the ability to feel compassion and sympathy and understand the feelings and motives of another person. Empaths literally feel the other person's feelings and motives, in ways that can make sorting out the emotions of the Empath and the emotions of other difficult. Miriam's gift of seeing the death of anyone she touches is a metaphor for the Empath's gifts. Guererro can sense the location of any psychically gifted person he's met and Anaya just has feelings, hunches and intuitions about people and situations, intuitions that usually turn out to be right on the money. These experiences are a pretty accurate description of the experiences of Empaths in the real world. Both Anaya's and Guererro's gifts were brought out by trauma. There is also a character with classic medium gifts in the mix.
Miriam's journey becomes the journey of all traumatized people and that is the heart and the brilliance of these books. How will Miriam beat the demon and her own self hatred to live her life and protect the innocent and those she loves? Is she fated to pass on all of her trauma to her child? Questions that haunt all traumatized people. Wendig answers these questions in ways both realistic and hopeful while telling a page turning tale. I've always said that Miriam Black was a heroine rather than an anti-heroine, not because she is perfect, but because she is on the hero/heroine's journey that we are all on: to understand our lives and ourselves and others and to grow our characters by trying to atone for our mistakes and do better and vanquish the demons of self-hatred. These are the ultimate themes of Vultures and the entire series presented in dark, urban fantasy packaging.
I've been a fan of Miriam Black since Blackbirds was published by fledgling press Angry Robot and have pre-ordered all five subsequent volumes. I admire Wendig's work ethic as a writer. Like the pulp writers of yore, he made his bones doing commercial work, writing video games and Star Wars novels to keep the pot boiling and make space for the work he wanted to do. Not only do I love Miriam Black, but I love that kind of resourceful determination and I'm now wondering if Wendig, like his heroine, might be a bit of a traumatized Empath. I'll be pre-ordering Wendig's big new stand alone novel due this summer. You should too because with Vultures Wendig shows that he is growing his craft and his themes.
I'm not really sure how I stumbled across Miriam Black. A suggestion. An interesting cover on a book. Scrolling through Amazon. But I am a happy reader because of the discovery.
The end brings sadness because it is over. There won't be another book to anxiously await and I will miss this character. There hasn't been anyone like her and I doubt anyone could replicate her. One of a f$@king kind (wink wink).
The final book is a wild ride from beginning to end that never lets up. Just when you think you know where it's going, it flies in a totally different direction. The ending may be too tidy for some, but it gives closure and understanding of everything that has come to pass.
This is a series that I will recommend over and over until people tell me to stop talking about f$@king Miriam Black. And I don't think I ever will. She has become something more than a character. Something bigger. Something that will stay with me like my own, not so evil Trespassers.
"Vultures" is a fitting conclusion to the Miriam Black saga. The lessons she's learned from her previous adventures finally take hold, and Miriam is stronger for it. There are a few small things that are still worrying away at my mind hours after I've finished the book. Lose threads that demand to be pulled. Dropped plotlines that I was invested in. Other all, however, these books were about Miriam's journey, and as such they've more than done their job.
We have trash bag dumpster fire male characters everywhere, but very rarely do we get a trash bag dumpster fire female character. No one who knows me will be surprised to learn that I adore this character. I cheered for her when I probably shouldn’t have, and more when she deserved it. We need more Miriam Blacks in pop culture, and more diversity in our trash bag dumpster fire characters. This has been a great six book ride, and also reassured me that there is a place for the trash bag dumpster fire ladies living in my head, begging for their stories to be released into the wild. Thanks, Chuck.
