Chuck Wendig can write the piss out of a book!

Overall thoughts: a very readable novel.  Building on strong noir/paranormal roots, Wendig delivers a second foray into a series that shows a lot of promise.  Miriam Black is an excellent, exciting, frustrating, hilarious heroine.  She makes the novel character-driven – driving the plot like a one-eyed truck driver careening down a mountain!

The plot itself is good.  Again, taking elements of noir detective stories, Wendig gives us a good mystery to sink our teeth into.  A cast of supporting characters that are strong and, therefore, all suspect.  The story is strong and delivers the goods, keeping pace with our rocketing heroine.

The narration is where the book really distinguishes itself – it makes the book so damn readable.  Often authors hold back their “William Shatner” writerly-tendencies when it comes to 3rd person POV.  Not wanting the narration to get in the way of the story, most authors reserve stylized narration for 1st person narratives.  Not Wendig.  His narration often goes toe-to-toe with Miriam’s dialogue for the funniest and most interesting sentences in the story.  It’s crisp, sharply-observant, and helps add to the overall package that this is less a book and more a reading experience.

Series thoughts:   As a sophomore addition to a building series, it was very strong.  In Mockingbird, Wendig begins to drop hints at an over-arching mythology behind the series, leading us to believe that it won’t be just Miriam stumbling from one adventure to the next.  I imagine that there still will be some stumbling (Miriam wouldn’t be Miriam without an inability to relate to the rest of humanity) but that there are questions asked and no answers given makes me want to read more books in the series to see what the answers might be.

Overall thoughts:  Mockingbird rocked!  I burned through it like it was nobody’s business even though I was trying not to read so fast.  I loved the hell out of it and can’t wait for the next book (after I read the first – don’t ask why I read them out of order…).  Write Wendig, Write!