The Dark Side

On the subject of Chuck Wendig, he also has a character called Black—Miriam Black, to be precise. A psychic who can tell when, where and how you are going to die just by touching your hand. I discovered her after reading JC Hutchins’ guest post the other day. Curious, I hopped on over to amazon.com and took a look inside the first book (there are three). I read the sample and now I’m intrigued. “Hooked” is pushing it this early on, but comparing a good urban fantasy to crack on paper isn’t far off the mark where I’m concerned. Rob Thurman has nailed it with Cal Leandros. Jim Butcher did it with Harry Dresden, though so far I’ve only read the piece he wrote for Dangerous Women. Simon R. Green created the Nightside, a city neighbourhood where it’s always three in the morning and the freaks never go home to bed. Laurell K. Hamilton started me off with her Anita Blake series … though I gave up on Anita after Incubus Dreams—nine books in and the series turned from a fun ride to pretty well raw porn. I like sex, but by then Anita was getting it on with everyone for no discernible reason, and quite frankly, after she chose Jean-Claude the vampire over Richard the werewolf, I washed my hands of her. I didn’t even bother with the Merry Gentry series because I saw it going a similar route. Most recently, Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series had me reading on the limo. Happily, I’m not even halfway through that run and it makes for good summer reading. Joanne Baldwin is a bit like Stephanie Plum with superpowers.

Anyway, I’m planning an attack on Russell Books in search of Blackbirds, to see if Chuck’s Miriam can give my Ariel a run in the Whose Black is Blacker? department. If I go back for the follow up, I’ll know.