The advent of the internet, and specifically that of twitter, has led to some interesting reader-author discoveries. Due to the interconnectivity of authorial relationships with fellow authors, along with the ease to post quick opinions on current events, I'm finding myself following authors whom I really like as people, but haven't actually read any of their books yet. And for the longest time, Chuck Wendig fell into this category. 
 It seems fitting, then, that as I sat pondering what my final verdict on Blackbirds, the first book in the Miriam Black series, actually was, Mr. Wendig summed it up perfectly on twitter: 
 "This is also your daily reminder that, very often, the most boring story is an origin story. Origin stories are all start, no end. An origin story can be neatly folded into a story that comes much later in the narrative. This is why we begin stories as late as we can." 
 In many ways, Blackbirds seemed to suffer a lot from the origin story syndrome, or more specifically, the "first book in a series" syndrome. A lot of time is spent (out of necessity) showing and explaining to us the rules involving Miriam's powers, showing us her character, having us learn how she reacts and what her overall mindset is. This amount of time allocated leaves a rather thin story. 
 Miriam Black can see how you'll die. If she touches your skin in any way, she will see the exact time, place and cause of your death. And she can't do anything to stop it. She doesn't know why she has this power or how to do anything with it so Miriam Black is just along for the ride, powerless to stop fate. But when a kind trucker gives her a lift one day, she sees that he will die in a few weeks: tortured to death and helplessly uttering her name. 
 And that's the main crux of the book. Miriam undergoes a form of the Hero's Journey--hearing the call to action, rejecting it, failing, rethinking things, finally taking up the hero's path--and along the way the reader learns more about her backstory and how her power work. There are a good number of side characters and villains in Miriam's way but she is more of an obstacle to herself than anyone else is. She is definitely an unlikeable protagonist. She is selfish (sometimes positioning herself at the time and place of people's deaths so she can take whatever money they have on them), makes horrible life decisions overall, is a habitual liar, and usually ends up hurting anyone she remotely cares about. And yet I felt for her. I might find some of her actions despicable but I understand why she's making them given where she is in life. Watching her grow as a character throughout the book was the most engaging aspect of Blackbirds. 
 From what I've heard, this is a theme with Chuck Wendig's books, but Blackbirds is very graphic and as such is hard to read at times. This most likely was heightened by my poor choice of reading time i.e. while I was eating my lunch, but the content should be noted. 
 Overall, Blackbirds is a very adequate first book in a series. The plot in this one is fairly straight forward, but we get a very good sense of Miriam as a character and there's a nice foreshadowing of more dramatic events to come in the later books. Thankfully, Miriam is really fun to be around, in spite of and because of her unlikeability as a character. She's rude and self-centered and due to her habit of lying constantly, as a reader I couldn't always trust that the backstory she was giving was at all true. I like that aspect of her. Given the character growth we saw in Blackbirds, I look forward to seeing what other places Chuck Wendig takes Miriam, although if twitter is any judge, it's to nowhere happy.