Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

Rating: WARTY!

"Miriam Black knows she can't rescue the people whose deaths she foresees. But when a vision of murder shakes her to the core, she risks everything to change the future" If she knows she can't change it, then why risk everything? Unless she's a callous idiot who's never seriously tried to change it. Either way I have no interest in reading about her. Why not call this novel "Black Ops" and start a whole series with derivative titles like "Blackout," "Black Jack,"and "Blackpool"?

Under the Empyrean Sky by Chuck Wendig

Title: Under the Empyrean Sky
Author: Chuck Wendig
Publisher: Amazon Childrens Publishing
Rating: WARTY!

Audio book read by Nick Podehl

There are certain words and phrases which, when appearing as a part of a novel's title, should flash glaringly in garishly bright red light, and be read as caveat emptor (or caveat mutuor if you happen to be looking at it in the library).

One of this is "Finding..." or "In search of..." or something along those sorry lines. This means that the novel is a piss-poor attempt at being literary and is more than likely going to fail embarrassingly in its aim. Another is if the novel contains the name of one of the novel's characters. So from this alone you know that you can count on John Green's Looking for Alaska to be an unmitigated disaster for sure.

Maybe that's not fair, because he is a special case. His novels reek of literary pretension. Consider a selection of his titles: An Abundance of Katherines, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and The Fault in Our Stars, that latter one opening up yet another category of titles to avoid like the plague. How to Build a House falls within this category; that is to say one where a metaphor is employed for what you hope the novel will turn out to say. Again these pretensions are typically doomed.

Under the Empyrean Sky falls squarely into that last category, too. Since 'empyrean' actually means sky or heavens, the title doesn't even make sense. Clearly if an author cannot even get the title properly socked away, it speaks seriously ill of the content, as Wendig then goes on to prove.

The narration was particularly appropriate to this novel since both were obnoxious high-school jock chic. The novel starts out trying to demonstrate the intense rivalry between the poor excuse for a hero and the poorer excuse for a villain, which is to say it's street urchin v. rich boy. No gray areas here. The only mystery is how there can be a rich boy and if he is rich, then why is he a scavenger? But don't let a little detail like that get in your way. Wendig certainly had no intention of doing so. None of this novel makes sense.

Note that this is a boys-only story. Females are not welcome as is indicated by the fact that the pitiful few such characters are mere set decorations, so don't imagine there's anything worth reading there. I didn't find anything of value at all here.