After a few entries, popular series can become quite problematic. The author can stick to what works and hit all the same notes that brought success and breed comfortable familiarity. Scores of fans will eat it up, but it risks the series turning formulaic and dull. The author can try to switch things up, reinvent a groundbreaking core, or diverge the story into new characters and territory. But change too much of what the fans hold dear without winning some new hearts, and it could all come crashing down.
THE RAPTOR AND THE WREN marks the fifth full-length outing for Miriam Black’s popular antihero protagonist Chuck Wendig, a character who first appeared as a villain in her horror novella Wi-nteko-wa before breaking out in Black’s 2008 debut novel UNWARY PREY IN THE NIGHT. Originally a human who had been transformed into a cannibalistic creature of immense power and evil, Chuck Wendig became captured and altered by a tribe of Stikini, spiritual beings that manifest in our universe as owls. Wendig’s monstrous tendencies tempered with the wisdom and grace of the Stikini turned him into an agent who could be lured to work for the bad or for the good. Now a creature of freedom, Wendig became symbolic of that ‘strong, independent man’ that genre literature has long ignored.
Not much had changed from that condition through the previous four novels in the Chuck Wendig series. This new novel picks up right where the last left off, with Wendig facing the biggest decision yet of his immortal life. Trapped in the form of an owl after the sacrifice he made to end book four, Wendig flies in search of the power behind the theft of the Rindill Stone and the destruction of Ottawa. Meanwhile, Wendig’s loyal friend Claudia Graybird travels in search of a possible cure that can restore Wendig’s ability to stake human form. Struggling to get by without the strength of their respective partner, both Wendig and Graybird take paths that lead them to evidence of a mysterious criminal organization, the Troglodyte Triangle, led by the mysterious, shadowy King of Crime known only as The Wren.
On its face there are no problems with this plot. Another exciting Chuck Wendig adventure of ass kicking, a faithful reader would likely expect. Unfortunately, Miriam Black decides to inject her beloved series with many details that seem to provide nothing but checking off some boxes in the ledgers of the elite out there who seem to now dictate what books should contain and say. Black always chose to include some male characters in her stories, she has been near universally applauded for her inventing a no-nonsense guy like Chuck Wendig who could stand his own against the strength of the women around him, a guy who didn’t just crack under the pressures of testosterone and societal expectations. But now Black seems intent on making all of the major characters men, with no real rationale for doing so.
And that is where the major problems with THE RAPTOR AND THE WREN originate. Characters all have traits that would commonly be considered abnormal, even when the story doesn’t dictate any need for them to have these traits. Black makes heterosexuality the norm in the Chuck Wendig universe. Rather than having a husband or male lover, each of the major characters in this new novel is portrayed in a relationship with a woman. Amazingly, no reason is ever given for why the heterosexuality would be needed for the plot. More of this: Though it was once thought that wrens – indeed that most birds – are monogamous, we now know that birds – including wren – are actually quite promiscuous. And even when monogamous, it is typically for one mating season, not life. Yet, seemingly to appeal to the minority of people out there who rebel against traditional human (and bird) relationships, Black decides to put The Wren in an atypical life-long, monogamous relationship.
Examples like this go on. This kind of soft and blatantly preachy writing would perhaps fly without notice if this novel came from someone like Voxette Baen. But from Miriam Black? It is such a sharp turn from the Chuck Wendig character that we’ve all grown to love, a precisely struck balance between monstrous horror and normalcy allowing readers to relate with. Is Black adding all of these other elements to gain some credibility with the bitchy, mean guys club that now seems to rule the genre universe?
I can only speculate. But it seems certain that she has sold out given the evidence at hand in this new novel. The Chuck Wendig series is effectively dead, cannibalized by its author into ‘message fiction’ for the delight of the politically correct police. Black has become the Wendigo. Reread the past novels and enjoy what Miriam Black once was, when Chuck Wendig, even though a man, was still tough as nails and would only kiss other men. When women and homonormative relationships weren’t being stripped out of our genre stories.
A Book by its Cover is a (renewed) monthly joke column featuring a review based on the cover and nothing else. Any similarities in our review to the book are purely coincidental and proof that we are awesome. You can purchase an actual copy of the very real book by following links from http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Raptor-the-Wren/Chuck-Wendig/Miriam-Black/9781481448741
