Blackbird
A Novel
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3.7 • 16 Ratings
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- $23.99
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
Featured on the Lifetime and Netflix TV show You
A darkly compelling debut of an unusual bond between two killers—and the destruction left in their wake.
A cold-blooded killer-for-hire, Edison North drifts across America from city to city, crime scene to crime scene, leaving behind a world in flames. But during a seemingly random stop at a fast food restaurant, Edison meets Christian, a young girl who mirrors his own sense of isolation and stink of "other." Though it's been a long time since he felt anything resembling a human connection, something about this desperately lonely child calls to him like a fallen nestling. Edison feels certain she deserves better. And while he is not convinced that he can give her that, he can teach her to fly on her own. So he takes her.
Thus begin the chronicles of Edison North—and his protégé. Weaving together past and present, Edison begins Christian's strange apprenticeship as Christian looks back upon her fractured upbringing and the training that made her into the killer she's become. What emerges is a savage—and ultimately tender—exploration of the unlikely bond between two outsiders: a fledgling assassin and the man who took her under his wing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fiegel combines engaging sociopathy with a bit of the anarchist bent seen in the television show Mr. Robot in his electrifying debut. "I believe in neither free will nor predetermination. I believe in condiments." Meet Christian, an eight-year-old girl kidnapped by assassin Edison North in a fast-food restaurant. Though he's a killer for hire, he has standards, and he raises Xtian (as he rechristens her) as his apprentice forbidding her, for instance, from playing role-playing games online because the players curse too much. North's teaching provides Xtian with brutal lessons in survival and how to kill with cunning, but other people in North's amorphous organization don't appreciate his bringing her into their business. Mentor and apprentice narrate Fiegel's black comedy, which turns deadlier and less comedic as Xtian grows from child to partner to caretaker in the decade between her kidnapping in 2008 and 2018, when the denouement occurs. Readers will want to stick around and see how the characters respond to peril and betrayal. Despite a slack ending, Fiegel's debut is satisfying and original.
