Snow

Malfi excels in creating likable protagonists with enviable speed, and for anyone who has ever been stranded in an airport (or anywhere else for that matter), they’ll likely feel drawn to Todd and Kate real quick. With a Christmas promise and a strained divorced/custody situation on the line, Todd shares the last 4-wheel drive rental with Kate, another stranded passenger, along with a senior couple who also feel the need to move. There’s care for uniting the protagonists, and much like the rest of Malfi’s work I’ve read, the story proceeds at terrific pace to getting our travelers into trouble as fast as possible

The initial threat beyond the massive snowstorm is the discovery of a stranded man in the snow. Hypothermic and yet show more seemingly functional, Todd and crew agree to help this odd man find his missing daughter, and upon locating her, set off a chain of events that compel them to flee their damaged car and to take refuge in a city under siege.

The monsters of “Snow” are unique — if they can be considered monsters at all. Without ruining the ending, let it be known that their physiology, morphology, and communication amongst one another is a critical learning arc for the quartet, and failure to recognize the (literally) shifting landscape can prove fatal. I’ve spoken with other dedicated horror readers who felt let down by the novel’s end, and again to preserve the story, I’ll merely say that while I felt the character relationships (or lack thereof) felt quite authentic, the denouement for the threat and creatures is explained away quite fast. Additionally, the epilogue feels far more like the sort of prologue one becomes acquainted with in early 80’s horror, and for my part, I would have been happy to end on a note with our characters.

A solid read, especially for Leisure Books at the time. It will definitely satisfy fans of weather-based survival threats, and definitely adds a touch of realism to such scenarios — there is definitely a dearth of weather-based/influenced horror, to be sure. show less

Honestly, I skim read a lot of the action scenes in this book. They were repetitive, uncreative and boring. The scenes read like a bad horror movie. The characters were kind of 2-D. The main character, Todd, was okay. Kate was less rounded out. The secondary characters were stereotypes. The best character in the whole thing was Shawna the store clerk. I was rooting for her.

The ideas behind the horror in the snow, OTOH, were really cool. I wanted more of that. So much more. There was little of the eerie atmosphere that I encountered in his other books.

It's clear that I didn't like this book as well as the other three I've read. But, I liked his other books well enough, so I'll put this down as an anomaly.

Ronald Malfi's SNOW, an atmospheric and fast-paced horror, follows a group of strangers, Todd, Kate, and couple Fred and Nan, who become stranded at Chicago's O'Hare airport on Christmas Eve and decide to rent a car and attempt to drive through the blizzard to get to their various destinations in Iowa. Predictably, this does not go well and the four find themselves at the mercy of the elements after Todd loses control of the car and crashes into a snowbank. They travel on foot to the nearby town of Woodson, only to discover that the town looks like it has been destroyed in a war zone.

They discover that most of the town's inhabitants have been killed by beings who are either in the snow or composed of the snow, and once these beings show more take control of a person, they become a zombie-like cannibal, eating anyone they can find. The group make their way through the town, fending off the creatures and trying to survive long enough to figure a way out of the town.

SNOW is my first book by Malfi, and while I didn't *love* it, I will definitely be reading more by him. I had some problems with his descriptions of characters (particularly characters we aren't meant to like, focusing on their weight and physical appearance as the basic means for us to not like them), and he seemed to have a hard time pinning down exactly what was going on with the creatures attacking the town. I feel like he had a really good idea here, but couldn't quite figure out how to pull it all off, and just ran with it anyway. This does create a sense of confusion in the book for both the reader and the characters in the story, as we're left as much in the dark as they are, but I do like to have something more than the story just sort of ending, with no real resolution to what happened. I believe that this was one of his earlier works and I can see the potential of a really great author here, so I think given the time since, he has hopefully honed his craft a little better. If you haven't read him before, I don't know that I'd say SNOW is the book to start with, but it's still a fun, small town horror story that fans of Stephen King's books in the same vein might enjoy.

#horror #ronaldmalfi #snow #bookstagram #books #book #bookreview #horrorbooks #horrorbookstagram #frommybookshelf #frommybookshelfblog #zombies show less

Todd and a few stranded passengers have to head into a nearby town after getting waylaid by a storm during a flight. They stop to help a man who claims his child is lost in the storm, but when they go for help the stumble onto an empty town. It doesn't take long to discover there's some seriously-eerie stuff involved with this particular snowfall, and they must figure out how to beat it if they hope to survive.

There's something enchanting about thrillers or horror set in a snow-filled environment. Even if it's in an open area, there's a sense of isolation that comes from the winter white. Some genuinely creepy parts graced the pages, and there were twists on who to trust (of course). As always when you meld a group together to brave show more evil forces, they start coming apart at the seams and turning on each other. It starts with one group, becomes another, and ultimately they have to battle yet another set of strangers at the end.

As fun as it is to play in the snow, it's not a fully fresh, unique story. Writing style is fine and characters are genuine enough, but there isn't a lot of surprise waiting for the reader. The beginning is strong and promising, and I dug the ending conflicts, but the middle was slightly weighed down. show less

This book is serious crack - makes only a nominal attempt at logic, and the characters are predictable. But that’s okay - the thrills and scares keep coming. Snow zombie apocalypse!

A cross between "Invasion of the Body Snatcher's" and "Night of the Living Dead". A subtle tale that creeps up on you and by the end, you feel as if it were all a dream...a fast paced end of the world tale by a gifted writer. I will be looking for his future work. He has created scenes that stay with you days after. I can't think of a better compliment.

"Snow" es uno de esos ejemplos en los que la narración realmente no oculta nada, no hay un tema que dé coherencia a la historia, ni Malfi muestra su visión del mundo (lógicamente, algo hay, aunque es tan leve que apenas es perceptible, y sí le sirvió a Malfi para escribir la novela, pero eso no lo principal de esta historia). "Snow" es puro escapismo, escrito con el muy sano objetivo de entretener al lector (algo que los intelectuales nunca entenderán), pero es un escapismo de muchísimos quilates. Malfi es un autor tremendamente visual, capaz de lograr escenas muy espectaculares y agobiantes, y tiene muy buena mano para subir tensión y crear suspense.

http://www.elrincondecarlosdelrio.com/2015/11/snow-8.html