Snow

      Everyone has atmospheres that strike them a terrifying on a personal level. For some, it's their

A view of fresh snow from my childhood home

grandparents' dim and cluttered basement or that dilapidated house two blocks over. For me, nothing was eerier growing up that the forest across the street from my house covered in thick, blinding snow. Naturally, when I discovered there was a novel that warped snow into a monster that attacked small towns, like the one I grew up in, I was ecstatic. Surely, this would be the sort of book that would bring all my childhood unease into delightful horror fruition. Ronald Malfi's Snow delivered - at first. I wanted to love this novel, I really did. What I ended up with was a decent book that had the potential to be much more.

     The beginning of the novel had a killer atmosphere. The details and character development is strong and immersive at the start. The four lone travelers crammed into a rental Cherokee in a white out blizzard is tense. Then add in a lone wandering man that has a check mark on every item of my "this creepy guy isn't what he seems" list, and the audience is squirming in anticipation for what happens next. The evil entity is revealed in glorious fashion. As with all good things though, this great start doesn't last. The tension seems to recede over the course of the book. The atmosphere and detailed descriptions become little pockets within a plot line barreling forward. Every innovative element of he book was dragged down when it could have been placed center stage.

     The monsters were a unique and striking creation, especially at first. The idea of something as benign as a little flurry of snow being a blood thirsty entity is startling to say the least. These vapor snow creatures manage to materialize enough to penetrate and invade a body, creating a meat suit to walk around in. Then Malfi adds in that these meat suits eat flesh. The creatures attack and pursue the survivors, both in various snow varieties and body puppet forms, ruthlessly. In a sense, they were a wonderful twist on body snatching type monsters and zombies.

     I think the monsters would have been more impressive if the plot didn't descend into the stereotypical zombie survival structure. The protagonists, Todd and Kate, encounter hidden survivors in a rapid fashion as they scramble through town in an effort to withstand the snow terror. Each time a new stronghold is stumbled upon by the pair, the place and people that had managed to keep concealed for a week are attacked. The local survivors are taken out by various means and the protagonists move on. The audience has little time to develop any connection with the survivors the pair encounter before they are replaced by new survivor characters. This quick turn over made these other characters feel rather stereotypical. There's the lone teenage/young adult girl that's tough as nails, the sweet elderly couple. the psycho that assumes control with violence (who also plays the religious nut), and a whole sheriff's station of characters like the martyr, and the kids who end up turning on the protagonists. The audience gets a quick succession of the various manifestations of psychological mistrust that's expected for a story where anyone could be the enemy. The overall plot is nothing fresh after the popularity of the zombie genre. It's not bad, just a mediocre structure that lacked the innovation I was expecting for such a unique monster.

     The protagonists themselves were decently fleshed out. Todd is a man with a dark past desperate to make amends to his son and ex-wife. Kate is a woman unable to open up and therefore stays in an engagement headed nowhere. There issues are resolved in the end as Todd embraces his son and seems to come to some peace with his ex, while Kate has formed a more honest romantic bond with Todd. These character arcs worked fine, but none of their traits or issues had much effect on the main plot.

      Overall, this wasn't a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. Malfi's monsters are invigoratingly different than the scores of vampires and werewolves that occupy a big chunk of the horror genre. At it's best, the book is haunting in it's description and atmosphere. On the downside, there is little in the way of surprises as far as the plot and characters are concerned. Worth a read if your craving some frozen creatures on a cold winter's night.