Snow - Wintry Christmas Horror
I received a signed copy of this bone-chilling novel from Ronald Malfi and saved it for reading around Christmas. It certainly complemented the icy temperatures my city was experiencing of -41°C!
Being a huge fan of Ronald Malfi, I went into this book with confidence and anticipation. It hit the mark with the ghastly nature of the monsters; they were unique and terrifying. I will think of them every time it snows. The story itself was less unique: it followed a classic scene of apocalyptic isolation with characters who fell in line with those types of movies/stories. You had the standard man meets woman situation, overly zealous Christians, unexpected heroes, and unexpected foes. It was an engaging read that pulled me along gracefully, and as I already mentioned, those monsters were very memorable.
I disliked that the book had quite a few errors in the editing department. There were also three different times when situations were compared to the Holocaust and only one of them was even remotely close to being comparable. It felt out of place and off-colour, and reminded me of the childish attitude of kids yelling something like, ‘Going to Grandma’s is worse than dying!’ To accompany this sort of childishness were a few comparisons to genitalia that felt like dick jokes more than useful prose. It only happened a few times, but it was enough for me to notice a pattern that made my inner teenager snicker in that poor-taste sort of way.
Honestly, I was still entertained and you really can’t beat the creativity of the monsters. I could see this book easily being made into a B-movie horror that would probably end up in the cult classic section.
