For those of you following any of my recent rants on horror in the month of October, you know I've become a bit jaded. However, I did "cleanse my palate" and was able to enjoy Malfi's Snow a lot. (As a side note, anyone looking for a good read should go look up Patrick Ness right now. His "Chaos Walking" series might be the most brilliant YA read since Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. His books had horrific elements, to be sure, but it was more of a "Wow is this good sci-fi" thing than a "this is horror" thing. And they were pretty damn mature for YA books, so all you nay-sayers, don't diss the genre just because it's young. Go try it. OK, I'm done gushing now.)
I really want to start by saying that Malfi had a lot working against him from this reader. For one, last year's blizzard was on my mind from the moment I saw the title. Anyone who wasn't flattened under 3 feet of sopping wet, heavy, "happy white" flakes last year won't know what I mean (well, except that everyone had to deal with a little bit of it during residency), but it was bad. Like, I had to re-dig my way out of my house every day bad. I couldn't make it to the grocery store bad. And it wasn't scary bad, it was annoying. So, Malfi had a big obstacle to overcome in this reader. I brought all of my history and grumpiness about snow to this story, and he still surprised me. So, major kudos to him.
And the reason he surprised me was because of the monsters. This Snow wasn't annoying, it was sinister, and the way it turned humans into zombie-ish things just upped the ante, IMO.
First, an analysis of the monster itself: Can we talk about cool? For one, they don't fit into any pre-defined "monster" template I know of. They aren't vampires (yay! I still haven't recovered from Twilight). They aren't werewolves. They aren't zombies, witches, Franken-beings, spiders, or your typical Alien. But they are alien to this world, which makes their attack unique. It's the idea that drove Independence Day and other similar movies--the aliens are coming to get us, and the aliens are going to beat us. And who isn't just the teeniest bit scared at the thought of that? Add to that the fact that Snow is basically a trifecta of monsters -- the "central being," the "wormy thing," and the "puppeteers," as I like to call them. The central being just swirls in the center of the town, the worm thing travels through the snow, and the puppeteers actually enter humans and transform them into zombie-ish servants. Reading this, I couldn't help but wonder how these aliens could be beaten. Half of the story was figuring out what to attack, how to fight back, how to survive, etc. There were no magic silver bullets or stakes to fall back on, and I really liked that.
And an analysis of the "zombie" people: I know that I've stated my opinions on zombies in previous posts. Specifically, I don't usually like them. I semi-enjoyed World War Z, and I'm enjoying them slightly more in Patient Zero/Rot & Ruin, which I'm reading for my paper, but usually I'm less than frightened by these creatures. However, while these creatures act zombie-ish, the truth is they are puppets. They aren't consumed by the need for brains in the traditional sense, but they are controlled, used to inflict harm on other humans, and that is scary. The thought of being physically controlled definitely frightens me, slightly more than writing deadlines do (they are a form of control, after all...).
Overall, the physical appearance of these aliens in the snow and the way they take over humans really had me on the edge of my seat. And all of this was backed up by a cast of characters who popped off the page. I cared about who survived, which made the Snow even more sinister. I think these characters really "sealed the deal" for me. If there's one thing I've learned this semester, it's that a monster is only as good as the people its hunting, and these people were good. I really liked Nan and Shawna, and their deaths made me really fear these aliens. It gave it that edge that I felt was missing in other books. When they died, I thought "Well, if they couldn't survive, I sure wouldn't have." And then I realized that Malfi had brought me into the story, which is (for me) the best indicator of good writing.
Great book to end a semester on!
