I’ve said it before … sustaining horror/terror through an entire novel is extremely difficult. Author Christopher Golden works hard to create a unique horror story, is often successful, but over-all the book felt a bit flat.
A dozen years ago, a small New England town was hit with a tremendous storm in which people went missing and stories swirled of icy figures haunting in the snow. Now, as another snow strikes the city some citizens are thinking back to previous storm, when Detective Joe Keenan wasn’t able to save a young boy, and Jake Shapiro lost his little brother, and petty thief Doug Manning thinks to the mysterious death of his wife. The snow and the wind make it a bitter storm, but there’s something else out there. An icy, alien form that hungers to for the warmth of a human life.
Golden brings the storm to life and does a wonderful job of setting the mood and the tone of the storm. He also is fantastic with the horror of the unknown forms . The tension and suspense built well when the character of the storm was the focus.
But the set-up was slow and the back story of all the players took me out of the story rather than bringing me further in. Instead of building the story, it bounced around, making it challenging to follow at times. Manning’s story never felt fully connected to the rest of the book and the supernatural aspect felt a little tacked on at the end.
Looking for a good book? At times, Snowblind, was captivating and frightening, and at other times slow and meandering.
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Snowblind
author: Christopher Golden
publisher: St. Martin’s Press
ISBN: 1250015316
hardcover, 320 pages
