Snow by Ronald Malfi is a horror story taking place on a snowy day. The story is John Carpenter’s The Thing meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The book starts with a delayed flight from Chicago to Iowa. A group of strangers gets a rental car together and attempts to drive. On that drive, they crashed the car in a town that was run by creatures made of snow. The story has a brief setup where the character’s motivation is set up to risk driving in a snowstorm. Todd has promised he will see his son for Christmas after being away for a year, and Kate will be meeting her soon to be husband. After that, the setup of this book gets intense fast, with the group not knowing what is going on. The group has to flee from creatures that can puppet human bodies and creatures that can build themselves out of snowflakes. The pace for this book is insane. Once the group enters the town, the tension doesn’t let up. The kills in this book are brutal. The gore dips into the extreme but doesn’t get too gross with the descriptions, and lets the leader fill in the blanks. The scariest thing is the children who are infected by the snow beings. The book has some good twists and turns. The body count for this story is very high. One thing I didn’t like was that it takes too long for the group to learn anything about the threat. So the characters wallow in hopelessness too long. Snow was first published on January 1, 2010.

Why Did I Read Snow? Snow is a book I have owned for 5 years. I can’t remember where I picked it up. But the cover is bloody snow. Ronald Malfi is one of the artists in the New Anthology, The End of the World as We Know It, where stories take place in the world of Stephen King’s The Stand. I was able to go to a book signing/book release party for The End of the World as We Know It. Ronald Malfi was one of the authors doing the signing. I have heard his name mentioned in the horror community and never read his books. Sjgomzi on Goodreads described it as Invasion of the Body Snatchers during a snowstorm, and I was hooked. I finished the book before the signing and got it signed. Ronald Malfi, with Brian Keene, remarked how vintage my books were. Ronald Malfi has a very unique signature.

Plot Summary: Todd Curry is in Chicago on Christmas Eve, and he is desperately trying to see his son in Iowa on Christmas. But a snowstorm is preventing it. He meets Kate at the bar, who is engaged. She wants to spend Christmas with her fiancé; they talk and connect well together. They hope the flight is just delayed and not cancelled. The flight does get cancelled. Todd decides to rent a car, and he discovers Kate and an older couple, Fred and Nan, are getting a car together, and she talks Todd into coming along. The drive is going great until a man pops out on the road, and the car crashes to avoid him. Eddie, the guy they almost hit, says his daughter has gone missing during the snowstorm and needs help. Everyone can feel there is something not right with the guy, but it could be desperation or the cold. The car is not great, but drivable. They take Eddie to town and find his car is empty with the door open, full of snow. He convinces them to go to town, where they plan to turn him over to the police. In the town, the radio and cell phones stop working. The car hits a snow bank, and they are stuck. The town has no power to its storefront or street lights. The town looks abandoned. Eddie leaps out of the car with his leg folding in an odd way, and he meets up with a little girl with no face except snow. They try to go after him, but people rise out of the snow like zombies. They retreat and are saved by a convenience store clerk.

What I Liked: The pace of the story made reading this book a breeze. I really like the character study with both Todd and Kate. The Gambling backstory for Todd was tragic. I liked that no one felt safe; this book has a big body count. I liked the side characters; they were all unique and brought something extra to the story. The way the monster at the end was described. The ending wasn’t all great, but what was done right was very good. The kids in the car scene at the end were so tense. Bruce is a badass. The action was intense and well paced. The snow creature has a wicked design. I liked how the characters can tell the effect on the unaffected.

What I Disliked: The great character work at the beginning was followed up on, but it was not consistent. There’s a romance in the story that just wasn’t necessary. One of my favorite characters got killed, which sucked, but the death served no purpose to the story. When the death happened, I thought it was just the character’s nightmare; it was not. While the pace of the story was always good, the substance of the scenes was never that great. It takes the characters way too long to know how to hurt the creatures and to learn about them. The Molly plot line at the end was unnecessary.

Recommendation: Snow is a book with a lot of great moments and some moments that don’t serve the plot all that well. The story Idea is great for Snow. I recommend that if you like films like The Faculty and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, then you will like this book. I would recommend this book for Dean Koontz fans who want a little harder edge, A dip into extreme horror. I will barely recommend Snow by Ronald Malfi to my followers. I look forward to reading more Malfi in the future.

Rating: Snow by Ronald Malfi, I rated 3.3 out of 5.