Snow Way Out Of Here (Snow review)

Snow by Ronald Malfi

Finally another book from class to purchase and put on my shelves. This is definitely in my top three of best books we’ve read this term.

Despite the setting of the book being Christmas and the overarching theme of snow, this doesn’t feel like a holiday book to me. It doesn’t even really feel like a horror book. It reads as more of a thriller in my mind. Yes, there’s graphic details of intestines on the ground and people being torn apart, but I feel like the majority of this book more put me on the edge of my seat with the ominous hands on windows and faceless kids rather than giving me nightmares. That being said however, anyone else concerned going to Pennsylvania in winter because of all the snow?

The snow particle preying mantis creatures were amazing. I loved the traversal aspect of them. They could disappear into the ground, move mounds of snow, be storms in the sky, or even flecks of ice sneaking in through a vent or an open window. These creatures would be great monsters to fight in video games. I like that the creatures were left vague too. We don’t know much about the storms and clouds, or whether these things are aliens or something paranormal. The unknown is a known fear of humanity, and it really works well in this book.

That being said, the head hopping perspective was not the easiest to pick up on immediately because I listened to the story as an audiobook. Maybe it was more obvious in the text version, I don’t know. However, following the different characters separately really did work for me anyway. I loved seeing the different point of views and the deaths. It was definitely written with a movie camera POV vibe to it. This would be a beautiful movie, especially with all the snow special effects or animation. Normally, I say that in a negative way, as if the book isn’t great and would be better as a movie. I think they could be equal in this situation. The book did an amazing job of describing every little thing to us, from the monsters light orb souls, to their gruesome deaths and puppeting of skin suits.

Excluding the awkward dialog at the bar in the beginning, I felt like every bit of this book was taken advantage of, and even the bar scene was necessary to introduce the characters. Speaking of the characters, this is one of the few books where I actually cared about them. When Shawna died, I was legitimately sad. I was genuinely happy to see Kate and Todd survive. Despite having a ton of characters and head hopping, I remembered people, and I was interested to hear their individual stories. Much like some of the others, I found the story good enough that I’m interested to know if anyone has read other Malfi, and if any of them are good?

Overall, I’ll never look at snow the same way again. Thank goodness I live somewhere where every season is rain.