Epic Horror is one of the most ambitious kinds of horror stories to tell. Horror is a genre that relies a great deal on tension and can often be strengthened by intimacy of character or situation. In other words, relatively small stakes. Maintaining a level of tension and mounting dread over the course of a 750+ page novel is audacious goal. Ronald Malfi successfully meets that challenge in stride with The Hive, a chonker of a novel that is in rarified air. To play on words, there was a great deal of buzz about this novel in the months leading up to its release. For me, as a fan of Malfi’s work since I read Black Mouth a few years ago, The Hive is a book I was greatly anticipating. How did it measure up and what is it about?
Read on after the blurb/publisher description and cover…
The residents of Mariner’s Cove are changing…
In the aftermath of a violent storm, a collective obsession is rapidly developing among the people of this quaint suburban neighborhood. Random, everyday items left scattered upon the lawns, the streets, and the shoreline all seem to call out to them. There is an item for almost everyone, and each item has a certain hold over the person who finds it—a hold that soon turns into unwavering infatuation. They hide their items from each other, obsess over them, and they will do anything—anything—to protect them.
The collective hum of bees’ wings…
A young boy finds himself the possessor of a strange and inexplicable power. Is the arrival of this power linked to the increasingly odd and dangerous behavior of the residents of Mariner’s Cove? Has he been granted this power in order to thwart whatever is about to happen in this small, bayside community, or is there a more sinister purpose?
All hail the Dragon…
All eyes are on him now. The residents of Mariner’s Cove are watching. They move as one, like a solitary organism, and will do anything to succeed in their single-minded purpose.
They will not be stopped.
A powerful, almost otherworldly storm assaults the Maryland Chesapeake Bay town of Mariner’s Cove. Lightning unlike anything people can recall flashes in the night with the storm serving as a catalyst, of sorts. While there doesn’t seem to be severe storm damage, residents do find rather unique objects strewn about town. A door stuck upright in shallow water is probably the most peculiar. Little Cory McBride, who had been behaving a tad strange prior to the novel, outright manifests… something during the storm, stopping broken glass from scattering and harming him and his mother Ellen.
Other strange things begin to occur. Markings appear on sidewalks and streets, strange iconography that are almost like hieroglyphics. The townspeople start to become obsessed with specific, but otherwise ordinary everyday objects… the aforementioned door becomes a point of obsession for a retired heart surgeon, a colander becomes a talisman of sorts for a family, a girl becomes obsessed with collecting hangers, another young man already obsessed with bees (who many call Stinger) is compelled to build … something in the town’s park.
Poor little Cory becomes the target of an obsessive neighbor who stares at Cory’s house and continually tries to get in. What makes it worse for Cory is that he can sense / read the thoughts of the neighbor, as well as many of the people in the town. Cory has some hope, his estranged uncle Brian also has abilities similar to Cory, Cory calls out to Brian, drawing his uncle to Cory and his mom.
The novel is an examination of a small town under duress of compulsion with everybody living under a growing cloud of terror. These strange obsessions (hangers, doors, colanders) superficially seem extremely random. Malfi takes great care to put these characters under a microscope, illustrate how a compulsion or obsession can be damaging to those around them. Despite the cast of characters being fairly sizeable, Malfi does a great job of building them out as individuals, their life in Mariner’s Cove and what they convey of their time before the storm, and how their obsession with a seemingly random object affects their arc throughout the novel. Even the characters who seem the most unlikeable (looking at you, Stinger), do manage to elicit a glimmer of empathy because of their situation. The aforementioned retired heart doctor, Mike Danver, was fascinating character. His obsession with the door lodged in the sandbar was very compelling, his relationship with his (much) younger wife seemed almost a throw-away but I really identified with the annoyance he felt about his neighbor. I loved the tense yet powerful relationship between Cory and his Uncle Brian.
Throughout the 750+ pages, Malfi crafts a tense, growing sense of dread that is both an undercurrent that might be connecting these characters and a dark cloud that shadows all of them as well. To say this novel is a slow burn is an understatement, but I found it to be extremely effective. I felt invested in these characters, the strangeness of these objects of obsession and how they may connect was a powerful curiosity. I myself felt obsessed with discovering where all the pieces would lead because the pace is addictive.
Something I’ve called out in my reviews of Epic Fantasy novels (especially the books that I enjoyed) is an author’s ability to balance epic and intimate. As I mentioned, intimacy and personal stakes in a horror novel are often elements that help to make an effective horror story. Malfi does that perfectly with the characters. But he also lends a sense of scope to the story beyond the individual. Even though it is set in a small town, the stakes are high. The way the characters begin to view their objects and where those objects can lead feels larger than them or the town of Mariner’s Cove.
… and here we arrive at the inevitable comparisons. It is hard *not* to compare an Epic Horror Novel to Stephen King’s work, so here goes. I felt some very positive resonance to King’s Needful Things with The Hive, the small-town cast of characters, singular point of obsession, a dark “thing” at the center of it all. That said, The Hive is definitely its own thing. I also think an apt comparison is Chuck Wendig’s recent masterpiece, Black River Orchard, another “epic small-town horror.” As it stands, the dark force seeping into a small town is a tried and true template for a horror story and Malfi has proven himself a master with novels like Black Mouth and the aptly named Small Town Horror and now The Hive.
Maybe the only issue(?), criticism(?) I can level at the novel is the conclusion. I can usually accept a novel or story where certain elements aren’t explained in great detail. Here in The Hive; however, I would have liked a little more detail at the end. Was the climax/conclusion/ending effective? Yes, by the time I closed the book and declared it finished, I was satisfied with the novel as a whole and how the plot and character arcs were resolved. Would I have been a little more satisfied if there was just a bit more detail? Also, yes.
Bottom line, another superb novel from Ronald Malfi.
Not sure if there’s a buzz in the back of my mouth or my head, but I feel like there might be more story to be told with these characters and where the novel ended.
Highly recommended.
© 2026 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | Titan Books
April 2026 | 765 Pages
https://www.petervbrett.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Titan Books
