Snowblind by Christopher Golden
Published by St Martin’s Press/Headline, January 2014 (Review copy received.)
ISBN: 978-1472209580
480 pages
Review by Mark Yon
In wintertime here at Hobbit Towers there’s often nothing nicer than settling down with a hot drink and a good book whilst the weather outside is something rotten. Snowblind is one of those books: a gripping horror thriller that’s a great Winter read (though I daresay any time of the year might have the same effect.)
The title gives you a pretty good summary of the plot. We visit the town of Coventry, Massachusetts, as snow falls and puts its icy grip on this isolated settlement. The book begins twelve years before the main event: when a great snowstorm led to many deaths, and people disappearing in the blizzard.
This is clearly an event in itself. However, much of the book deals with the consequences of that first storm – the people left behind, the social and emotional lingering damage that such disasters can cause. Families have been made, others have broken up, but life has gone on. It’s an interesting take, that whilst the first part of the book seems to be what will be the main plot, after fifty pages or so the plot takes a leap forward a dozen years later.
Snowblind is full of those characters that fit the archetypes nicely: the sort of resolutely American characters that we normally meet in a Stephen King novel (and it is no great surprise that the cover gives a quote from Stephen, giving this book his blessing.). We have teachers, local bar owners, local police, local ne’er-do-well’s, all hunkering down before the arrival of the Great Storm in their small community. And when strange things start to happen, it’s clear that this storm may be different…
Being honest, Snowblind is nothing radically dissimilar to other tales – anyone who has seen the TV series The Returned will recognise some of this – but it is done very well. It does set up and use situations that the reader rather expects. This is deliberate, and no doubt is part of the fun, the fact that the reader immediately recognises parts of this place and the things that happen there. What Christopher has done here best is that trick that Stephen King does very well, and others try but rarely match: the ability to take characters, and give them recognisable nuances that we like or dislike, so that we care about their outcome when things go badly. There were characters that I really liked almost straight away, and that I wanted to know how things turned out for. And things do get grim, as you might expect.
It’s an engagingly winning read, with no over-stylistic frills, nor attempts to be clever. The characters are rather simple, but we’re not looking for particularly complex ones here. Instead, the reader expects – and gets – a rattling good read with some nicely creepy (some would say unearthly) protagonists, and a feeling at the time that this read has been worth their time. Just the sort of thing you want this time of year!
So: if you want a great page-turner, that kept me reading long after I expected to, to lose yourself in when the world outside is grim and the wind whistling around your abode makes you just a little bit worried, Snowblind may be for you. Recommended.
Mark Yon, November 2013
