Let’s face it: The Fog and The Mist weren’t the best movies (I still need to read Stephen King’s original novel of the latter before writing it off completely), but that’s not to say the premises didn’t have potential.  Go play Alan Wake and you’ll understand.  I was hoping Snowblind would create an experience more along the lines of this video game, but it still just isn’t chilling enough.

For those of you not familiar with the concepts and/or stories of the items mentioned above, then let me break it down: a creepy environment can lead to scares.  Simple enough.  Most do this with darkness, but the same effect can be caused through the unfortunate aspects of our weather system.  Fog, mist, blizzard-like conditions all make it a challenge to see the horrors lurking out there for you, which is where Snowblind comes in.  Twelve years ago there was a raging blizzard in a northeastern town called Coventry, leaving many dead with few answers as to how they got that way.  Only those souls that were lost that night (and one little boy) know what was out there with the snow, but now as another blizzard looms near, more will quickly become privy to that information.

The audience is let in on the creatures that lurk in the snowstorm within the first few chapters of the story, so it is for the characters of the book to play catch up throughout the entirety of the novel.  I can’t fault any rational human being on not believing in monsters, and that’s not actually my problem with the majority of the story since they’re pretty quick to accept that side of the situation once it is in front of them; my problem comes from how most are oblivious to the happenings that come before the clouds break.  It is another one of those hard to believe for a logical individual, but my patience was definitely tried by some characters that would make connections (though it might have just been the author trying to clue in the extremely unobservant readers among the group) between certain things, yet not see what is actually happening.  I don’t care if this is a truthful representation of what would happen in reality, I wanted to smack some of these characters upside the head for not understanding what story they are a part of!

Though I found the timeline of the events happening during the second storm slightly confusing as it jumps from one character to the next as it moves towards the climax, it definitely picks up in a way that pulls any part of me that had fallen out of the story back in.  A little of that appreciation was lost in how the story is wrapped up, and as I closed the pages of this book (or turned my Kindle off, rather), I couldn’t help thinking that this would make a better movie.  I hate to say it, but it’s true.  I don’t need to be in the minds of these characters.  I’d actually rather not be.

That’s definitely not a good note to come away from a book with, but I still enjoyed it for the most part.  It just pales in comparison to the horror book I read prior, NOS4A2.  If debating between that and Snowblind, go with Joe Hill; if not, maybe wait for the next story with a similar concept to this to come along.

Final Grade: 3 out of 5      Follow @BewareOfTrees