Snowblind
by Michael Mc Bride
Delirium Books 2012
Reviewed by Mario Guslandi
I won’t be beating around the bush : this is a great horror thriller, a fast-paced, page-turning novella which will haunt you for a long time. After reading (and reviewing) horror fiction for decades I’m not easily frightened, believe me, but this is a book apt to scare even people with steel nerves.
The story describes a nightmarish hunting expedition in the Rocky Mountains, where four friends meet year after year to re-tighten their bonds and to escape from the blues of everyday life. But this time things are not quite right from the beginning. First of all the weather is frightfully bed because of a terrible blizzard hitting the area. Then, much worse than that, there is a murderous, brutal, carnivorous something or someone lurking around, ready to silently kill after cunningly trapping its victims in a dead end trap.
I won’t say anything more, in order to avoid spoilers which would ruin the pleasure of being bewildered and unsettled by the power of Mc Bride’s narrative style.
The plot develops with not a single moment of pause or boredom, the book being just impossible to put down. Not for the squeamish or the fainthearted, “Snowblind” is by no means a grandguignolesque feast, but a strong piece of fiction where characterization is kept to a minimum while the desperate fight for survival doesn’t spare unpleasant details ,none of which, however, is redundant or complacent.
Author of several successful novels, Mc Bride confirms to be a master also of medium-length fiction where he has to employ his storytelling ability to compress in a shorter narrative the explosive force of unbounded terror.
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