Thoughts on : Malorie by Josh Malerman

Posted by Kay on July 30, 2021 1:49 pm in 3 stars reads | 0 comments

Malorie by Josh Malerman
Genre : Horror
Series : Bird Box 2

About the Book  :

Twelve years after Malorie and her children rowed up the river to safety, a blindfold is still the only thing that stands between sanity and madness. One glimpse of the creatures that stalk the world will drive a person to unspeakable violence. There remains no explanation. No solution.

But then comes what feels like impossible news : someone very dear to her, someone she believed dead, may be alive.

Malorie has a harrowing choice to make: to live by the rules of survival that have served her so well, or to venture into the darkness and reach for hope once more.

Bird Box is one of my favorite horror books, and I quite enjoyed the movie. There was no doubt in my mind I would want to read Malorie, even though I didn’t feel a sequel was needed. It’s safe to say I went in with low expectations!

Maybe that’s why I thought the book was somewhat entertaining. Was it as good as Bird Box? No, and to be honest, it didn’t come close. But it developed some interesting ideas within the world Malerman created, several I hadn’t really thought about before.

I was quickly hooked : this imagined future is as intriguing and bleak as before, and the pace is quite quick. There’s action, danger, twists, lots of suspense. There’s annoying characters, too, but I didn’t mind them too much.

But all along, I kept thinking the story really wasn’t necessary. One of the strength of Bird Box is its ending, not quite opened but not quite completely closed either. A lot of its impact relies on the reader’s imagination. In Malorie, we learn more about the world and the “creatures”. And for each question that is answered, or tentatively answered, five more appear, making the worldbuilding feel a bit more shaky and less “possible”. Consequently, I felt it lost some of its impact.

All in all, Malorie was entertaining but didn’t quite work for me. I still enjoyed Josh Malerman’s writing though, so I know I’ll want to read more from him in the future.