"A book that demands to be read in a single sitting, and through the cracks between one's fingers. There has never been a horror story quite like this. Josh Malerman truly delivers." — Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool
Written with the narrative tension of The Road and the exquisite terror of classic Stephen King, Bird Box is a propulsive, edge-of-your-seat horror thriller, set in an apocalyptic near-future world—a masterpiece of suspense from the brilliantly imaginative Josh Malerman.
Something is out there . . .
Something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.
Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remain, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now, that the boy and girl are four, it is time to go. But the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat—blindfolded—with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children's trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. And something is following them. But is it man, animal, or monster?
Engulfed in darkness, surrounded by sounds both familiar and frightening, Malorie embarks on a harrowing odyssey—a trip that takes her into an unseen world and back into the past, to the companions who once saved her. Under the guidance of the stalwart Tom, a motely group of strangers banded together against the unseen terror, creating order from the chaos. But when supplies ran low, they were forced to venture outside—and confront the ultimate question: in a world gone mad, who can really be trusted?
Interweaving past and present, Malerman's breathtaking debut is a horrific and gripping snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.
"A book that demands to be read in a single sitting, and through the cracks between one's fingers. There has never been a horror story quite like this. Josh Malerman truly delivers." — Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool
Written with the narrative tension of The Road and the exquisite terror of classic Stephen King, Bird Box is a propulsive, edge-of-your-seat horror thriller, set in an apocalyptic near-future world—a masterpiece of suspense from the brilliantly imaginative Josh Malerman.
Something is out there . . .
Something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.
Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remain, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now, that the boy and girl are four, it is time to go. But the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat—blindfolded—with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children's trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. And something is following them. But is it man, animal, or monster?
Engulfed in darkness, surrounded by sounds both familiar and frightening, Malorie embarks on a harrowing odyssey—a trip that takes her into an unseen world and back into the past, to the companions who once saved her. Under the guidance of the stalwart Tom, a motely group of strangers banded together against the unseen terror, creating order from the chaos. But when supplies ran low, they were forced to venture outside—and confront the ultimate question: in a world gone mad, who can really be trusted?
Interweaving past and present, Malerman's breathtaking debut is a horrific and gripping snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.
Critiques-
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Starred review from March 10, 2014
The sight of something unknown drives people to savagely attack others before taking their own lives in Malerman’s terrific debut, a sophisticated update of John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids. First reported in Russia, the mysterious plague spreads to the U.S., where it takes a devastating toll on humanity. The only defense against the madness is to avoid looking at the outside world. Four years after the initial outbreak, Malorie lives with her four-year-old twins, known as Boy and Girl, in a suburban Detroit house with sealed windows that has been prepared for long-term survival, stocked with food and other necessary supplies. When Malorie and her children go outside for brief periods, they do so blindfolded. Now Malorie has decided that the time is right for them to flee their refuge. The author uses understatement and allusion to create a lean, spellbinding thriller that Stephen King fans will relish. Agent: Kristin Nelson, Nelson Literary Agency. -
March 15, 2014
There is something out there. Something that drives people insane from simply seeing it. In their postapocalyptic world where looking outside is potentially deadly, Malorie and her two children live in perpetual darkness with blacked-out windows, blindfolding themselves when they venture outside. But Malorie can survive on her own for only so long. Hoping to find a safer place to live, she takes her children on a 20-mile trip down the river that runs behind their house. Blindfolded and alert to every sound, they set out on a journey that will require Malorie to use everything that she has to get her children to safety. Because something is following them, something that wants them to take off their blindfolds. VERDICT A good horror story lets the tension build slowly, eventually ending in a nail-biting crisis that is finally resolved by the novel's last page. Debut author Malerman, however, takes the pressure level from zero to 100 on page one and attempts to keep it there for the entire book. That extreme suspense becomes tedious after about 50 pages, and yet there are another 200-plus pages that the reader must get through. Malerman does attempt to add dimension to his protoganist by interspersing her backstory into the main plotline, but that addition only serves to make the peripheral characters more interesting than Malorie. With an anticlimactic ending, there is little reward here for the faithful reader who perseveres to the end.--Elisabeth Clark, West Florida P.L., Pensacola
Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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—Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool
"A book that demands to be read in a single sitting, and through the cracks between one's fingers. There has never been a horror story quite like this. Josh Malerman truly delivers." — Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool
"This completely compelling novel contains a thousand subtle touches but no mere flourishes-it is so well, so efficiently, so directly written I read it with real admiration. Josh Malerman does the job like a fast-talking, wised-up angel." — Peter Straub
"[A] chilling debut . . . Malerman. . . keeps us tinglingly on edge with his cool, merciless storytelling [and] douses his tale in poetic gloom....An unsettling thriller, this earns comparisons to Hitchcock's The Birds, as well as the finer efforts of Stephen King and cult sci-fi fantasist Jonathan Carroll." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The author uses understatement and allusion to create a lean, spellbinding thriller that Stephen King fans will relish." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
