Alone and stranded in the Arctic wasteland, would you risk your life to save a stranger or try to get home?
Paul
is a father-to-be; traumatised by his past, he's terrified of becoming a
father after his own beat him until he was unilaterally deaf. While
working as a freelance cameraman in the Arctic, he's caught in a
blizzard, separated from his crew, and falls into a chasm. Alone, and
waiting for death to come, personal demons plague his mind.
When a
young native girl falls into the chasm with him, Paul must learn how to
accept responsibility and what it takes to give your life for a child.
FERAL SNOW,
while a tense and action-packed story, is an intimate journey between
two polar opposites and how love can be forged in the unlikeliest of
circumstances.
It has been compared to The Revenant, 127 Hours, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
I
began writing FERAL SNOW with the idea of writing a commercial thriller.
Slowly, over time, it morphed into something more though. Paul’s layers began
to unravel and his true colours came to the surface. His history of abuse
became so much more important than I had first intended. I fell in love with
all of the characters and I’ll admit I had a tear in my eye while writing the
ending.My Thoughts:
I was tempted in to reading this book by the blurb of course but also the fact that The Road by Cormac McCarthy is one of my favourite books. I can understand the comparisions, whilst Feral Snow doesn't have the sparsity of language that The Road did, the landscape and environment have been perfectly captured. Even I felt a bit chilly whilst I was reading. So engrossed was I that I curled up under a blanket and read this in one sitting.
At the outset Paul is arriving in the Arctic to do some filming. A blizzard means one thing and that is danger. Paul becomes separated from the rest of his colleagues and he falls in to a chasm. He finds himself alone and with only his thoughts for company and most of them aren't good. It doesn't look like he is ever going to see his child now. He is struggling to grasp for the best ways to keep himself alive when a native girl Nanny falls into the chasm too.
Nanny seems to be completely different to Paul personality wise. She seems strong where at first Paul seems weak. Can they find a common ground and ultimately is it going to become clear who is helping who. It has taken a lot of skill from the author to make these characters so engaging as for the most part it is just them.
There are important points to be take from reading this book surrounding the environment and global warming and the author has layered these points in well. There is also a theme of abuse that threads through the story. This is a survival story with a difference.
I quite simply found this book stunning. I thought it was original, with a setting that is brought to life with the effortless descriptive nature. There is a lot of monochrome in this book with the amount of snow etc but the writing here is not one shade it is kaleidoscopic. Riveting stuff and a richly rewarding read.
About the Author:
Mark Lowes is a former teacher, current early
childhood educator, and future dad. He lives in Cardiff, Wales, UK, and is
sometimes found lamenting over how awful his football team is. While he's not
working with deaf children and their families, he's writing dark and twisty
fiction.
His writing, so he's told, is a mix between
Chuck Palahniuk Josh Malerman and Ernest Hemingway (although Mark retains, all
this praise is too much too high). He loves edge-of-your-seat fiction, novels
that make you think deeper about the world but will also terrify you and live
the world through the protagonist, experiencing every detail. He’s a fan of
description, somewhat a lost art nowadays, and has a soft spot for a dark,
unreliable narrator.
You can find him on Twitter @StrugglingMJ where
he would be excited to hear your views.
Mark
is the winner of Litopia's Pop-Up Submissions and of a pitch contest at the
Cardiff Book Festival. Publication Date: 1st October, 2020
Please do have a look at the other stops on the blog tour:
Huge thanks for the blog tour support Leah x
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