White Death

By: Christine Morgan

Narrated by: Matt Godfrey

Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

January 12, 1888.

When a day dawns warm and mild in the middle of a long, cold winter, it’s greeted as a blessing, a reprieve. It's a chance for those who’ve been cooped up indoors to get out, do chores, run errands, and send the children to school...little knowing they’re only seeing the calm before the storm.

The blizzard hits out of nowhere, screaming across the Great Plains like a runaway train. It brings slicing winds, blinding snow, and plummeting temperatures. Livestock will be found frozen in the fields, their heads encased in blocks of ice formed from their own steaming breath. Frostbite and hypothermia wait for anyone caught without shelter.

For the hardy settlers of Far Enough, in the Montana Territory, it’s about to get worse. Something else has arrived with the blizzard - something sleek and savage and hungry. Wild animal or vengeful spirit from Native American legend, it blends into the snow and bites with sharper teeth than the wind.

It is called the wanageeska. It is the White Death.

©2018 Christine Morgan (P)2018 Christine Morgan

White Death

I really loved this book. I think I have made it clear that I think Matt Godfrey is one of my favorite narrators (if not already my fave). I could talk all day about the great job he did performing this book. So I won't, sorry Matt. This book was too much fun on its own merits. It wasn't so much a horror or thriller or adventure... it was more like a re-telling of a historical event. Something that everyone knows has happened but is unwilling to talk too much about. During an unseasonably warm spell in the winter, a massive blizzard hits Montana. Many try and fail to survive the icy winter storm. Oh, and they are hunted by creatures of perhaps a supernatural origin.
There are roughly 65,000 characters in the book. Well, that is how it felt anyway. GRRM would have been proud. As the people were introduced, I began by trying to remember all the relationships people had with one another. This proved impossible for me, but I fought on because in a lot of cases, shortly after they were introduced, they were gone until the aftermath. This wasn't one person or a focus on a small group of people that had to fight both mother nature and what may very well have been a supernatural family of ferocious beasts. It could have been, but it would have been terrible. This was the frontier without weathermen or warning systems of any kind trying to establish themselves in the harshest of conditions. And don't get me wrong, just because the cast was so large didn't mean that I didn't care for particular people and want to see them thrive... they didn't by the way. At the end of the book, a laundry list of people and their outcomes is sussed out. One little girl's outcome made me very sad... as if unbeknownst to me, amid the flurry of new characters and snowfall, I was attached to these people and their well being.

This book was given to me for free at my request for my voluntary and unbiased review.