The profound success of Bird Box on streaming giant Netflix (an adaption of Josh Malerman's novel of the same name) led to Malerman beginning to write a sequel to his smash hit.
Once again, Malorie follows the eponymous Malorie and her two children as they venture out of the safe world of the school for the blind after danger finds them once again. After they escape the school for the blind, Malorie sees a blind woman that has gone mad from the creatures all around them. She determines that this is because the creatures now have the ability to transfer their madness onto someone through touch, rather than simply through sight.
Twelve years later, Malorie and her children are living in an abandoned Jewish summer camp. Her children, now rebellious teenagers, deal with Malorie's restrictive expectations and rules but realize that they are their only way of survival. Then, one day, Malorie discovers a potential camp for survivors. The group of survivors might even include her parents, who she thought were long dead. The trio travels to the camp but discovers an all-new threat along the way: humans who have been experimenting on the creatures, causing them to mutate and making them more dangerous.
According to Malerman, Bird Box and its sequel drew inspiration from a number of sources, including The Greater God Pan, The Twilight Zone, religious concepts, like the idea that God is infinite, and the film 10 Cloverfield Lane. Fundamentally, though, the novel is meant to entertain readers. Because of this, Malerman's novel has little literary merit aside from a couple of major themes.
Ultimately, Malorie is about the power of family, and the effect losing a key sense has on a person (Malerman explained in an interview that it was a struggle to write a story where a character is only able to experience bits and pieces of their story), and the power of connection and community in a world mostly bereft of both.
Not only that, Malorie is an exploration of what it means about being a teenager during unfamiliar and difficult times. After all, Malorie's children are some of the first to grow up in such a new world. And they are some of the first to navigate that world (while still teenaged behaviors from the before time). In that sense, the novel is also an exploration of power dynamics and how things have changed in the world.
