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The Mall
“At just under 8 million square feet and towering four stories, with one subterranean level for time-saving transport, the Mall of the Nation is home to 1600 stores and an additional three stories of residential apartments.
Boasting a 30 screen movie theater, a five star resort-style hotel and two five star restaurants, the Mall is everything you ever wanted in one place.
You may never want to leave.”
When single mother Lara Myers finds herself suddenly homeless with her two children, she takes refuge for the night in the Mall of the Nation, a completely automated retail complex that never closes. When a catastrophic event occurs, the Mall is locked down, causing Lara to be separated from her ten-year-old son Owen.
Trapped and desperate, Lara enlists the aid of Simon whose job it is to maintain and repair the Mall’s army of Bots. Lara finds herself in a life and death struggle to save her family from homicidal and supernatural forces to which Simon may hold the key.
For they discover that they are not alone and that something does not want them to escape from...
The Mall
Boasting a 30 screen movie theater, a five star resort-style hotel and two five star restaurants, the Mall is everything you ever wanted in one place.
You may never want to leave.”
When single mother Lara Myers finds herself suddenly homeless with her two children, she takes refuge for the night in the Mall of the Nation, a completely automated retail complex that never closes. When a catastrophic event occurs, the Mall is locked down, causing Lara to be separated from her ten-year-old son Owen.
Trapped and desperate, Lara enlists the aid of Simon whose job it is to maintain and repair the Mall’s army of Bots. Lara finds herself in a life and death struggle to save her family from homicidal and supernatural forces to which Simon may hold the key.
For they discover that they are not alone and that something does not want them to escape from...
The Mall
ebook
First published May 1, 2012
75 people are currently reading
339 people want to read
About the author
Bryant Delafosse
5 books14 followersAuthor/Screenwriter Bryant Delafosse is a native of Southeast Texas, graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, and currently lives in SoCal.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
dnfed
November 28, 2024The premise of the book seemed interesting especially for a fan of retail horror such as myself. Unfortunately, the lead character suffered from a bad case of "written by a man", she was shallow, spiteful, obsessed with shiny things and her age (she's an ancient relic at her big age of 29 but she could still get a man… as if that was a big accomplishment), unable to cope without her husband (who was apparently unable to plan too) and she was also abusive to her son and not shy about it. We also absolutely needed to know that she didn't want her children and had only gotten them because aforementioned allergic to planning husband had wanted them and she gave in cause he had pretty eyes. Maybe she was just your average conservative/biblical/mommy vlogger type of woman, and the author is actually really good at creating unlikeable character. Either way, by the 2% mark I was convinced that the best thing that could happen to poor Owen would be to not find his way back to her and I noped it out of there.
No rating because DNF.
No rating because DNF.
August 14, 2021
When I was a kid, I loved a movie called Chopping Mall ( I think that was the name). It was about a technological advanced mall that used robots for security (or something like that. It's been many years and I haven't Googled it yet(. So this book seemed like a newer version of that with newer tech. The beginning of the book was great. Exploring this new mall was a total delight. Then things go bad. I'm not into supernatural, but it fit with this book.
February 4, 2015
Robots? I would have read this long time ago. This was somewhat mismarketed, the cover and description somehow coming across more as a haunted/possessed mall. But this really is a robot novel, certainly more scifi than horror and a pretty good one at that. The enormous star of the book, The Mall, stands in Texas (of course) and has it all as a genuine monument to a culture that worships technology and consumerism in equal measures. Set in a parallel universe where political events took different turns in the few decades preceding resulting in the Japanese/US techboom resulting in superior technology resulting in robots this is a survival story of what happens in the mall when a solar flare hits, scrambling all that tech like so many eggs. This was a debut novel and as such certain things might have used more work, primarily it might have used some trimming down and the ending might have been improved upon. The book was certainly overly long. But...it was pretty clever, inventive and quite entertaining. Genre wise until now the mall has been most closely associated with surviving a zombie apocalypse. Now the question is can you survive The Mall. Fun read.
September 24, 2012
Film director John Carpenter used a system with his movies where he would create an amazing exposition. An "okay, here's the situation" device that would suck the viewer into whatever world it was he had created. I personally love that aspect of his films and Bryant Delafosse's The Mall makes heavy use of it.
Okay, here's the situation...
Lara Myers is in a pickle. The economy is tanking and she is a widow who is barely making ends meet as an administrative assistant. With two kids in tow, she is horrified to find out that her landlords have foreclosed on her apartment and her key to the front door no longer works. It would just so happen that her deceased husband was her lifeline to society and her options for help are limited. The only route for a remedy lies with her mother-in-law - who, unfortunately, hates her guts.
This old dowager lives in a fully-automated condo atop a just as fully-automated megamall. The structure is a behemoth of commerce that stretches for miles outside of a Texan megacity. I can't help but think of the gargantuan Costco featured in the movie Idiocracy. Yeah, that big. After a mishap between her children and the crone's android dog, Lara's pickle gets all the more bitter. With no place to call home, the remains of the Myers family must spend the night in The Mall...
Delafosse can not only illustrate an intriguing lay of the land, but his characters are quite believable in their reactions to an array of devilish situations. That's a refreshing use of literature, because so many science fiction writers focus so much on the milieu and not on the emotions and minds of the cast. The Mall is like J.G. Ballard's High Rise with a heart, and this is presented to the reader as the protagonist is so vulnerable. I'm not sure if this is an indie publication, but I doubt mainstream publishers would take a chance on featuring such a main character. After all, this story takes place on a family's first night of homelessness. Naturally, horror.
Another interesting aspect is the book's timeline. At first, I thought it was about twenty minutes into the future as everything is automated and androids are accepted as commonplace. They have the internet (but it is a bit different from ours) and a flourishing economy on its last legs. But why in the hell are The Goonies and Back to the Future brand-new movies? After some brilliant revelations, we realize that the novel takes place in an alternate 1980's! An alternate 1985 if I'm not mistaken. This world enjoyed a 1960's dominated by eight years of JFK and a robotic heyday of the 1970's. How cool is that?
The plot has not only elements of sci-fi, but delves into the supernatural. The book is a smorgasbord of genres, but I did not get lost in the cavalcade of...cool horror. I don't know what else to call it. The twists and turns are there, but not in an M. Night Shyamalan fashion and I felt that they were handled elegantly.
Grammar fascists will wince at some of the typos, but I felt that the story itself overrode that and I could forgive them. But for those foibles, I would give the book five stars for character, plot, an incredible setting and Delafosse's ability to conjure suspense. These characters really have their work cut out for them as they attempt to survive The Mall.
Okay, here's the situation...
Lara Myers is in a pickle. The economy is tanking and she is a widow who is barely making ends meet as an administrative assistant. With two kids in tow, she is horrified to find out that her landlords have foreclosed on her apartment and her key to the front door no longer works. It would just so happen that her deceased husband was her lifeline to society and her options for help are limited. The only route for a remedy lies with her mother-in-law - who, unfortunately, hates her guts.
This old dowager lives in a fully-automated condo atop a just as fully-automated megamall. The structure is a behemoth of commerce that stretches for miles outside of a Texan megacity. I can't help but think of the gargantuan Costco featured in the movie Idiocracy. Yeah, that big. After a mishap between her children and the crone's android dog, Lara's pickle gets all the more bitter. With no place to call home, the remains of the Myers family must spend the night in The Mall...
Delafosse can not only illustrate an intriguing lay of the land, but his characters are quite believable in their reactions to an array of devilish situations. That's a refreshing use of literature, because so many science fiction writers focus so much on the milieu and not on the emotions and minds of the cast. The Mall is like J.G. Ballard's High Rise with a heart, and this is presented to the reader as the protagonist is so vulnerable. I'm not sure if this is an indie publication, but I doubt mainstream publishers would take a chance on featuring such a main character. After all, this story takes place on a family's first night of homelessness. Naturally, horror.
Another interesting aspect is the book's timeline. At first, I thought it was about twenty minutes into the future as everything is automated and androids are accepted as commonplace. They have the internet (but it is a bit different from ours) and a flourishing economy on its last legs. But why in the hell are The Goonies and Back to the Future brand-new movies? After some brilliant revelations, we realize that the novel takes place in an alternate 1980's! An alternate 1985 if I'm not mistaken. This world enjoyed a 1960's dominated by eight years of JFK and a robotic heyday of the 1970's. How cool is that?
The plot has not only elements of sci-fi, but delves into the supernatural. The book is a smorgasbord of genres, but I did not get lost in the cavalcade of...cool horror. I don't know what else to call it. The twists and turns are there, but not in an M. Night Shyamalan fashion and I felt that they were handled elegantly.
Grammar fascists will wince at some of the typos, but I felt that the story itself overrode that and I could forgive them. But for those foibles, I would give the book five stars for character, plot, an incredible setting and Delafosse's ability to conjure suspense. These characters really have their work cut out for them as they attempt to survive The Mall.
November 9, 2015
There is a lot going on in this novel and it made for a hard read because of it. Its like everything was being thrown in to make it more interesting but what it did was keep me confused. There is science fiction with an automated Mall with robots and a central intelligence running things. Then we have a revisionist history which has figures alive and kicking who died in the original timeline, a paranormal leaning with psychic individuals and ghosts running around. With all of this I was still actually kind of bored while reading it. I never really felt anything much for any of the characters, though I did want them to survive if only because they were children. The mother was kind of unsympathetic and annoying for the most part. It felt like it was to long and could have been concluded sooner.
Lara is the mother of two children, Cora and Owen, the widow of Ben and not a great planner at all. She has been evicted from her home and finds herself homeless with her children and no backup plan. Lara is going to the one person she hoped not to have to ask for help, her mother-in-law who blames her for the death of her son. She lives in the residential section of the Mall, Lara hopes that she will allow the children to stay with her until she can make arrangements for a new place to live. But she wants to take the children and to brand Lara an unfit mother, so she leaves and decides to stay in the Mall.
Owen is ten years old and blames his mother for everything and anything. When she falls asleep in the movie he decides to sneak off and do something he wants, even though he is leaving his sister as well. Not surprisingly there is a power outage and he is cut off from his family, a killer is roaming the Mall, the robots are all offline, and Lara is panicking. There is an evil presence in the Mall and reuniting is more difficult than anyone could have expected.
When I read the blurb I was really excited about reading this book because it sounded good. I am not quite so enthusiastic about it now. It took me 8 days to read a book that should have only taken me three at the outside. This did not work for me but maybe it will for someone else. Just to much going on and not enough action or scares to keep me engaged. I finished it because I do not like to quit and find that I missed something.
Lara is the mother of two children, Cora and Owen, the widow of Ben and not a great planner at all. She has been evicted from her home and finds herself homeless with her children and no backup plan. Lara is going to the one person she hoped not to have to ask for help, her mother-in-law who blames her for the death of her son. She lives in the residential section of the Mall, Lara hopes that she will allow the children to stay with her until she can make arrangements for a new place to live. But she wants to take the children and to brand Lara an unfit mother, so she leaves and decides to stay in the Mall.
Owen is ten years old and blames his mother for everything and anything. When she falls asleep in the movie he decides to sneak off and do something he wants, even though he is leaving his sister as well. Not surprisingly there is a power outage and he is cut off from his family, a killer is roaming the Mall, the robots are all offline, and Lara is panicking. There is an evil presence in the Mall and reuniting is more difficult than anyone could have expected.
When I read the blurb I was really excited about reading this book because it sounded good. I am not quite so enthusiastic about it now. It took me 8 days to read a book that should have only taken me three at the outside. This did not work for me but maybe it will for someone else. Just to much going on and not enough action or scares to keep me engaged. I finished it because I do not like to quit and find that I missed something.
August 31, 2016
Outstanding take on a time worn plot. Great Read.
OK.. No Spoilers from this reviewer.. the description tells you what the novel is about. The author used a time worn plot in an astounding new way. I really enjoyed this novel.. it is fun, fast paced, realistic and a bit haunting.
The prose uses an eclectic mix of 80's culture and futuristic temperament to weave a suspenseful thrilling tale through a familiar yet bizarre landscape. The humor and the horror can be "felt" in the pages, in fact the author has his unique way of presenting the characters and situations so a reader can't help but understand what each person is going through. The novel throws together a varied range of personalities; each trying to survive in a crisis yet also trying to collaborate to find a solution.
For this reader The Mall is a novel about what very well may happen in the near future as our society continues to move forward as a consumer, instant gratification, technological driven culture.
OK.. No Spoilers from this reviewer.. the description tells you what the novel is about. The author used a time worn plot in an astounding new way. I really enjoyed this novel.. it is fun, fast paced, realistic and a bit haunting.
The prose uses an eclectic mix of 80's culture and futuristic temperament to weave a suspenseful thrilling tale through a familiar yet bizarre landscape. The humor and the horror can be "felt" in the pages, in fact the author has his unique way of presenting the characters and situations so a reader can't help but understand what each person is going through. The novel throws together a varied range of personalities; each trying to survive in a crisis yet also trying to collaborate to find a solution.
For this reader The Mall is a novel about what very well may happen in the near future as our society continues to move forward as a consumer, instant gratification, technological driven culture.
June 29, 2012
What a joy to find another writer of the caliber of Koontz and King. If you are like me, that has read all of Koontz and every summer you pick up another of his books to re-read because you cannot find a new Sci-fi thriller. Search no more. Bryant Delafosse, had me engaged from beginning to end. Without giving out the plot I can tell you that there were moments when I could actually feel the heat of the furnace, the vibration of the glass that was about to break by that constant crazy pounding and felt the fine cool breeze before they… well, you have to read this book. He is an amazing writer that is all I have to say. I encourage any one to read this thriller well worth every cent you pay and every word you read.
May 4, 2013
I found for free for my kindle app. I wasn't expecting much, but boy was I happily amazed. The characters are created masterfully. The story is told similar to the style of King. Lots of cliffhangers, debates of good and evil, a really good yarn. If I had to classify it, I would say it is Stephen king meets science fiction with a little bit of religion thrown in. I have another author that I am gonna look out for.
March 5, 2014
Great story...somewhat unique twist to a not-so-unique premise. This author has definite promise, but needs to work on his editing skills, or find a pro to do the job for him. I would have appreciated an ending that wrapped everything up a bit tighter, but an enjoyable read overall.
February 10, 2016
4.5/5
I was looking forward to kicking back to some teotwawki/horror fun with a bit of 'Dawn of the Dead' thrown into the mix and this delivered that and much more. It was much more complex and had more depth to the plot and characters than I expected.
I was looking forward to kicking back to some teotwawki/horror fun with a bit of 'Dawn of the Dead' thrown into the mix and this delivered that and much more. It was much more complex and had more depth to the plot and characters than I expected.
April 23, 2023
Lara Myers finds herself homeless with her two children, Owen & Cora. They take refuge for the night in the Mall of the Nation, a completely automated retail complex that never closes. A catastrophic event occurs, pitting the mall into lockdown. Of course, it happens while Owen has snuck away from his mom.
Obviously, Lara doesn't heed the call to evacuate as finding her ten-year-old son is her priority. Lara looks to Simon, a worker at the mall who maintains the Bots. The mall itself seems to be working against Lara & Simaon as they fight to find Owen & escape.
The very best part of the book is the alternate reality aspect. "The Mall" takes place in a timeline that is vastly different from the one that we live in. The "facts" sprinkled throughout the book are absolutely fascinating! The book has a lot going on, so unfortunately, this doesn't get much attention. There are several plot types going on - horror, paranormal, family dynamics- & they don't always mesh well together. Lara wasn't a very likable character, not due to her being flawed, but more because she wasn't very developed.
The book would definitely benefit from a bit of editing as well.
Obviously, Lara doesn't heed the call to evacuate as finding her ten-year-old son is her priority. Lara looks to Simon, a worker at the mall who maintains the Bots. The mall itself seems to be working against Lara & Simaon as they fight to find Owen & escape.
The very best part of the book is the alternate reality aspect. "The Mall" takes place in a timeline that is vastly different from the one that we live in. The "facts" sprinkled throughout the book are absolutely fascinating! The book has a lot going on, so unfortunately, this doesn't get much attention. There are several plot types going on - horror, paranormal, family dynamics- & they don't always mesh well together. Lara wasn't a very likable character, not due to her being flawed, but more because she wasn't very developed.
The book would definitely benefit from a bit of editing as well.
November 5, 2020
Interesting book
This mall, was a modern marvel. Run almost completely by robots, or bots. There are a few humans there, just for support. A catastrophic event happened. Most were evacuated from the mall, but not all. A Mom, her two kids, a couple of teenagers, one strange man, and a security guard were still there. So were the people, who lived in the apts. upstairs. Things went to hell in a hand basket.
This mall, was a modern marvel. Run almost completely by robots, or bots. There are a few humans there, just for support. A catastrophic event happened. Most were evacuated from the mall, but not all. A Mom, her two kids, a couple of teenagers, one strange man, and a security guard were still there. So were the people, who lived in the apts. upstairs. Things went to hell in a hand basket.
September 12, 2021
This book has a lot of good. I loved the premise. I cared about the characters. It was written quite well. Yet it dragged for me. I don't know the last time it took me so long to finish a book. I'd read a bit and then set it down to read something else. I found it difficult to force myself to pick it back up. I finally told myself to finish it today or send it to DNF. There are several strong elements to the story that pushed me to finish. I think I just got really bored with the robot talk.
August 1, 2017
I had two major issues with this book: the absence of editing, and the supernatural components. The editing just showed a lack of care, even if this was a free read; and the supernatural was actually irrelevant to the book and actually made the story worse. Overall a good story though, but the little girl does not need to be psychic to make the book work.
August 30, 2021
I got this book for free in Amazon and i procastinated his reading till now... Its a scary suspenfull book, at first i thought it was what would happen outside that would make the story, oh Boy how i was wrong..
Read
August 3, 2024Tried reading this one, but it wasn't holding my interest. I found it boring and a bit hard to follow. Totally uninteresting. Deleted it from my Kindle w/o finishing it.
January 24, 2016
The Mall is an awesome book. It's a fast moving story full of action and breathe-holding suspense. This story is a fascinating combination of science fiction, horror and a bit of the paranormal. The story follows a small number of people trapped in a huge automated shopping mall after a massive power failure. As the various characters move through the dark, they discover something evil is in there with them. I believe that Bryant Delafosse will someday be a contemporary of Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Harry Turtledove. If you are a fan of those authors, you will definitely like this book.
January 23, 2013
Wow. I can't believe that this book is from a first time author. The characters were very well done and he kept the tension ratcheted up nicely throughout. There were several twisty surprises that really added to the story and I enjoyed the heck out of it. I did notice a few editing errors, but there were very few, and they did not at all detract from the story.
September 4, 2016
I really enjoyed reading this. The idea of a shopping mall staffed by robots is kinda creepy! As you might expect, the robots turn rogue and a fight for survival trapped inside the mall ensues. An excellent book.
December 20, 2012
It would have been better had it had an ending that actually explained everything. I had such high hopes, but it just stopped.
January 4, 2014
I like his other one better. This was good, but kind of predictable and I wasn't that hot on the ending.
Want to read
February 13, 2014FREE ON AMAZON 13/02/14
January 25, 2016
It looked like a horror book from the cover but it was more like a futuristic book with robots. The robots ran the mall. A widow with two children trying to survive.
December 20, 2016
it is a great read not like the type of books i do read but i couldn't put my kindle down lol so yea read the mall if u life robots!!
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews