Road of Bones
Books | Fiction / Thrillers / Supernatural
3.4
(86)
Christopher Golden
An American documentarian travels a haunted highway across the frozen tundra of Siberia in New York Times bestselling author Christopher Golden’s Road of Bones, a “tightly wound, atmospheric, and creepy as hell” (Stephen King) supernatural thriller.Surrounded by barren trees in a snow-covered wilderness with a dim, dusky sky forever overhead, Siberia’s Kolyma Highway is 1200 miles of gravel packed permafrost within driving distance of the Arctic Circle. A narrow path where drivers face such challenging conditions as icy surfaces, limited visibility, and an average temperature of sixty degrees below zero, fatal car accidents are common.But motorists are not the only victims of the highway. Known as the Road of Bones, it is a massive graveyard for the former Soviet Union’s gulag prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of people worked to death and left where their bodies fell, consumed by the frozen elements and plowed beneath the permafrost road.Fascinated by the history, documentary producer Felix “Teig” Teigland is in Russia to drive the highway, envisioning a new series capturing Life and Death on the Road of Bones with a ride to the town of Akhust, “the coldest place on Earth”, collecting ghost stories and local legends along the way. Only, when Teig and his team reach their destination, they find an abandoned town, save one catatonic nine-year-old girl—and a pack of predatory wolves, faster and smarter than any wild animals should be.Pursued by the otherworldly beasts, Teig’s companions confront even more uncanny and inexplicable phenomena along the Road of Bones, as if the ghosts of Stalin’s victims were haunting them. It is a harrowing journey that will push Teig beyond endurance and force him to confront the sins of his past.
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Horror
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Author
Christopher Golden
Pages
320
Publisher
St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published Date
2022-01-25
ISBN
1250274311 9781250274311
Community ReviewsSee all
"⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐<br/>5+ stars <br/>I was hooked like the Parnee hooks and catches with song persuasion. <br/>Once hooked, Golden is gonna reel you in to the last page. <br/><br/>⋆❆⋆Deathly cold setting<br/>⋆❆⋆Survival<br/>⋆❆⋆Friendships<br/>⋆❆⋆Siberian Folklore<br/>⋆❆⋆Camp Roanoke vibes<br/><br/>This is my first Christopher Golden book and won't be my last. I live in South Dakota and we can get some 40℃ below 0℃ weather here with windchills of -57℃ recorded as the coldest. I can feel the pain these people in this book are going through and they're getting worse than we have here in Siberia. <br/><br/>This is quite the ride. You have a documentary guy (Teig) and his close friend (Prentiss) who sticks to him no matter how deep in debt he gets. Teig is always on the look for TV show ideas and landed on the idea for traveling the Road of Bones and the town recorded for the coldest temps. Siberia Tundra where they are met with deathly cold threats and spirits from Siberian Folklore."
"This was quite bleak, but I did really enjoy it until around the last 40 pages. The story started to go so far off the rails that I could no longer stay onboard with where it was going and I struggled to finish. I was also annoyed that we didn’t actually get that much backstory on the actual Road of Bones. 3.5"
"If you like paranormal thrillers set in a remote location, this will be the book for you. I was intrigued from the beginning of getting to know the MC's Tieg and Prentiss. Being a big fan of paranormal investigator shows and the like, I was excited to learn that that was the background these men had. And their goal in being in this remote part of the world was to create the next best show. So, I was a fan of the characters right away. The excitement in the plot really started right from page one. I could really feel what they were feeling being in this super cold, remote area in Siberia.<br/><br/>That's the next thing...it is cold. At first, I found the descriptions of the cold endearing and helpful. I can barely imagine, but I felt like this was the best I'd ever be able to get close to imagining. However, as the book goes on there is no way that you can forget it's cold. It's mentioned so regularly by every single character, multiple times. It went past proving the point to being a bit grating. However, this was only mildly annoying. I would quickly lose the annoyance of it when gripped with the issues that these characters end up facing. And those problems surmount as the book goes on. <br/><br/>Overall, I find this book to be exciting and unique. I enjoyed the writing style. There were times it did drag and felt repetitive, but overall a good book. The one thing that I think would have made this book so much better for me is if we got a bit more information on a big character/plot point. However, I don't feel like it was very necessary to elaborate on it for the story to be a good one. <br/><br/>Thank you Netgalley and St. Martins Press for this ARC for a fair and honest review."