Road of Bones

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.

Book source ~ NetGalley

Road of Bones

Christopher Golden

25 January 2022

Horror

320 Pages

My Rating ~ 3 bites and a nibble

Documentary producer Felix Teigland is so intrigued with the history of Siberia’s Kolyma Highway, the Road of Bones, that he convinces his friend, Jack Prentiss, to invest in his new series about it. Traveling to the coldest place on Earth is no picnic though and if the cold doesn’t kill them, something out there in the wilderness, something unnatural, just might.

I normally love Christopher Golden’s books, but this was a bit of a miss for me. The setting is perfect, the plot engaging, and the characters are wonderful. However, the supernatural stuff just fell flat for me. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it was a bit too way out there. Too much to suspend belief and just go with it? That could be it. The ghosts I believed 100%. It’s the other stuff that’s just meh for me. Don’t let my experience deter you though. This is a chilling horror tale set in a place that’s, well, chilling. The setting alone gave me the creeps. Yikes. Pick this up and give it a whirl.