Source: Purchased
Paperback, 240 pgs.
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Road of Bones by Christopher Golden is set in the coldest part of Russia on Siberia’s Kolyma Highway, which was built by hundreds of thousands of forced laborers from the gulag who were interred in the pavement after dying during its construction during the Stalinist era. Felix “Teig” Teigland has rented a truck and convinced his cameraman friend Prentiss to join him on the Road of Bones as he sniffs out the next television series idea he needs to pay back Prentiss and numerous others.
“Don’t fall asleep,”Prentiss said.
Teig forced a smile. “Don’t bore me to death and I’ll stay awake.”
In the frozen tundra, keeping any vehicle on the road is difficult. From the moment they are on the road, it is clear that the cold of the tundra will play a significant role in this story, almost as if it were another character. Teig’s uneasy, “The worm of nausea squiggled anew in his gut,” especially when he meets the guide, Kaskil, he hired. Life and death on the road of bones is something that Teig sees will save his career, but perhaps he should be more concerned about his actual life and death situation in a place where the weather can kill you.
When he and Prentiss meet Kaskil and make it to his home town of Akhust, it is more than legends and ghost stories that they find. The town has been abandoned, with some of its people leaving their homes while barefoot. Lurking in the woods, wolves are stalking them, but these are not traditional wolves.
My one quibble was the character of Ludmilla, who is introduced and we get to know her and her mission to free the souls on the Road of Bones, but her connection to the main story line seems so rushed. It seemed as if she were a ghost in the first place or part of the legend of the woman on the Road of Bones freeing souls, but then she isn’t. It was a bit disappointing, but didn’t detract too much from the main story. Perhaps there’s another book in the works with her?
Despite the plot holes, Golden has created an otherworldly feeling with the killer cold, mysterious disappearance of a whole town, the appearance of a beautiful woman, and the eyes in the forests at the edge of town. Road of Bones by Christopher Golden is definitely all you would expect it to be — creepy, suspenseful, and chock full of gruesome murder.
RATING: Quatrain
About the Author:
Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of such novels as Road of Bones, Ararat, Snowblind, and Red Hands. With Mike Mignola, he is the co-creator of the Outerverse comic book universe, including such series as Baltimore, Joe Golem: Occult Detective, and Lady Baltimore. As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies Seize the Night, Dark Cities, and The New Dead, among others, and he has also written and co-written comic books, video games, screenplays, and a network television pilot. In 2015 he founded the popular Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival. He was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His work has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award, the Eisner Award, and multiple Shirley Jackson Awards. For the Bram Stoker Awards, Golden has been nominated ten times in eight different categories, and won twice. His original novels have been published in more than fifteen languages in countries around the world.