Helpful Score: 2
"Don't Go Out Tonight..."
The badlands of Siberia. It really gets dark and killing cold out there-- and if you have car problems on this road it is all over. The Kolyma Highway lies on the bones of maybe six hundred thousand prisoners who died while building it. This is the most menacing place on Earth. In "Road of Bones" the hostility is cranked up as something beyond evil has been unleashed onto this sinister landscape.
"Teig" Teigland is a documentary filmmaker out to create a series about life along the highway. He and his partner Prentiss are desperate to sell to National Geographic or The Discovery Channel, desperate enough to risk the dangers of this world. Teig is plagued by guilt over the sister he could not save in their childhood and this provides motivation as he and Prentiss find themselves tasked with rescuing others stranded in the morass.
The intensity throughout is perfect-- a creepy nightmarish mood blankets everything. There is a bit of a letdown when the forms of the monsters are revealed--just as the shark in the movie Jaws is more terrifying before we see him. When the supernatural evil is exposed physically here it loses some potency. Still, this is quite a solid thrill ride from start to finish.
The badlands of Siberia. It really gets dark and killing cold out there-- and if you have car problems on this road it is all over. The Kolyma Highway lies on the bones of maybe six hundred thousand prisoners who died while building it. This is the most menacing place on Earth. In "Road of Bones" the hostility is cranked up as something beyond evil has been unleashed onto this sinister landscape.
"Teig" Teigland is a documentary filmmaker out to create a series about life along the highway. He and his partner Prentiss are desperate to sell to National Geographic or The Discovery Channel, desperate enough to risk the dangers of this world. Teig is plagued by guilt over the sister he could not save in their childhood and this provides motivation as he and Prentiss find themselves tasked with rescuing others stranded in the morass.
The intensity throughout is perfect-- a creepy nightmarish mood blankets everything. There is a bit of a letdown when the forms of the monsters are revealed--just as the shark in the movie Jaws is more terrifying before we see him. When the supernatural evil is exposed physically here it loses some potency. Still, this is quite a solid thrill ride from start to finish.
Helpful Score: 1
I had been looking forward to reading this book for several months after seeing a great endorsement from Stephen King: "Tightly wound, atmospheric, and creepy as hell..." The premise of the book also intrigued me about the Kolyma Highway in Siberia running 1,200 miles near the Arctic Circle and made by the victims of the former Soviet Union's gulag prisoners who constructed the road and were buried beneath it after being worked to death in building it.
The novel's protagonist, Felix "Tieg" Tiegland is a film documentarian who has struck out on past projects and feels that the road may be a promising opportunity. He decides to drive the highway with his friend and photographer, Jack Prentiss. He imagines calling his new show "Life and Death on the Road of Bones" because of its brutal history and because life there is so treacherous with temperatures dipping to 50 below zero. The duo pick up a guide at a remote service area and a stranded motorist along the way and then proceed to the town of Akhust which they find deserted except for one catatonic child. So what happened to the townspeople? The story then kind of devolved for me into a supernatural story involving native shamans, spirits, and otherworldly beasts that end up chasing the group back down the road along with the young child. So why are they chasing them and what the hell is going on?
This was really not what I expected. Where are the ghosts of the victims of the Soviets? Where are the abandoned gulags? The way the story ended and how it got there was disappointing for me. Although the myths of the Siberian wilderness could be interesting, I was expecting something totally different and much more chilling as advertised by King and others.
The novel's protagonist, Felix "Tieg" Tiegland is a film documentarian who has struck out on past projects and feels that the road may be a promising opportunity. He decides to drive the highway with his friend and photographer, Jack Prentiss. He imagines calling his new show "Life and Death on the Road of Bones" because of its brutal history and because life there is so treacherous with temperatures dipping to 50 below zero. The duo pick up a guide at a remote service area and a stranded motorist along the way and then proceed to the town of Akhust which they find deserted except for one catatonic child. So what happened to the townspeople? The story then kind of devolved for me into a supernatural story involving native shamans, spirits, and otherworldly beasts that end up chasing the group back down the road along with the young child. So why are they chasing them and what the hell is going on?
This was really not what I expected. Where are the ghosts of the victims of the Soviets? Where are the abandoned gulags? The way the story ended and how it got there was disappointing for me. Although the myths of the Siberian wilderness could be interesting, I was expecting something totally different and much more chilling as advertised by King and others.
