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 were left where their bodies fell, consumed by the frozen elements, and ploughed 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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Teig snapped awake behind the wheel and hit her brakes, but the tires found only ice.1
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(@TitanBooks, 7 November 2022, e-book, 256 pages, #ARC from the publisher via @ NetGalley)
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I really enjoyed Road of Bones. This is the type of horror novel I love; intense, unsettling, creepy and a dash of predatory menace, and every moment of gore is earned and works. I hate horror fiction that's all about the blood and gore. I felt really connected to the characters, especially when Teig and his companions discover what the strange wolves want and why they are pursuing them, forcing difficult choices. This is a mesmerising book.
