I'm not sure what it is about Christopher Golden's writing that so perfectly immerses you with immediate effect into whatever narrative he is presenting to you but whatever it is I want more of it.

Road of Bones is such a clever book, lulling you into a false sense of security then BAM, knocking you sideways with the force of a freight train and sending you right to the edge of your seat. And basically it keeps doing that from first page to last.

I really don't want to give anything away so I'll describe it as the most deliciously dark fairytale I've read in forever, an actually scary horror folklore themed story that is packed to the brim with superb characters, emotional trauma, a kind of twisted road trip that is hugely satisfying. I absolutely loved it.

Don't miss this one. Simply superb.

What a crazy tale of folklore set deep in the cold depth of Siberia. Certainly a rollercoaster of the fantastic and gruesome. The savageness of instinct and loyalty of friends is intertwined in a race for survival. Ludmilla was a touching character that bound the story together. Everything has a balance and everything has a cost.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc

Felix Teigland, a documentary producer, and his closest friend and colleague Jack Prentiss are on a Siberian trek headed to, Oymyakon, the coldest inhabited place on earth. They are traversing the dangerous Kolyma Highway, otherwise known as the Road of Bones, in search of Teig's next big show to pitch. Teig hires a local Yakut guide but when they arrive at the settlement it’s abandoned except for a mysterious nine-year-old girl who appears to be in shock. While searching for answers they discover something far more sinister than they could have imagined. Pursued across the deadly permafrost by a malevolent shaman and his deadly animalistic minions the group must fight for survival where all the odds are stacked against them.

Road of Bones is the new horrifying action-packed novel by Christopher Golden. This novel starts out with a bang and maintains a tense and sinister tone right up until the last page. The thought of traveling across the Siberian permafrost, where subzero temps can freeze you to death, is frightening enough but then add animalistic monsters hunting you and it becomes nightmare fuel. Although I enjoyed the characters and the history behind the Road of Bones, this wasn't my favorite novel by this author. I felt like the plot focused quite a bit on the history of the road but the threats themselves were entirely different and didn't really get a full explanation. Overall this was a fascinating and enjoyable read with the perfect blend of mystery, suspense, and horror.

This book is a crazy a** roller coaster. I love to jump into a book knowing very little and really being surprised and this book DELIVERS. Imagine finding a girl near death on the side of the road. You save her, and are trying to take her to her nearest family member. But along the way you realize you are being chased By something - inhuman? I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Thank you Netgalley, St. Martin's Press, and Author Christopher Golden for this ARC.

WHOA! If you want to go on a wild, ice-cold, fast-paced, spooky ride then get in and buckle up!

We join Teig as he decides to do a documentary about the Kolyma Highway which Stalin's galugs were forced to build and so, so many died while doing so and were mixed into the asphalt and became forever part of the highway. Yikes! Talk about haunting.

This is going to be absolutely PERFECT for Halloween reading. It's a short read but it's far from short on suspense and supernatural scares.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC of Road of Bones by Christopher Golden. For fans of The Only Good Indians, Road of Bones takes you into a world of unbelievable folklore and danger. Set in Siberia, the plot propels you forward as you chillingly watch the main characters run for their lives from an indescribable set of foes. I have to let this one rest for awhile before I decide on a true rating. It was mind bending, but definitely kept me reading.

This great book starts out with the coldest road trip you have ever heard of. Two friends who are going so far north in Russia that the temp gets so low sometimes it’s 60 degrees below. As a matter of fact it was after I finished the book I found out there really is such a road of bones that is the Kolyma highway. Thousands of prisoners who built it died because of the extreme cold. This is a very very scary book, don’t read alone and don’t say I didn’t warn you. I have tried to read all of Christopher Golden’s books and this one is excellent!

This book was incredibly atmospheric and eerie. I enjoyed the premise. I think horror fans and thriller fans alike will really enjoy this one!

I had a really hard time reading this. It took me quite a while, because I couldn’t stick with it. I like ghost stories, but I started to tune out some of it. While this was atmospheric, and nice to read during a stretch it 90° weather, this one was not for me.

First off, huge, huge thanks to Netgalley, Christopher Golden and St. Martin’s Press for approving me with an advanced digital copy to read. When I got the approval email, I grinned like a maniac for a solid five minutes, never once expecting to be approved! So, thank you!

Now, as for ‘Road of Bones.’

I hate to do this, but have you read any of my own releases? Or my reviews? You know, the one’s where I share time and time again that the cold, the desolate mountains and crazy, creepy creatures are my favorite things of all time? If so – you could ignore the rest of my review and just go preorder.

If not – well let me share!

What I liked: ‘Road of Bones’ follows Teig and Prentiss. Two Americans who’ve travelled to the most remote (and cold) place in the world, in Russia, to try and film enough footage to sell a potential show to Discovery. The Road of Bones or more accurately, R504 Kolyma Highway was constructed in 1932 and stretches for over 2,000 km’s through some of the most uninhabitable wilderness in the world.

The coldest I’ve ever experienced is -51 C (-59.8F) and most winters here, we get temperatures that drop to -40C. This will be for days or sometimes weeks on end, but never for prolonged periods of time, such as they have where the Road of Bones lies. The Kolyma Highway received this name, because it is estimated anywhere from 250,000 to 1 million people died while constructing it. Due to the cold, the remote location and the conditions, those who died were buried beneath the road.

It is with that context that Golden begins the story by ramping up the tension and reality that one small mistake, one little error, and you’ll freeze to death in a matter of minutes. If the truck stalls, if you go too fast, hit ice and go off the road, you’ll become a block of ice.

The banter between Teig and Prentiss was great, showing the kinship of two filmmakers who’ve struck out a number of times, but have the shared experiences between them to know what buttons they can push. Golden made both instantly likeable but also both instantly frustrating. You want to see them succeed but also you see why they haven’t.

Once our guide joins the group and a female character comes along, we arrive at Akhurst, the last stop before Yakut, then on to Oymyakon, the coldest settlement on Earth. It’s at Akhurst where Golden really turns the narrative on it’s head. We find abandoned houses, food still on the tables and doors thrown open. Tracks lead into the woods. And it’s what’s in the woods that transforms this from a simple survival story to a creature-feature survival story.

The tension was palpable throughout, Golden pushing the reader to our max.

What I didn’t like: It’s odd, because I LOVED this book, but I almost feel like it would’ve been great to see more of everyday life and how people live in such cold and extreme, but we don’t really get that. We arrive at Akhurst and everything goes Pete Tong and it’s a race to stay alive after that.

Why you should buy this: This was a top notch novel of terror by a writer who knows how to write action but also to create characters that feel like life long friends. The folklore that arrives is stunning and me pausing to Google things as I went. Loved it and it really heightened the frightening reality of the fact that the characters will either die from the cold, or what lurks just beyond the frost. Outstanding.

**The review can be found here; https://stevestredauthor.wordpress.com/2021/08/01/book-review-road-of-bones-by-christopher-golden/***

Road of Bones is set on the Kolyma Highway - a 1,200-mile stretch of dangerous road that winds through Siberia and literally runs over the buried bones of the prisoners forced to build it during Stalin’s reign. Before starting this book, I only really knew it as an area often featured in those dangerous-road-ice trucker-esque docu-reality shows where the host of the show rattles off scary facts about the area and uses fancy post-production editing to make the experience seem life threatening. Funny enough, that is the premise of this book. Two filmmakers embark on a trip down the Kolyma Highway to scout it for a potential documentary that will hopefully heal their money woes; however, it quickly becomes apparent post-production editing tricks won’t be needed as they are hunted by shadowy creatures from the forest.

I enjoyed learning about the Kolyma Highway and history of the area. Upon a bit of five minute Google research, I learned that this area has the coldest temperatures in the world outside of Antarctica, it is illegal to drive by a motorist stranded on this road, and the route is actually more treacherous in warm temperature due to mud slides.

The plot started out strong but meandered quite a bit toward the end. Regardless, it was a fun and entertaining read.

A well-meaning but flaky documentarian and his best friend/cameraman/beleaguered patron undertake a perilous journey on Russia's Road of Bones to shoot a spec episode of a new reality show in this relentless thriller from Christopher Golden.
It's a Hail Mary for Teig, whose past successes in the industry has been overshadowed by more recent (and costly) failures. But it's not just his livelihood at stake. Best friend and traveling companion Prentiss has invested time, energy and $8,000 in Teig's prior schemes, but his patience is wearing dangerously thin.
Fortunately, Teig has found a fascinating subject for his next show: Russia's Kolmya Highway, a 1,200-mile road winding through a largely barren, completely frozen wasteland. The highway was built over the corpses of more than 250,000 workers, most of them prisoners in Stalinist-era gulags, who helped carve a path through the permafrost, giving it the ominous nickname "Road of Bones."
But while Teig and Prentiss anticipated contending with lethal, subzero temperatures and sparse, scattered resources, far greater dangers lurk along the Road of Bones. Dangers that defy explanation.
Like Golden's previous titles starring badass-of-all-trades Ben Walker, "Road of Bones" can best be categorized as adventure-horror. Supernatural threats abound in Golden's novels, but his narratives scream along at the pace of a bestselling technothriller. With Golden, you can expect all the explosions, shootouts and political intrigue of a James Patterson book alongside the abject and complex terror of Stephen King.
Perhaps "Road of Bones" has fewer gunfights and explosions than Golden's adventures starring Ben Walker, but the action is nonetheless relentless, brutal and delivered without sentimentality. It would be unwise to get too attached to Golden's characters, but good luck not getting invested.
Be warned, this book drops you into life-and-death peril on the first page and doesn't let up. Like ever. The latter two-thirds of "Road of Bones" essentially serve as an extended chase sequence wherein the icy cold and supernatural horrors remain constant threats. Like our heroes, readers should not expect any shelter when they turn the page or start a new chapter.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy.

Road of Bones finds Teig, a documentary filmmaker, and his cameraman Jack in Siberia looking at the possible stories the fabled road, famous for containing the bodies of former gulag prisoners who were buried under the permafrost, can give them for the next big docu-series on the cable networks. The guide they hired takes them deep along the road to a small town for their research, and along the way they rescue a stranded motorist. When they arrive at the town the quickly discover it bereft of all its citizens, save for one small girl. Before long they come under the attack of wolves, larger and more vicious than they've ever seen. As they turn tail and run they find themselves being pursued by something bigger and worse than wolves. Thus begins a harrowing journey along the Road of Bones as they try to escape from powerful creature out right out of the local folklore.
I've read several of Christopher Golden's books, but I've never read one quite like this before. I feel like he wrote beyond his usual style to create a relentlessly paced chase that seems like no matter how fast or far they go, the characters can't escape what is tied to nature itself. So far this year I've read a few novels where authors I like outdid themselves, and this book is no exception.

Road of Bones is an amazing story about two men who are making a documentary on the Kolyma Highway also known as the Road of Bones. The writing is fantastic and the frozen Siberian landscape combined with the hundreds of thousands of gulag prisoners lying dead in the permafrost on the highway makes for an eirie setting. The characters are really well-written, I especially liked the camera operator Prentiss. The story went along at a breakneck pace. This is one that is very hard to put down. This is one that will stick with me for a while. I can't wait to read more by this author.

I think I'm an unpopular opinion here. There was so much supernatural elemental aspects happening all at once that I started to feel numb toward the scenes that were supposed to make me feel scared and jumpy. I liked the story, I just couldn't feel what Golden wanted me to.

'Road of Bones' will not make any reading list produced by the Siberian Chamber of Commerce--it's as chilling as that part of the world is. I can't imagine anyone wanting to rush to Siberia after the frozen terror of this terrific tale from Christopner Golden. This work is further proof positive Golden stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the best writers working in the horror genre. The nightmarish existence experienced by the characters is skillfully brought to life. Golden magically weaves real life and fantastical shocks together to keep your heart racing and the pages turning. Thank you St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the advanced reading copy!

2.5 stars rounded to 3.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC for the Bone Road, a supernatural thriller in return for an honest review. The Kolyma Highway (Bone Road)is a 1200 mile stretch of dangerous road in Siberia. In their dark winter, it is ice-covered, and in their short summer months, it is often covered by mud. Its history is evil, and it must truly be haunted.

An estimated 250,000 to one million prisoners of Stalin's gulags died there while forced to construct the highway in average winter temperatures of -50C. As the road was built on permafrost, the dead bodies were deposited within the material used to form the road or dumped alongside it to save the difficulty of a proper burial in the frozen earth.

Tieg, a documentary filmmaker's career, is in a slump. He feels that making a documentary about the Bone Road's obscene history will restore his reputation. What can be a better setting for a horror/supernatural story either in Tieg's film or in this book? He is also interested in meeting a guide to take him to the settlement of Oymyakon, the coldest inhabited place on earth. His guide is from the northern Yakut tribe, known as reindeer herders. The town's record low temperature was -71.2 C (-96.2 F). Strangely their temperature soared to 31.6C this June 30th, 2021, a high never recorded before.

The reader can learn much horrifying history about the Bone Road and life in Oymyakon on the internet, along with many interesting photos.

Tieg is travelling with his friend and cameraman. His Yakut guide takes them to Oymyakon, which is the home of his family. They find the settlement mysteriously deserted when they arrive, except for a 9-year-old girl left in a catatonic state. Then things get weird, very weird! Personally, I found that the over-abundance of horror and supernatural elements with non-stop action, terror, injury and death left me numb. With so much frantically going on and over the top, I failed to engage in the horror or suspense that was well-described. I regret I am in the minority here and am sure many readers of horror and supernatural thrillers will be riveted to the pages. It just wasn't for me, but I struggled along until its end but wasn't feeling the thrills and chills I was hoping for.

X-Files vibes

Our Mulder like MC Teig, wants proof of the supernatural for money. Spoiler. He sure does get it.

Overall once the story picks up it runs. Can be slow at times an lore added a bit late at times. But overall solid spooky. 5.7/10.

I read this book during a heatwave but I felt chilled while reading, largely due to the story taking place in Siberia in the winter, the temperature never rose above -40c. Felix (Tieg to his friends) Tiegland and his best buddy and financial sponsor Prentiss, are travelling to the coldest town on earth, they are on the Kolyma highway, also known as the Road of Bones. The highway had been built by people that had been sent to gulags and when they passed away while working on the road, they were buried where they fell, their bones becoming part of the road. Tieg is a documentary filmmaker and thinks he has a good story in the coldest town. They pick up a local guide along the way and he directs them to the town, which when they arrive is deserted with the exception of one young girl. Strange creatures begin to stalk them and they escape with the child to a nearby bar they had stopped at earlier. The creatures follow, Tieg, his friend, the child and the couple occupying the bar experience strong compulsions to leave the safety of the bar and go outside where the creatures are. A life and death chase ensues and we eventually find out what the creatures want and the price Tieg is willing to pay. I recommend this one! Thanks to Negalley and the publisher for the ARC.

My thanks to St. Martin's Press, Christopher Golden and Netgalley.
It's just a given. If it's A Golden book, then just thinking about it makes my heart beat in double time. I've been a fan for a very long time!
Also, look at that dang cover! Beautiful!
Anyone who's read my reviews.knows that the freezing cold is my favorite setting. So, this was almost a given!
I nearly spent more time reading about gulags and this road than on the book!
What Teig set out to accomplish would make for riveting television. I remember watching ice road truckers and thinking they were mad!
I loved this story. But, I'll admit that I spent so much time being tense, that it finally just exhausted me.
I was happy it was a shorter book. Also, I wished it had a more definitive ending.
Don't get me wrong, because I know what happened, but how long must a "certain someone" be inhabited? Is he stuck inside.too? Argh!