Reviews with content warning for Body horror - Road of Bones

This book blew me away…This is a masterclass in writing that imbeds dread into your bones and causes horror so profound that you can’t do anything but silently scream. Chilling. I could write a whole dissertation on how awed I am by this book.

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feralfocus's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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bookeduntil's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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morecrocs's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

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ripxreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

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thesaltiestlibrarian's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What if I presented to you a book set in Salem, Massachusetts and talked all about its rich history as one of the most tragic towns in New England's early history? What would you expect to see in this book? Giants? Talking mice? How about Cthulhu?

Well, when you tell me I'm going to read a book about the Road of Bones in Siberia--a highway that was literally paved over the dead gulag prisoners who fell while constructing it under Stalin's regime--I better damn well have a ghost-revenge story set in the coldest drive on Earth. Not whatever this was.

So Felix Teigen and his buddy Jack Prentiss are setting out to make a documentary about life and death on the Kolyma Highway, affectionately nicknamed the Road of Bones. To elaborate on the name, from 1932 to 1953 gulag prisoners in labor camps were forced to construct the highway. Since the road is set on permafrost, whenever one of the roughly 250,000 to 1,000,000 people who perished building this road died, the bones were built into or around the highway, cuz diggin' holes in Siberian winter is a bitch. Why was this road constructed in such unforgiving conditions, you might ask? Well, money! Duh! Rich uranium deposits!

Teig and Prentiss are here to document life and death on the road, they say, but also Teig is looking for ghost stories, I guess? They never specify exactly why they're there and don't talk about a shooting schedule, a script, a rough outline of their expectations, nothing. Essentially what we have is two grown men running around with an expensive camera saying, "BRO, ARE YOU FILMING THIS?!" And it gets real tedious.

The concept of this novel is fantastic. Documentarians show up someplace that people don't normally spare a thought for, the supernatural nature of the region/road pops up, and crap goes down hardcore. It's the execution that leaves a lot to be desired.

The characters are cardboard cutouts. Teig's motivation for trying to save Una reads as halfhearted and thrown-in. Nari, the girl Teig and Prentiss save from being stranded on the road, is the most complex character, but because of the stuffy main characters she doesn't get enough time to shine. Prentiss is even more interesting than Teig. By the end of the novel I hated Felix Teigen and was firmly convinced he's the kind of guy who thinks ketchup is spicy and actually believes that plastic straws are the reason climate change is intensifying.

Felix Teigen would have a man-bun and call it "cool" because he visited Japan once. He's the kind of guy who won't eat sushi because it kills fish, then buy all of his designer skinny jeans on Amazon. He only knows "Wonderwall" on ukulele and calls himself a self-made musician. He would unironically use pickup lines like, "Are you my appendix? Cuz I have this painful urge to take you out." He probably has "Entrepreneur" in his Twitter bio.

Felix Teigen is That Guy. And he is the worst.

The thing that kills me about this book is that a random character who ends up adding absolutely jack diddly squat to the story takes up such a huge chunk of it. Ludmilla was useless and I cannot be persuaded otherwise.

The author takes so much time to describe the cold that he forgets to insert the unique cultural narratives to be found in this region. We get zero taste of Siberian culture until the last 20% of the novel, when some folklore is randomly thrown in for some reason and even then some of it isn't correct.

Ugh, guys. Wrong focal points, flat characters, setting that's too vague to be one place...this one was a solid miss.

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