As non-Siberians they’re unprepared for the menace of the temperature, but their guides and new acquaintances are more than capable of thriving in it. The cold itself is also practically a character, its presence and deadly patience haunting the documentarians’ every step. The supernatural element is strong from the start, drawing on traditional Siberian beliefs as well as the more recent history of Stalinist purges. Literally: a character I thought was going to be a major one dies very early on, eaten alive by wolves. He doesn’t mince words–or pages–building up the atmosphere, he just sics the wolves on you at the earliest opportunity. Golden’s take on horror is all about the darkness and the gore. Stephen King does this too-the POV shifts and the forthrightness-but King is about suspense. Add to that his tendency to jump between narrators and the book feels almost Victorian in style, if not in tone. There’s something refreshing about that kind of storytelling, a no-nonsense, almost fairy-tale-like forthrightness that refuses to play coy. He doesn’t drop tidbits about Teig’s childhood trauma or Prentiss’s divorce or force you to piece together stray comments. Golden tells rather than shows to such an astonishing extent that I cannot think it’s anything other than intentional. I can’t say I’m sad about this, since characters who pause their fight-or-flight to bicker is a pet peeve of mine, but it is surprising how much Golden leans away from the trope. They also know everything about each other’s pasts and personalities, so there’s little chance a secret is going to come up that will serve as a dramatic wedge. Still, the two have a gruff but warm bond, and they’re able by long experience to accommodate each other’s flaws rather than fight about them (too much). Their friendship, already strained by money problems, is on very thin ice once the danger starts.
Teig’s production company is about to fold, and Prentiss is about to be out way too much money for their relationship to survive the debts Teig owes him. This isn’t just the “next” hit for them, though-it’s their last chance at one. He knows ghosts do well with audiences, and he knows he can do them justice, haunted as his own past has been.
But the ghosts are thick on the Road of Bones, and Teig, left with an overactive imagination after a childhood tragedy, can almost feel the spirits of convicts and political prisoners who died to make the highway. It’s a sparsely populated expanse, punctuated with very small settlements only every few hundred miles. Knowing that shows about extreme places and people tend to do well, they’ve gambled it all on the Siberian “Road of Bones,” a stretch of highway leading to the coldest place on earth. Teig and Prentiss are down-on-their-luck documentarians looking for the next big thing.
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