Ararat - Christopher Golden - Book Review

 

I have been reading horror for a long time. I was recently browsing through the list of Bram Stoker Award winners when this book caught my attention. A different name! This set me reading the book.

A newly engaged couple sets out on a trip to Mount Ararat in Turkey. This mountain is supposedly the site of Noah's Ark. The couple get a call from their friend that there has been a discovery at a cave on the mountain. The couple make their journey to the cave on the mountain where there are a team of archaeologists, professors and filmmakers studying the coffin that was discovered. As they discover a disfigured cadaver, the climate takes an ugly turn into a blizzard and the people are stuck in the cave. As the blizzard intensifies, an unknown evil seems to linger in the cave. What transpires forms the story.

The biggest plus for me in this book is the pacing. The first ten pages starts at a slow pace and as the story progresses, the pace picks up and keeps upping our experience. The author succeeds in creating tense claustrophobic moments for a big part of the story. Most of the characters are well written and their emotions convey the situations very well. I would not categorize this as a full fledged horror genre intended to scare us but you can see equal mixture of horror, thriller and disaster genres. The genuine scares that I felt were due to the whole atmosphere. The natural settings play an important role in taking the story to a different level. I liked how the author brings people of different beliefs together thereby triggering discussions on belief and atheism. The demon force remains strong and a mysterious force throughout the story keeps us on tenterhooks. One thing I was not satisfied was the way the novel spiralled towards the end. There was an ambiguity on what happens to the evil entity. May be the author had left the story that way on purpose. But for me the ambiguity was a damper.

In short, a quick read filled with a lot of tense moments that keeps the reader at the edge of the seat.