Road of Bones

Road of Bones #1-4

by Rich Douek, Alex Cormack (Illustrator)

Horror, history, and Russian folklore collide in this brutal survival tale, where the worst prison in the world is merely the gateway to even darker terrors. In 1953, the Siberian Gulag of Kolyma is hell on Earth–which is why Roman Morozov leaps at the chance to escape it. But even if they make it out, Roman and his fellow escapees still have hundreds of miles of frozen tundra between them and freedom. With the help of a mysterious being straight out of his childhood fairy tale stories, Roman just might make it–or is the being simply a manifestation of the brutal circumstances driving him insane?

Genres: Comics, Horror, Graphic Novels, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Paranormal, Graphic Novels Comics

113 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 21, 2020

About the author

Rich is an award-winning copywriter, and the creator of the independent comic series, Gutter Magic. He has worked on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Universe comics for IDW, and has published short stories in the New York Times-featured All We Ever Wanted anthology, for A Wave Blue World, as well as anthologies for Comixtribe and Red Stylo press. Additonally, he is a moderator of the Comics Experience Creator's Workshop, where he strives to help newer creators learn how to create their own comics and navigate the industry.

Reviews

[James DeSantis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bleak, disturbing, and brutal. Those would be the three words I'd used to describe this realistic horror title.

Roman is in hell. Well it feels like it. In the times of war when one wrong word about a dictator can send you to a life of imprisonment, Roman made a joke, and is suffering the consequences. When two of his fellow prisoners decide to bread free he follows them. But is the horrors of the cold world even more dangerous than the one inside a prison?

This is a brutal outlook of a survival story with horror sprinkled on top. If it wasn't bad enough seeing people being beaten to death you have to watch people go crazy and murder just to survive harsh winter conditions. I really enjoyed the characters, each giving off their own voice, and a reason to want to live. I also felt the art nailed the atmosphere and made it depression and cold at all times. I feel though the art, as much as I love it in Sink, made it hard to tell who is who face wise. Everyone looked very similar. And the story is semi-predictable but still very enjoyable.

Overall, if like realistic horror this one is for you. A 4 out of 5.

[Kate Victoria RescueandReading · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gruesome, despairing, but kind of a let down.
From the synopsis I thought the storyline would lean more into the folktale/lore aspect of things. Instead the “being” is rarely shown, possibly a delusion made by a desperate and broken mind.

[Lashaan Balasingam · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can find my review on my blog by clicking here.

Stripped of your freedom, limited in resources, forced into physical labour. There’s nothing pleasant about a life where the future is bleak and dark. Not only is it physically exhausting but there’s also only so much that the mind can handle before unhinging someone. The mere thought of this situation provokes anxiety and that’s enough to tell you how despicable such conditions must be. But when the mind starts playing tricks on you, that’s when things get complicated. That’s when the creepy, ugly, and deadly monsters in the corner of our imagination come crawling out and make life unbearable. Writer Rich Douek and artist Alex Cormack team up to deliver a brutal horror story where imagination meets reality in the cold Russian mountains.

What is Road of Bones about? Set in 1953, Roman Morozov is condemned to a miserable and abhorrent life in the Siberian Gulag of Kolyma. Surrounded by hundreds of miles of frozen tundra, freedom remains unimaginable for these prisoners. While the guards serve out inhuman punishments to every mortal at their care, Roman Morozov secretly feeds a strange being with stolen ration and fears the consequences that he might face if anyone were to find out. Fortunately for him, with the help of this creature from his childhood fair tale stories and fellow prisoners, a plan is hatched to escape the gulag, looking for a way out of this barbarous life. Collecting Road of Bones issues #1-4, this graphic novel explores dark corners of the mind of individuals living in a hell hole with nowhere to go.

Brilliantly blending horror, history, and Russian folklore together, this self-contained story captures a horrific moment in history while giving it a supernatural edge that keeps you wondering if everything you see is real. While it doesn’t break new ground and sticks to telling a linear story where humans are portrayed as monsters, it succeeds in illustrating a grisly and hideous reality that will have you cringing at the horrors that humankind is capable of when given the opportunity and put in the ideal circumstances. There is a certain predictability to the narrative presented in this graphic novel, but seeing it so well-executed is what ultimately makes it an enjoyable read, especially if you’re looking for a relatively realistic horror story.

With fear being personified in the supernatural creature, it is when trying to figure out what is real and what is of the imagination that makes this story so bewitching. With the help of artist Alex Cormack’s illustrations and colouring, the story was able to take a life of its own. From the beautiful landscapes to the gory scenarios, his contribution is impossible to neglect. His facial designs are, however, rough and scaly; which can be distracting at first until you allow it to represent the monster-like characteristics that are present within all of us. Nonetheless, the dialogue-light story coupled with the contrasting and expressive artwork gives way to an engrossing journey through gulags and frozen tundras.

Road of Bones is a straight-forward, gruesome, and crisp horror tale diving deep into the psyche of prisoners who would do anything to know freedom.

Yours truly,

Lashaan | Blogger and Book Reviewer
Official blog: https://bookidote.com/

[47Time · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story isn't meant for casual readers. It's a drama featuring human suffering, the desire for freedom, the willingness to risk one's life for that freedom, the thirst for blood that dehumanizes people. Human history has some dark times in its past.

Kolyma, USSR is a work camp in the frozen wastes. The inmates are forced to work until they drop dead. Roman Ivanovich Morozov is a political prisoner who is approched by a member of the organized crime syndicate. They are having trouble controlling the guards who are pushed by their higher-ups into stamping out the syndicate's dealings. Roman hesitates, but ultimately agrees to the syndicate's plan. Grigori, Roman's only friend Sergei and Roman himself escape the camp during a riot. Now they risk the tundra where food and warmth is virtually nonexistent.

The three push on thanks to Grigori's encouragements and shaming. Unfortunately, they lose what little food they had while crossing a canyon. Grigori manipulates Sergei into trying to kill Roman and eating his flesh, but Roman and Sergei kill Grigori instead and feast on him.

Roman believes in spirits said to protect people who leave food out. He is convinced this is what kept him alive in the work camp. He believes he is being followed by such a spirit, though it turns out to be evil. After surviving the cold, Roman allows the demon to kill his friend. It's suggested it might all be in his head when he finally reaches a town where it's obvious that the experience has traumatised him deeply.

[Gabriell Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jednoduchý, drsný a krvavý příběh o útěku z gulagu. Nohy mu podráží kresba, kde se špatně odlišují postavy a která většinu času prostě jenom staví na kontrastu krve a sněhu a tak trochu délka. Ona je to totiž jenom jednoduchá povídečka, natažená na 4 sešity a která toho ve vás po přečtení moc nenechá. Originality tady vážně moc nehledejte a pokud jste v tomhle žánru toho přečetli víc, tak vám bude vývoj jasný vždycky s pár stránkovým předstihem.
Máte rádi sníh, krev a beznadějnou cestu přes hory, kde hlavnímu hrdinovi možná pomáhá nadpřirozená bytost a možná mu prostě jenom naprosto hrabe? Tak vás tenhle kousek nejspíš zaujme. Jinak o moc nepřijdete.
Čtvrtá hvězda čistě proto, že mám dobrou náladu a tak u tohohle 3.5/5 kousku přitáčím spíš nahoru.

[Valéria. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Za mňa čistý priemer aj to s hviezdou navyše za krvavé scény, kedy jednak ide o štyri uponáhlané zošity, na ktorých sa poriadne nič nestane a ak sa aj stane, tak je to predvídateľné jak hovado, druhak proste sorry, ale aby som tri zošity kukala na tri postavy v snehu a nebola schopná ich rozoznať, tak fakt ne diky. Do tretice - nebavilo ma to, jediné čo som si užívala boli fakt tie krvavejšie scény.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5

[Frédéric · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

A grim tale of survival in the terrible and dehumanising context of the Stalinist era and the gulag.
Although the ending is very predictable and the vague undertone of fantasy rather pointless, the story is well told and depicted in a "dirty" style that fits the subject matter.

[Jakub Kvíz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solidních 3,5*...

Historická fikce se špetkou nadpřirozena popisuje příběh Romana Morozova, který společně s dvěma spoluvězni utíká z gulagu, kam se dostal kvůli vtípku na adresu tatíčka Stalina a matičky Rusi. Na jeho cestě za přežitím mu pomáhá postava z ruského folklóru, o které ale jeho parťáci nevědí.

Podaří se téhle trojici překonat stovky kilometrů přes ledovou Sibiř nebo se útěkem sami odsoudili k smrti? Proč si dvojice vězňů vybrala jako třetího do party právě Romana? Zešílel Roman nebo je Domovoj opravdu skutečný?

Pokud chcete znát otázky na tyhle odpovědi, tak tomuhle survival příběhu zasazenému do reálných kulis, dejte určitě šanci.

[Václav · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3,1 of 5 for survival horror from gulag)
Well, the theme was interesting and I'm a big horror fan, so Road of Bones got stuck in my to-read list. And now I'm done and it was quick reading.
The atmosphere is there, yes, freezing winter, hunger, despair and madness are oozing out of it. The art is fine, crude and rough it fits the theme. But it also looks like... not from a skilful comics artist. And it brought one major issue for me - most of the time I didn't know which of the prisoner was which. But that's fine, in the same clothes it is like that, but still...
But the main problem is the story - when I finished it, it felt like Cola Zero - it was the whole thing, but it also felt like a lot is missing. Somehow left out and even if it's a full story, it feels like a movie trailer, but it isn't. And that's pity.

[Nadine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any story about the gulags would be a horror story, but this is exceptionally well done. Not only is it extremely gory, and for the right reasons, there is also a great sense of suspense throughout. For such a short graphic novel the characters and world are quite detailed too. Generally, quite impressed by this, even though the plot points were not surprising, the detail and atmosphere of the art was!

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bleak little horror story, somewhat in the vein of Dan Simmon's The Terror, about a trio of men escaping a Siberian gulag and attempting to walk to freedom. There just may or may not be a creature from Russian folklore following along after...Nice artwork here and a suitably horrific, often depressing story.

[Alison Fiona Mckay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great wee find in the library. Very haunting, very gripping. I blasted through it and enjoyed some excellent chills.

[Lukasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bleak, bloody, and brutal. Not a bad story, but darkness tends to overshadow other stuff here.

[Dean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very entertaining, some may find the art not for them. It worked for me. Interesting setting and time. The ambiguity may frustrate or lead to deeper questions.

[Michael J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

True horror is always more unsettling than fictional horror. The horrific deeds that humans are capable of are more frightening than the carnage and destruction caused by monstrous inhuman creatures. ROAD OF BONES does refer to an unseen (except by one) creature of Russian folklore that main character Roman has believed in since childhood. That's why he's always left food outside at night as an offering, hoping the Domovik would watch over the neighborhood and protect it.

Years later in a 1953 Russian gulag surrounded by frozen tundra, Roman, with cooking duties as part of his slavish daily labors, continues to leave food outside for the creature he's never glimpsed. When he begins to have visions of the Domovik and hears it whispering in his ear, readers can't be sure if the creature is real or a product of Roman's madness, perhaps a byproduct of mental exhaustion brought on by hunger pangs and despair. Roman and fellow prisoners Grigori and Sergei have escaped the Gulag and are attempting to find freedom on the other side of an unending vista of mountain ranges and freezing cold. Desperate times lead men to desperate measures.

You can imagine where this story is going but it's not that predictable. It's the power of Rich Douek's storytelling and the brilliant art and colors by Alex Cormack that move the story along while vividly depicting the hopelessness, desperation, isolation, and madness that the trio are experiencing as they try to find their way to an alleged hunting lodge.

Gritty. Bloody. Gory. Disturbing. The grisly ending has a grim punchline. An incomparable work of true horror.

[Artur Coelho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uma história tremenda, nos gulags estalinistas. Três prisioneiros de um campo siberiano conseguem escapar, mas apenas um conseguirá ser livre. Sujeitos às piores privações e forçados a trabalhar até cair, o risco de fuga pelo gelo siberiano é convidativo. Resta o problema da comida, e para isso, alguns dos companheiros de fuga serão sacrificados para alimentar os sobreviventes. O verdadeiro horror desta história é basear-se em factos, na desumanidade dos gulags, e nas fugas onde um dos fugitivos era enganado com a ideia de atingir a liberdade, quando apenas era trazido para alimentar o grupo. Momentos extremos revelam o pior da alma humana, e esta graphic novel é implacável nisso.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend for horror/thriller comic readers!!

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 I picked this one up because I was interested in a graphic depiction of a gulag, and this artist did not disappoint. Good writer /artist collaboration of a brutal psychological thriller in a bleak setting drawn with horror and passion. I liked how Roman’s clear green eyes radiated humanity and propelled the story amidst the chaos and violence.

[Andrei · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book I went into blindly, and which kept me captive throughout. The plot revolves around a group of prisoners escaping from a Russian gulag in the middle of winter, and trying to survive. It's dubbed as a horror story so the tone is quite sinister, but at the same time it's a very realistic take on the events and the atmosphere it creates feels genuinely tense. There's also a supernatural element involved, but due to the way it's written, it leaves plenty of room for doubt in the reader's mind as to how much of it is actually real.

The drawing style is sketchy and the characters can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from one another, but otherwise it helps drive the story forward.

[Gekh · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful mountains

[Tragic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esta entretenido pero no es la gran cosa. Los horrores de la nieve y el hambre.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

From the despair of imprisonment without hope for reprieve, the path to freedom is often filled with as much blood and grime and fealty to darkness as was required for one to be imprisoned in the first place. Freedom depends on stretching beyond the limits of human compassion, ere none is extended to the hopeful.

ROAD OF BONES is full of heavy-handed drama, occult gore and clumsy visual storytelling but generally regales readers with the tale of one man's attempt to escape the Siberian gulag. The timing of events coincides with the death of Stalin, but this coincidence has no real thematic bearing on the story itself. Roman Ivanovich Morozov is doing 25 years of hard labor and makes the acquaintance of a few fellow inmates. Together, the three men hatch an escape plan during a riot, only to find themselves listless and freezing in the mountains.

Roman is one of those fellows whose sense of hope hinges on an unreal and imperial understanding of just how hopeless things really are. Not unlike the man's fascination with appeasing the fantastical, mythical spirits he imagines ensure his survival, Roman's grasp of what is worth saving, what is worth forgetting, and what facets of his humanity are worth refusing each grind him down as his time in the mountains grinds on. Is there a hunting lodge over the next ridge? Will the group have enough food to last through the storm?

ROAD OF BONES goes to sleep praying for hardship and jolts awake acquiescing to a never-ending nightmare. The comic puts its claim on demonology, the waning throes of human sanity, and the violence bred betwixt men of ill intention. It's a lurid and bloody affair. This comic is less about Roman and his cohorts' escape from the gulag so much as it is their inevitable confrontation with the more dangerous, naked truths that await them at the end of their miserable lives.

The art is integral for how or to what degree readers may enjoy this title. The background detail is delightful; dangerous mountain crevasses, smatterings of conifers, and supple night skies beholden to the endless torment of these men's lives on the run. Also, the fiery contrast of a victim's bloodshed against the agonizingly pure snow of the mountainside surely qualifies for fine art.

On the other hand, ROAD OF BONES also traffics in a salty array of indiscernible campfire shadows, whispered groveling at dusk, and the mayhem of multiple people speaking at the same time in almost every scene. As a result, it's nearly impossible to tell the characters apart from panel to panel, much less from scene to scene. The creative team attempted to resolve this by assigning clothing accent colors to certain characters, but orange shoulder pads don't show up in the nighttime and it's impossible to tell apart green from black in a skirmish. And when it's hard to tell one character from the next, the story becomes far less interesting than one had first thought.

ROAD OF BONES is a curious little horror story that feels far less linear and straightforward than it really is, but this is largely on account of asynchronous and ineffective visual storytelling.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I enjoy checking out a pretty wide range of graphic novels, the horror genre doesn't generally catch my eye. This book, however, is grounded in the horror of real history, making it quite potent. The story concerns prisoners of a Soviet gulag in 1952, who are forced to work on the titular highway. This real-life forced-labor construction project was a 1,200 mile road linking the Siberian port city of Magadan to the gold, tin, and uranium mines of the interior. It is estimated that somewhere between 250,000 to a million gulag inmates died in its construction, many of whom were buried under the road as it was built.

We meet two prisoners in a road-construction gulag, who team up with a third -- a professional criminal -- to escape in the confusion of a riot. One of the prisoners had been leaving food offerings for a "domovik" -- this is a figure from Slavic mythology who is a kind of household guardian, watching over a family. In its traditional form, it does no harm to humans and is somewhat similar to the helpful Brownie of Scottish mythology. However, in this version, the domovik appears as a terrifying vampiric monster -- but whether it actually exists and follows the three on their escape is another matter...

The story mainly concerns the plight of the three escapees trying to cross the mountains in winter with a limited food supply. Readers who know anything about the real-life horrors of the gulag, will probably have a good sense of the direction the story is headed. And indeed, what transpires is very similar to an anecdote recounted by a former gulag prisoner in Anne Applebaum's 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Gulag: A History." The artwork is suitably dark and intense, if sometimes perhaps a little too dark. All in all, it's a very simple and effectively told tale of horrors real and imaginary.

[Rade · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had really high hopes for this comic book. It started off solid with a bit of supernatural angle thrown in there to spice things up. Unfortunately the story quickly went into a predictable direction. By the end I was really surprised and was left asking myself "is this where it ends?"

I am sure there is more volumes but I am not eager to read them. Besides being predictable (I think more than 60% of the comic was about walking through snow and talking about how they will die if they don't find food or shelter), the characters are very bland and half the time I could not tell who is talking. At daytime it is easier, at nighttime it is harder.

I do understand that the time period for the comic was pretty hard and depressing, but this is where we could lean onto supernatural elements and have the characters battle both real life and some otherworldly forces.

Lastly, and I am not the only one based on what I read on Amazon, my comic book cam apart by the time I was less than 10 pages in. Each page came out and by the end I was left with a useless pile of individual sheets. I don't know how to put it together and I should not have to. Maybe it is bad binding or bad storage but in either case I am very disappointed.

Based on all of this, I doubt I will seek volume 2 any time soon (if there is one).

[Austrian Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Road of bones is a preliminary round competitor in the 2020 Bram Stoker awards under the Graphic Novel category. Right from the title page - skulls frozen in the Siberian waste - Cormack stamps his authority on the page, the visuals leaving no doubt as to the genre and mood of the book. It’s a great opener and sets Douek up to deliver his story of survival in the Siberian wastes, as an escaped band of prisoners fight against nature and against themselves to the bloody bitter end of the novel.
To address the artwork first, Cormack has done some really fine work here in the darker scenes of the novel, but for me the stand out artwork is in the Siberian wastes, against a backdrop of snow and mountains the figures really stand out well. There are touches of Edvin Biukovic from his Grendel work, and the unsharp madness of the magnificent Bill Sienkiewicz competing here for dominance. And if that doesn’t mean anything to you, let’s say the artwork is lush, brutal, raw and honest. It’s a beautiful frame to the story itself.
Douek’s story leads the reader to exactly the places we imagined we would go – human depravity and friction, violence and banter – the character work is spot on and the author knows when to shut up and let silence do the talking. It flows as well as the best of Frank millers work and packs the same punch. You can really see why it made it to the preliminaries, and though it’s a breeze to read, I was totally engrossed in the story for as long as it took me to devour in one sitting.
This gets a solid 5 stars from me because of the build up in tension both creators invested in the work – the violence, when it arrives, feels both natural and brutal enough to be compelling, something not every graphic novel can boast.
I’ll be watching the BSA with interest, for me, they nailed it.
Austrian Spencer

[Pavel Pravda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Příjemná jednohubka okořeněná brutalitou, masakrem a děsem. Někdo si může stěžovat, že je to předvídatelné. Ano je. Zvláště pro národ Járy Cimrmana, který se stejnou zápletkou také pracoval. Ale vůbec to nevadí. Právě proto, že víme, kam to směřuje, tak si můžeme užívat tu plíživou atmosféru hnusu a brutality očekávaného. Navíc čtenář ví, že lidi nejsou jediné monstra, které skrz to bílé peklo putují. Ale možná taky jo. Kresba a barvy mě bavily. Jednotliví aktéři jsou ve svých mundůrech a kuliších trošku hůře rozeznatelní, ale scénář s tím do určité míry pracuje a kreslíř Alex Cormack jim udělal dost detailů na to, aby je čtenář dokázal rozeznat tam, kde je to potřeba. Doslov autora Richarda Doueka pak celou knihu zasadí do historického kontextu.

[C.J. Edmunds · Rating 4 out of 5]

As grisly and gruesome as you can expect from a graphic novel about surviving and the horrors that one has to go through in order to make it.

Roman Morosov has been in the Russian gulag for a better part of his life. And inspite of the horror that he has seen within it, he still manages to leave out for some food, beyond the gates. in order to guarantee, some form of protection. Protection that came from childhood stories his mother told him about the Domovik, a household spirit of a given family member.

While the word has its roots in Slavic and Belarusian folklore, it is believed to be a being that cannot be killed by ordinary means. But then again, why would you want to kill a being that supposedly lives to provide you protection?

Read on...

[Gamal Hennessy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Road of Bones is a high quality example of psychological horror.

Set in Siberia during the Stalin period, the story seamlessly blends man vs. nature, man vs. the system, man vs. man, and man vs. himself into a bleak multi-layered tapestry.

Every beat increases the tension in the story in a way that is both violently shocking and painfully plausible. The plot twists are well executed without being obvious. The ending is a combination of insanity, irony, and tragedy.

If you enjoy realistic horror, read this book. If you don’t enjoy that genre, you still might want to give it a shot.

[Vladimír · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kruté obdobie a surový príbeh o prežití. Nadprirodzený element tomu dával niečo navyše, aj keď je otázne, či bol v rámci toho čo hlavný hrdinovia prežívali naozaj potrebný. Lebo život v gulagu a snaha o útek bol dostatočný horor. Kresba bola zaujímavá, aj keď občas bol dosť problém odlíšiť hlavných hrdinov. Krvavé pasáže však dokázali dostatočne znechutiť.

Road of Bones kombinuje horor, historickú výpoveď o šialenej ére a ruský folklór a všetko to mixuje v boji o prežitie, kde sa nemysliteľné stáva jedinou možnosťou ako ísť ďalej. Ide o jednohubku, ktorú určite zhltnete a po prečítaní vám ešte chvíľku bude chodiť mráz po chrbte.