30 October 2017

The White Road

Horror
A 2017 Top Rated Read

By Sarah Lotz

Paperback 304 pages
Publisher Hodder Paperbacks (18th Oct 2018)
ASIN B01INGSW9I
ISBN-13 978-1473624597

'Lotz excels at making you feel like you're there and her flawed lead sympathetic. Fans of Dan Simmons's The Terror will be pleased.' Publishers Weekly


📕My Review

Simon Newman and guide Ed set off to explore an 'off limits' Welsh cave, notorious for the deaths of three young men, whose bodies still remain trapped deep underground. Simon intends to film the corpses and post the footage online, hoping it will go viral. Disaster strikes and Ed is killed. Simon faces a fight for survival and is eventually rescued but, unbeknown to him, something else also emerges from the cave. Something that chillingly awaits... 

‘Who is the third who walks beside you?'

The video of Simon's Welsh cave fiasco goes viral and, spurred on by its success, he decides his next challenge will be even more treacherous - Mt. Everest - where there are plenty more cadavers ripe for filming. He uses false credentials to join a climbing team and befriends 'Mark Pratchett' who he later discovers is really Marcus Michaels, the son of acclaimed climber Juliet Michaels, who died attempting to summit Everest. Simon thinks the opportunity of lifetime has just landed straight in his lap. Little does he know the terrifying fate that awaits upon the deadly mountain. 

'There is another one walking beside you’

WOW! What a marvellous book. It's incredibly dark and creepy, claustrophobic and atmospheric. I really can't praise it enough - it will definitely be among my top three reads of 2017. The writing is outstanding and the characterization exceptional. If you love your horror intense and brooding, then this is the book for you! It leaves the reader with a deepening sense of uneasiness; you simply can't put it down - you have to know how it ends. I was chilled to the bone and peeking at shadows from under the bed covers. Fantastic! 

‘Who is the third who walks beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look up the white road
There is another one walking beside you’

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land 

My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for providing a copy of this book.

Barnsey's Books Rating 

📗The Blurb

Adrenaline junkie Simon Newman sneaks onto private land to explore a dangerous cave in Wales with a strange man he's met online. But Simon gets more than he bargained for when the expedition goes horribly wrong. Simon emerges, the only survivor, after a rainstorm trap the two in the cave. Simon thinks he's had a lucky escape.

But his video of his near-death experience has just gone viral.

Suddenly Simon finds himself more famous than he could ever have imagined. Now he's faced with an impossible task: he's got to defy death once again, and film the entire thing. The whole world will be watching. There's only on place on earth for him to pit himself against the elements: Mt Everest, the tallest mountain in the world.

But Everest is also one of the deadliest spots on the planet. Two hundred and eighty people have died trying to reach its peak.

And Simon's luck is about to run out.

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