Christopher Golden first came to my attention in association with one of my favourite author-artists, Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy. They collaborated on a Hellboy universe title, Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, which I enjoyed. I expected that Ararat, written by Golden alone, would also carry some of that creepy supernatural horror, and (given the title) connect that to the biblical story of Noah’s Ark. Fortunately and unfortunately, the story of a group of climber/explorer/experts who discover a large ark-like structure on Mount Ararat in Türkiye led , as expected, to the more shocking discovery of something scary buried within — and chaos ensued. The predictability of this story was both what led me to pick up the book, because I wanted a Noah’s Ark horror story at high altitudes, but also what made the story a bit dull. Most of the plot and character elements followed a familiar formula with few surprises.

Written in a fairly standard way, as a paperback thriller adventure, the prose often described much of the physical details of each scene (which was helpful for evoking the blockbuster movie in my mind’s eye). However, I also found this kind of superficial description felt too evenly spread over the scene so that nothing really stood out as meaningful or emotionally resonant. Thoughts and flashbacks provided from various characters helped move the story along, but even these parts of the story were written in a workmanly style and only moderately engaging. 

The first half of the book was spent with various members of the large team of scientists and experts who were studying the find. Despite the book following an action movie template, not much really happened beyond a lot of “workplace” discussions and bickering. The character beats in the story were soapy melodramatic turns like hook-ups or personal secrets. There was a modest bit of exploration around the religious implications of such a discovery, since the crew was (not unexpectedly) comprised of individuals of varying beliefs and backgrounds. However, these were used more as sources of friction and dramatic tension rather than as a means of actually diving into those ideas. There was not a very well drawn connection between supernatural elements of the story and the original story from the Bible, or even other versions of the flood story. It felt like the Noah’s Ark angle was just a gimmick on which to hang a typical “uncover a monster at the dig site” horror story.

By the second half of the book, some crew members had mysteriously “disappeared”, and the creepiness started to build. However, I was surprised at how little the needle was moved on the supernatural scale. Overall, the supernatural level on this story is not high. Yes, there are some obvious aspects that were far beyond mundane, but it’s really nothing that wouldn’t show up in your average episode of The X-Files. At the climax of this book, when the characters are all trying to survive the evil scary situation, I was reminded of the movie Fallen, featuring Denzel Washington and John Goodman (don’t look it up if you don’t know it, as it may spoil certain aspects of this book). That movie is not very much like this book as it takes place in the city and has nothing to do with an archaeological discovery, but it pulls off one of the main thriller aspects of this book much better, in my opinion. In the book, dangers sort of come out of nowhere and, for example, one character just attacks another. As a story, that is not creepy no matter how brutally the attack is described. 

On the positive side, the audio narration was good. The narrator was able to pull off distinct voices for characters of different ages, cultures, and personality types. The female voices were a bit weak, and the occasional children’s voice was kind of creepy — though that might have been intentional — but overall the audiobook was well narrated. 

In the end, this story had some potential to be more unique and interesting than it was. Its ordinariness made it disappointing. I would not consider myself very well read in this supernatural action thriller subgenre, but I have read a few, and this one just didn’t set itself apart as something memorable.

2.5 stars

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