The Pandora Room by award-winning author Christopher Golden is a sequel to the bestselling Ararat. The other contains all the curses… Now, Sophie needs to figure out which jar she’d discovered, before the jihadi forces closing in on her dig site unleash whatever is inside. One jar contains all the gifts destined for mankind. In this variation of the Pandora’s Box tale, there are two boxes-or jars-one given to Pandora and the other given to her sister Anesidora. However, this room is much older and so is the story. When the team translates the symbols, the story they read is familiar: the Greek myth of Pandora. Deep in the subterranean city Sophie and her team were exploring, she finds a hidden room covered in ancient symbols and containing a jar. One week before closing up shop in Northern Iraq, archaeologist Sophie Durand makes the discovery of her lifetime. So whether you are a reader who loves horror novels or a writer who’s looking to sharpen that particular tool in your toolbox, I highly recommend reading this Bram Stoker Award winner.The Pandora Room from New York Times bestselling and Bram Stoker Award-winning author Christopher Golden turns ancient lore into a modern-day horror in a variation on the myth of Pandora’s Box, where there were two boxes: one contained blessings of the gods, the other all the world’s curses… I have not met Christopher Golden, but I have met Joe Hill and other horror authors who speak highly of him and there’s no question he’s at the top of his game when it comes to dread. The author and I were both nominated for the Bram Stoker Award the same year in different categories, and Ararat won that year.

He doesn’t hide his monster, it’s in plain sight the entire story, yet the dread just builds and builds until you are forced to stay up long after dark, reading to see when things will finally burst. Dread is a tough one to do, because it requires patience and precise words and pacing. One of those tools is dread, which is not the same as horror, terror, or the gross-out. Whether it’s Noah’s ark at all becomes secondary to survival as the team squares off with a chilling and brutal entity that will feed off the reader’s worst fears!Īs a horror writer, I have many different tools available to scare you. But when scientists ascend the mountain to study the discovery, they quickly find that there’s something in there that should not be. That’s exactly what the novel seems to be about, when an earthquake unearths what appears to be remnants of a giant ship.

The novel Ararat takes place on the mountain of the same name, where Noah’s Ark is reputed to have come to rest. Christopher Golden has constructed a place you never want to go but that you cannot stop reading about.

Ararat by Christopher Golden