Ararat

Ararat is a just okay thriller by Christopher Golden. It is set on the titular mountain, where for eons pseudoarchaeologists have supposed Noah's ark came to rest. Golden takes that premise and instead of doing something interesting that actually has to do with Noah, just settles for a simple story of demonic possession.

An earthquake has revealed that there is a wooden structure on top of Ararat, a mountain in Turkey on the Armenian border. There is a race to get to the top, and the winners are Adam and Miryam, a couple who make documentaries on their archaeological adventures. There are other scholars there as well, including a Catholic priest, along with local mountain guides.

Also present is Walker, who is from the U.S. government. Unknown to the others is that he is from DARPA, a division of the Defense Department that looks to weaponize any unusual finds. He is accompanied by Kim, a Korean woman representing the United Nations.

The story of Noah takes up one page in the Bible  but has certainly inspired many, from filmmakers to Ken Hamm, who made his own ark in Kentucky for tourists. The group in this book range from the believers to the skeptics--a flood water could not have risen that high--and of course, it would have been physically impossible for two of every species to be put on one boat. "The story of the great flood had too much historical prevalence in disparate ancient cultures to be pure invention, but the biblical story could not possibly be true. To jump-start the human race—never mind all life on Earth—with only whatever animals you could fit on a single boat … the idea that anyone could accept that concept made her want to bang her head against a wall."

This part of the book is interesting, but it all goes downhill when the team discovers the coffin of a horned man. Seems that a demon slipped aboard the ark, and now he's free and moving from one person to another. The book then turns into a series of people dying, until there's only a few left, and it's not interesting at all, unless you like reading about jaws getting ripped off a face or throats torn out.

I'm guessing that Golden read an article on Ararat and thought it would be a good setting for a thriller, and force-fed the demon story into it. It might have made for a better short story, cutting some of the characters (new characters are introduced late, just in time for them to be killed). I also find it annoying that some supposedly smart characters just assumed that it was Noah's ark, as if finding the remains of a wooden structure on Mount Ararat would automatically lead one to that assumption. No scientist taken seriously (and that excludes Ken Hamm) would make that kind of leap.

Ararat won the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel. Must have been a slow year.