The Abominable
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4.4 • 7 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
June 1924. On the brutal North East Ridge of Mount Everest, famous adventurers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine vanish into the snow-whipped night.
Daredevil explorer Richard Deacon devises a plan to follow in the men's footsteps, accompanied only by two friends. Off piste and with no support team, the three men strike for Everest's peak and the most vicious climate on earth.
As the winds rise and the temperature and oxygen levels drop, Deacon and his companions hear howls in the distance. Some dark creature is tracking them up the mountain, sending them scrabbling blindly into Everest's dangerous heights to escape it.
Soon they will discover what happened to Mallory's crew - but can they escape the same hideous fate?
A gripping thriller by a master of the genre, The Abominable blends historical fact with spine-tingling drama - this is one of the most chilling and unforgettable novels you will ever read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Even Jake Perry, the fictional travelogue author Dan Simmons meets in his latest novel, jokes that his reader may not make it through this endless stack of notebooks. But lovers of Simmons s blend of alternate history, mystery, and myth will appreciate this three-act thriller set in the interwar years. Young American alpine climber Jake is invited on a recovery mission to find Percival Bromley, a British lord who vanished on Mt. Everest. Much of the novel is devoted to the strategies and techniques of mountain climbing as it was developing in the 1920s, and Jake, his friend Jean-Claude, and team leader Deacon spend a lot of time rubbing elbows and comparing gear with real alpinists of the era. But amid the wash of detail, Simmons plants crucial facts and conjectures about early-20th-century Europe that won t pay off until Jake and his party are nearing the top of the world. Can murder and carnage be fully explained by the evil of men? Is a supernatural threat looming over the expedition? As usual, Simmons doesn t answer all the questions he s raised when the mysteries surrounding the loss of Percy Bromley are resolved, but his fans, like Jake, are sure to enjoy the journey.
Customer Reviews
Lazy plot development
Well written, Mr Simmons has obviously put a lot of research into the technicalities of mountaineering and developing his central characters. Too bad he didn't put any where near as much effort into thinking through the central plot element that was supposed to make wading through all that technical jargon worth while. If the central plot development had actually occurred in real life then really Mr Simmons? Do you honestly think any of your final chapters would have come to pass after over a decade? The end seems a messy after the fact justification as to why the characters were forced into the situations that make up the entire book. The amazing gap between Mr Simmons scramble at the end to try and cover plot holes that you could drive a London bus through and what would have really occurred in the real world had his story actually been true leave a bad aftertaste in the mouth and highlight the weakness of the whole central premise of the book. I'm trying to not give the game away to those that are thinking of buying the book, but if you do, once you get to the end you'll see exactly what I mean.