Book Review – The Abominable

The Abominable by Dan Simmons
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dan Simmons is an author with special interests, and here he gives full vent to an obsession with mountain climbing. All of the suspense scenes – and much of the rest of the narrative – get bogged down with details that non-experts will need a stack of climbing manuals, equipment catalogs and guides to the geography of Mount Everest to have any hope of following. The fussy details combined with the constant peril and physical agony of high altitude climbing make for difficult reading. Further, act three is rife with disappointments that can’t be described without major spoilers. Disappointing. I used to love Simmons’s writing, but I fear at this point he’s lost me.

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