The Abominable: A Novel

I enjoyed the story line and how much technical research went into it. I was hoping for more supernatural twists like in "The Terror". Overall was worth reading and owning. I enjoyed how it was written as a true story and looped around from present to past to present again.

In The Abominable Simmons creates an almost believable tale of a young climber Jake Perry. A gentlemen who Simmons claims to have received a manuscript of his adventures and simply 'tidied' it up a little. Of course while the physical and photographic evidence was misplaced, the story itself is intact...

And what a story.

Certainly not for the impatient or time-strapped, Abominable is an extremely slow build. More like classic literature with lengthy descriptions and gradual attachment to the characters, this book is actually pretty charming. The action picks up in Part III and doesn't let go until the slightly rambling post-climatic epilogue.

Present are Simmons' bold, beautiful an brutal prose and imagery. While I heard more about climbing than I ever wanted to know, the author has done brilliantly bringing Everest vividly to life and making the characters fallible and lifelike to the reader

My only criticism of the book is that it is simply too ambitious, between Simmons/Perry's fawning over authorly procedure and Simmons' slightly too elaborate re-write of history it just doesn't work as and attempt to pass off as real.

In summary, this book is not a quick read, and while I enjoyed the journey immensely it is easy to see a casual reading struggling to maintain interest.

Simmons basically invented a new genre with his works, The Terror and Black Hills. Those two deftly wove history, alternative history, the supernatural and mystery into highly unique tales. From the pre promotion and packaging of The Abominable, I expected something similar. What was delivered was an overly long dissertation on climbing and a tepid, predictable thriller.

One of the usual strengths of Simmons are his characters and their dialogue. In this outing we are treated to stereotypes and banalities. Gone overall is the usual suspense, intrigue and mystery. It seemed like reading a manual more than a novel. At many points it felt like it came from a different author. I hope Simmons returns to form.

I loved this book! Dan Simmons takes the facts and builds it into a great story. After I read the book I went to YouTube and checked out all the videos related to mountain climbing, mainly Everest and K2. After that I started watching videos on rope and knot tying. This book got me fired up! The resolve of the human spirit amazes me and The Abominable taped me right into it. The characters in this story show how people, when motivated, can go beyond the limits of our human physical ability. How on earth did they do it back in the early 1920's? Mt. Everest, how do they do it now????

So, you know this is about an expedition up Everest the year after Mallory died, right? It's a subject that fascinates me so I went into this incredibly excited and read the entire thing in one day.

Even though I was excited to read the book, at first it was not an easy task and at times felt like I was attempting the mountain as well. It was the beginning third that I found tough to read. There was a lot of detail which I'm sure interested the narrator and which was part of his character, but it didn't interest me so much; though it did bring home to me the period in which they were climbing the mountain and how impossible a task it was with the tools they had back then. But after reading 100 pages or so I started skimming any lengthy descriptions I encountered and read only actual scenes with dialogue for the next 100 pages.

That said, once they got to India and Reggie (yay!) I was riveted and couldn't put it down. And while I found the ending to be a little less than I'd hoped, the journey to it was amazing. From the time they hit Everest until the novel's climax I was on the edge of my seat. It wasn't just that there were tense scenes. It was that Simmons made me feel how very grueling their trip was, and I felt like I was with them every step of the way. I just had to know what happened to them. I will never forget their climb up that mountain.

This book isn't for everyone, especially if you're set on reading every word and can't slog through some of the bits at the beginning that take a little force to get through. But if you can and enjoy the topic, I think it's worth getting to the point about 30% in where the novel takes off.

Note: This has very little of the supernatural about it. In fact, depending on how you read it it could have none.

I so looked forward to this book, particularly after reading The Terror. Unfortunately, the last hundred and fifty pages had me asking myself why I was wasting precious hours of my life just to finish it.
Without spoiling the book, if that's possible, let's just say that plot twists are fine. Misleading your readers, and potential purchasers of this book is not fine.
Mr. Simmons is a good writer, and works like, "Song of Kali", "Drood" and "The Terror" are testament to that fact.
However, this book should have been written by a ghost writer.

Excellent book. I bought it first because of the title's association however I got so much more. The book pulls you into the world of mountain climbing like no other and if you're caught in the polar vortex this year and want a good read, here you go.

This is epic novel-writing. As in most Simmons books, the detail is astonishing: you'll feel like an expert in 1920s mountain climbing, among other things, and Simmons knows how to pace things so the details never stop the story. Suffice it to say that climbing Everest, even in the era when oxygen came into use, was painful and difficult in ways hard for us armchair adventurers to even imagine. The setting and introduction of the novel are clever, and the adventure moves between continents as four climbers search for another climber's body, which carries a secret only two of the searchers know about. As their search unfolds, the Nazi party is rising in faraway Germany, and some far-sighted men have realized what a danger it presents. The result is a thrilling chase in an alien realm where humans need every bit of their stamina and grit just to stay alive, much less fight a skirmish with global implications.
Those wanting to learn about the yeti will not find a lot of detail, but the subject is pivotal at two points. To keep from spoiling it, I won't say whether Simmons' novel presents metohkangmi (which actually does translate as something close to "abominable snowman") as real animals.
If I have a disappointment, it's with the ultimate resolution of the geopolitical story: in real life, the good guys would have put their secret to use long before they do here. (Sorry if that's confusing, but you'll see what I mean. This bit was so improbable that it really made the story grind to a halt for moment.) That's one bad moment in a superb novel, though.
If you are interested in tackling a long and unique novel with some cryptozoological bits and a memorable tour of the roof of the world, The Abominable (which at 672 pages is heavy enough to anchor a climbing rope or clobber a yeti with), you won't be disappointed.
- Matt Bille, author, Shadows of Existence: Discoveries and Speculations in Zoology (Hancock, 2006)
[...]

Kevin Collins is ruining this audiobook for me. His reading of Dan Simmons' The Abominable is stilted, robotic and sounds like his 3rd Grade teacher is sitting over his shoulder forcing him to read a book he doesn't understand, while making sure he is over-enunciates every word. The result is so bad that it's almost entertaining how awkward the listening experience is. Almost... "Painful" is really the only word.

I am a huge Dan Simmons fan, and I prefer to listen to his works on audiobook because there is something about his writing where the listener can get lost the landscapes and complex characters he so painstakingly creates. I can't even comment on the plot of this book because I hardly can bear to listen. I am constantly jerked out of Simmons' spell by Mr. Robot and his utter lack of any melodic flow or humanity. Perhaps I can blame it on the director, or the production team, whoever is to blame the end product is void of emotion or insight. Read the kindle version and save the money.

The degree of detail describing the first generations of mountaineers and their exploits might be interesting for the mountaineering freaks but is frankly boring in the extreme for any other mortal. So unless you are among this select group escape while you have time. The lurid and unpleasant details that are very typical of Mr. Simmons are there all right and it is well written but the story...

I have read a number of Dan Simmons' books. "The Terror" is in my top-ten all time(and I read *a lot*). So I, perhaps naively, saw the title of this book and expected something along those lines, but set in the Himalayas. Boy was I wrong.

********************* SPOILER ALERT. SPOILERS BELOW. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. SPOILERS, I TELL YOU. *****************
Instead, what I got was a third-rate political thriller with shallow characters. As Manzikert noted in his/her review of this book, you have the evil Nazis, the Frenchman with the cliched accent, and the steadfast Englishman. Nazis chase others through Himalayas. There's a scene where the "Allies" (for lack of a better expression) are fighting off the Nazis that are climbing up after them. And all I can think of is "Home Alone". The incompetent pursuers are fought off by ingenious tricks and tactics of the pursued. Gag. So aside from the absurdity of it all, I have a number of other issues with this book.

1. I honestly felt like the author and/or publisher capitalized on the much better "The Terror" by implying this was about a yeti pursuing climbers in the Himalayas. I mean, the other name for yeti *is* "Abominable Snowman" after all. Yes, the error of assumption is mine, but I still feel a bit deceived.

2. It builds slowly. Like glacially slow, if you'll pardon the pun. It's a couple of hundred pages until they are even in the Himalayas.

3. The author took great measures to avoid revealing that Reggie was a woman until she actually appeared in the book. There was no "she" or "her" as she was being discussed prior to her entrance. In fact it was sort of a sitcom scenario. Yet the publisher chose to reveal the fact that she is a woman right in the dustjacket.

4. As Manzikert also noted in his/her review, the Germanophobia is quite strong. Evil Nazi henchmen and their pedophile future leader. And a laughable revisionist history of why Germany ultimately failed to invade England.

I am so very disappointed. I will have to think about it very carefully before I pull another Simmons book off the shelf to read.

Like many reviewers here I loved Dan Simmons' "The Terror" and hoped for another haunting blend of history and horror. Fellow Terror fans: THIS IS NOT THAT BOOK! I'm not going to go into a long recitation of all the ways "The Abominable" lives up to its title, both because Manzikert's review has already done it better and because I want to start forgetting this book as quickly as possible.

Dan Simmons is required reading for me. Love, love, love his books. I want to give this book 5 stars but it did not excite me like some of his other books. I have no knowledge of rock or mountain climbing & I found the endless details of the sport to be way too much. His attention to said detail & his research of recorded historical events is thorough enough to keep this book at 4 stars. I am glad I read it. I learned a lot about Mt.Everest & its tragic attempts to reach the top. Thank you Dan but I will probably not read this one a second time. And I always read your woks at least twice. Keep 'em coming.

A fine piece of writing by Dan Simmons, 'The Abominable' falls just short of his first tier. It may not be the equal of 'The Terror', 'Ilium', 'Hyperion' or 'Carrion Comfort' but it still firmly ranked among the best pieces of fiction I've read this year. Dan Simmons remains a fantastic author. The tale of a 1920s expedition to Everest is best not described in detail, many of the pleasures of this book are in its surprises and densely intricate plotting. I strongly urge you not to read too many reviews as the well earned twists and turns present in this book deserve to be discovered on their own.

Stories involving snow and ice always seem more exciting, and Dan Simmons always manages to give me a chill, in a good way, first with The Terror and now Abominable. When I need to settle down with a well written book by a talented author, Mr. Simmons always delivers.

Simmons' historical fiction is unmatched. Each time I read one, I'm triggered into a months long reading spree of non-fiction titles about the subject. The Franklin Expedition, US Indian War, India, now Everest. The only down side of finishing a Simmons book is waiting for the next one.

Dan Simmons has written books in many settings- ancient Greece-ish, outer space, earth in the future, the Arctic, Victorian England - and his stories amaze me. They weave elaborate visions of suspense that will keep the reader wanting more. I can't wait for the next Simmons book

The author has no respect for his readership and squanders a brilliant premise for a horror story. Anyone who has read The Terror knows that Simmons was once capable of an engrossing yarn but in The Abominable he leans on leaden, sophomoric descriptions that serve only to show what books he read for his research, ludicrous stereotypes and a cardboard cut out of a narrator. He has either given over the writing chores to interns or The Terror was a lucky fluke. This could be a mildly entertaining comic book from the 60's. Tiresome and overlong; it was a slog from the fatuous introduction to the end. Don't bother. If you want Everest, read Into the Silence by Wade Davis.

A not uninteresting idea, with an occasional paragraph or two of good writing, all of it covered in an avalanche of words, words, words. Amazing that the author survived. Very hard to believe that even a journeyman editor would not have taken a red pen to entire pages of this long, didactic, and very often boring dissertation on climbing in the Himalayas. Recommended only for readers with enormous patience.

I read some of the negative reviews on "The Abominable" and wonder whether I read a whole other book. I loved this tale of mountaineering, of friendship, of mysterious hidden objects and history very much.

Is it the story I thought it was going to be, which is horror and Yetis? There is horror but it's created by humans, not mythical creatures. It is the horror of what man can do to his fellow man.

I loved the mountain sequences, the mountaineering, the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s history. I thought the characters were well developed and I wish I could know any of the Jake Perry group, all of them in fact. In a book this lengthy, you really get to KNOW the characters.

The descriptions of Everest were awe inspiring. And chilling - literally. I had to put a sweater on to read most of the book.

Yes, some of the plotline was "out there" but this is fiction and that is allowed. Is this my favorite of Simmons' books? No, that would probably be Summer of Night or Flashback. But I am very glad I didn't base my reading of this book on so many other's reviews. It held my interest from page one to the very end and I'm glad I bought it, read it and have it for my library.

Dan Simmons writes about such a diverse range of interesting adventures/ topics! Fictionalizing in a way that is tough to tell the historic facts from pure fiction keeps me guessing about how much is real and how much is imagination.
Another great read!

This book had me from the beginning. An engrossing tale of murder, mayhem, mountain climbing, and the missing link in more ways than can be imagined. Hard to put down. Full of surprises and lots of high altitude climbing detail. Keep your favorite warm blanket close for there are many chills in this tale!

I love books about climbing, especially in the Himalaya. This one is extremely well-written. I really looked forward to spending time with it each evening. Fascinating to hear about climbing techniques and equipment from the 1920's with natural fiber ropes, wool clothing, and canvas tents.

I was awestruck by this book. The author's forward was hilarious--and then it became the most magnificent journey of a lifetime for me. I cannot describe the pure fear, fascination, amazement, and eye-opening experiences I felt throughout this lovely, lovely piecing together of emotion, fate, history, fatality, and love.

This book surprised me in that I was expecting an alternate historical crossed with a bit of horror as in his book "The Terror". It skipped the horror part and substituted gritty realism. It ties in actual history so well that one could be confused with what really happened verses what happens in the novel. I enjoyed browsing actual mount Everest climbing videos while reading the novel as most of the places described are well documented in video.

I can understand why many will say the book is too long. It is like other books by Simmons...full of history and facts. I enjoyed the entire novel and I think anyone can who has a bit of patience and who is interested in how things work in the world and it's history. I can think of only two negatives. One is that the female character does not seem as fleshed out as the other main characters. I think I expected a bit more of her story and a bit more of the integration of the team as they learned to trust and live with one another. As it is this seems to happen without note in the novel... or too quickly. I was surprised at who ended up with whom at the end as also it seemed to have little foreshadowing relationship wise beforehand. (I tried to keep spoilers low so this may have read strange)

My second minor grip is the lack of horror or supernatural. This could be blamed on the marketing I have seen for the novel.

In summary... If you have read Simmons and enjoyed his other works then this novel will be worth your time and money.

This Dan Simmons guy writes some really good books. This one is a little slow to start but a great story overall. If you like books about Mt. Everest this should be on the list. As a side note I got a really good deal on the hardback here on the store, however the cover was slightly damaged through shipping. Happy with my purchase I would do it again.

This rambling, slow moving novel is supposedly the product of an eighty year old in a rest home sent to our author in hopes of getting it published. There is a long boring intro followed by an explanation of how the manuscript finally comes into the Author's possession. Finally the work begins (For the reader) as snail paced action? unfolds of mountain climbing technique dragging us slowly from the Alps to the Himalayas.The Author could have saved the reader a lot of time if after the receipt of this "manuscript" he had repackaged it, marked it "RETURN TO SENDER" and place it in the nearest mail box and hope the USPS would misplace it.

Possible spoiler alert!! This book was not what I was expecting. I was all set for a book along the lines of The Terror, and this had absolutely nothing in common with that book. Well written, but it is a Hitler War book.

I am grateful to Dan Simmons for some astonishing journeys rich with the power and sweep of a truly mighty imagination. Song of Kali, Carrion Comfort, Ilium, Olympos, Hyperion and the divisive Drood, were towering achievements. I even liked The Terror although it had its detractors. We won't mention that awful thing that is supposed to feature a young Mark Twain on a conveniently erupting Hawaii. Then Black Hills: spectacularly average and imminently forgettable. Now this aptly named The Abominable. Cookie-cutter Boys Own Annual Nazi Baddies. Flaccid diaphanous characters who you don't miss even when they die heroically and the ever-present hand in sock puppet presence of the author spoiling any possibility of enjoyable suspension of disbelief. It's like he was trying to find a voice and just couldn't nail it anywhere nearly as well as he has before in books like Drood. I was a Dan Simmons junkie. I believed he could write no wrong. I am sad that I do not feel that way anymore. I will have a good sniff of his next offering before committing time and dollars. The second star is purely for past enjoyment and affection. I miss you Dan.

Very interesting historical novel. I learned a lot about the expedition to break through the Northwest Passage. I studied maps and tried to understand the geography of the Arctic region. It was a great story that did not need the enhancement of the fictional horror that the author chose to add. In fact, this detracted from the real horror of the actual expedition. I did like it overall.

Posthumously transcribed from the hand-written journals of Jake Perry, mountaineer and travelogue author, who bequeathed them to author Dan Simmons in 1992—‘how do you say’…framing device?—The Abominable charts the progress of a secret attempt to summit Mount Everest in 1925 (in the disastrous wake of George Mallory’s famed 1924 expedition). After scaling the Matterhorn with two other climbers—Richard Davis Deacon (a.k.a. "the Deacon"), an emotionally damaged WWI vet with strength and endurance bordering on the superhuman, and Jean-Claude "J.C." Clairoux, a fully accredited Chamonix Guide—Perry learns that Lord Percival Bromley, a rakish Brit, and Austrian Kurt Meyer have been lost on Everest. Perry and his climbing partners convince Bromley’s wealthy mother to fund a recovery effort. Percy’s fetching cousin, Reggie Bromley-Montfort, in charge of the purse strings, insists on accompanying the trio to the summit with her personal doctor in tow. As the journey begins from the base of Everest to the top, the 35-man expedition is met with bitter frostbite, altitude sickness, and an unexpected terror with far-reaching implications in this tense, postwar period when Europe is ostensibly headed toward another great conflict.

It would seem that a hallmark of reading a Dan Simmons novel is that the reader comes away with a newfound wealth of knowledge on a specific subject; in the case of The Abominable, it’s 1920s mountain climbing. Sure, the text is highly saturated with the myriad technical aspects of climbing (more on this later), but there’s a decent story to be found within this 663-pager if you’re will to slog through the mechanical minutia. And just like with Drood and The Terror, Simmons utilizes historical events as the backdrop for his latest novel, skillfully blurring fiction with reality. Real-life people and interwar events are blended with the fictitious, as this slow, plodding tale of survival played out in the world's most inhospitable environment is peppered with cameos by a potpourri of historical figures, including Winston Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia, Charlie Chaplin, as well as the gorak-pecked corpses of George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine.

Simmons’s beautiful prose and brutal imagery not only infuses the characters with dimension but also brings Everest vividly to life. Geography and weather serve as characters themselves in order to further the dramatic narrative. The dangerous magnitude of the mountain is deftly conveyed—and Simmons doesn’t spare his readers from the reality of what happens to human bodies that are torn asunder by extreme falls.

However, Simmons’s epic mountain journey isn’t without its roadblocks. This steep tome is indeed a slow build; particularly with its mammoth info-dump on mountaineering that occupies much of the novel’s first 200 pages. The, at times, exhaustive detailing of mountaineering techniques and 1920s equipment is certainly impressive and lends credibility to the story, and while the glacial pacing allows the reader to gradually attach themselves to the oft charming protagonists, this book is definitely not for the impatient or time-strapped. From crampons to jumars to Primus stoves, there’s not a piece of climbing gear that Simmons fails to skim over. If you’re apprehensive of long novels inscribed with borderline-excessive detail, then you’ll want to abort this climb.

Although personable many of the characters bridged dangerously on the stereotypical, from the eccentric Frenchman and his fatuous accent to the deutschbag of ruthless, Lugar-wielding Nazi villains (mind the Germanophobia; it’s not like you haven’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark countless times!). On the upside, Jake Perry proved a likeable narrator; cocksure and skilled despite his youth, he refused to let cold reality stand in the way of his beliefs.

No stranger to Simmons’s elegantly terrifying works, I entered this novel expecting the author to incorporate superstitions around the mountain, perhaps employing Buddhist mysticism or Himalayan mythology as a pretext to weave some chilling, paranormal, occult, and horror elements into the narrative a la The Terror (which told the story of Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1840s voyage to the Arctic). However, Simmons avoids the fantastical and applies a wholly different approach to the Percy Bromley mystery that, arguably, turns out to be more farfetched than the highly anticipated, yet sadly absent yetis. In the end, the underlying motivations for the mission prove both a hard sell—more so than a female heroine disrobing at 28,000-feet, which struck me as a grotesque indulgence—and a tepid payoff for such a strenuous journey.

A worthwhile read for, perhaps, climbing enthusiasts or anyone who wouldn’t get bogged down by the intricacies of mountaineering, The Abominable is an overwrought, meticulous, and gripping account of one of the most terrifying feats a man can undertake.

Posthumously transcribed from the hand-written journals of Jake Perry, mountaineer and travelogue author, who bequeathed them to author Dan Simmons in 1992—‘how do you say’…framing device?—The Abominable charts the progress of a secret attempt to summit Mount Everest in 1925 (in the disastrous wake of George Mallory’s famed 1924 expedition). After scaling the Matterhorn with two other climbers—Richard Davis Deacon (a.k.a. "the Deacon"), an emotionally damaged WWI vet with strength and endurance bordering on the superhuman, and Jean-Claude "J.C." Clairoux, a fully accredited Chamonix Guide—Perry learns that Lord Percival Bromley, a rakish Brit, and Austrian Kurt Meyer have been lost on Everest. Perry and his climbing partners convince Bromley’s wealthy mother to fund a recovery effort. Percy’s fetching cousin, Reggie Bromley-Montfort, in charge of the purse strings, insists on accompanying the trio to the summit with her personal doctor in tow. As the journey begins from the base of Everest to the top, the 35-man expedition is met with bitter frostbite, altitude sickness, and an unexpected terror with far-reaching implications in this tense, postwar period when Europe is ostensibly headed toward another great conflict.

It would seem that a hallmark of reading a Dan Simmons novel is that the reader comes away with a newfound wealth of knowledge on a specific subject; in the case of The Abominable, it’s 1920s mountain climbing. Sure, the text is highly saturated with the myriad technical aspects of climbing (more on this later), but there’s a decent story to be found within this 663-pager if you’re will to slog through the mechanical minutia. And just like with Drood and The Terror, Simmons utilizes historical events as the backdrop for his latest novel, skillfully blurring fiction with reality. Real-life people and interwar events are blended with the fictitious, as this slow, plodding tale of survival played out in the world's most inhospitable environment is peppered with cameos by a potpourri of historical figures, including Winston Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia, Charlie Chaplin, as well as the gorak-pecked corpses of George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine.

Simmons’s beautiful prose and brutal imagery not only infuses the characters with dimension but also brings Everest vividly to life. Geography and weather serve as characters themselves in order to further the dramatic narrative. The dangerous magnitude of the mountain is deftly conveyed—and Simmons doesn’t spare his readers from the reality of what happens to human bodies that are torn asunder by extreme falls.

However, Simmons’s epic mountain journey isn’t without its roadblocks. This steep tome is indeed a slow build; particularly with its mammoth info-dump on mountaineering that occupies much of the novel’s first 200 pages. The, at times, exhaustive detailing of mountaineering techniques and 1920s equipment is certainly impressive and lends credibility to the story, and while the glacial pacing allows the reader to gradually attach themselves to the oft charming protagonists, this book is definitely not for the impatient or time-strapped. From crampons to jumars to Primus stoves, there’s not a piece of climbing gear that Simmons fails to skim over. If you’re apprehensive of long novels inscribed with borderline-excessive detail, then you’ll want to abort this climb.

Although personable many of the characters bridged dangerously on the stereotypical, from the eccentric Frenchman and his fatuous accent to the deutschbag of ruthless, Lugar-wielding Nazi villains (mind the Germanophobia; it’s not like you haven’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark countless times!). On the upside, Jake Perry proved a likeable narrator; cocksure and skilled despite his youth, he refused to let cold reality stand in the way of his beliefs.

No stranger to Simmons’s elegantly terrifying works, I entered this novel expecting the author to incorporate superstitions around the mountain, perhaps employing Buddhist mysticism or Himalayan mythology as a pretext to weave some chilling, paranormal, occult, and horror elements into the narrative a la The Terror (which told the story of Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1840s voyage to the Arctic). However, Simmons avoids the fantastical and applies a wholly different approach to the Percy Bromley mystery that, arguably, turns out to be more farfetched than the highly anticipated, yet sadly absent yetis. In the end, the underlying motivations for the mission prove both a hard sell—more so than a female heroine disrobing at 28,000-feet, which struck me as a grotesque indulgence—and a tepid payoff for such a strenuous journey.

A worthwhile read for, perhaps, climbing enthusiasts or anyone who wouldn’t get bogged down by the intricacies of mountaineering, The Abominable is an overwrought, meticulous, and gripping account of one of the most terrifying feats a man can undertake.

Simmons is a windbag. The slowest writer I've ever encountered. Long dialogue scenes that go nowhere. Repetitive and clichéd. Does he work with an editor? How has this guy managed to build a following?

Posthumously transcribed from the hand-written journals of Jake Perry, mountaineer and travelogue author, who bequeathed them to author Dan Simmons in 1992—‘how do you say’…framing device?—The Abominable charts the progress of a secret attempt to summit Mount Everest in 1925 (in the disastrous wake of George Mallory’s famed 1924 expedition). After scaling the Matterhorn with two other climbers—Richard Davis Deacon (a.k.a. "the Deacon"), an emotionally damaged WWI vet with strength and endurance bordering on the superhuman, and Jean-Claude "J.C." Clairoux, a fully accredited Chamonix Guide—Perry learns that Lord Percival Bromley, a rakish Brit, and Austrian Kurt Meyer have been lost on Everest. Perry and his climbing partners convince Bromley’s wealthy mother to fund a recovery effort. Percy’s fetching cousin, Reggie Bromley-Montfort, in charge of the purse strings, insists on accompanying the trio to the summit with her personal doctor in tow. As the journey begins from the base of Everest to the top, the 35-man expedition is met with bitter frostbite, altitude sickness, and an unexpected terror with far-reaching implications in this tense, postwar period when Europe is ostensibly headed toward another great conflict.

It would seem that a hallmark of reading a Dan Simmons novel is that the reader comes away with a newfound wealth of knowledge on a specific subject; in the case of The Abominable, it’s 1920s mountain climbing. Sure, the text is highly saturated with the myriad technical aspects of climbing (more on this later), but there’s a decent story to be found within this 663-pager if you’re will to slog through the mechanical minutia. And just like with Drood and The Terror, Simmons utilizes historical events as the backdrop for his latest novel, skillfully blurring fiction with reality. Real-life people and interwar events are blended with the fictitious, as this slow, plodding tale of survival played out in the world's most inhospitable environment is peppered with cameos by a potpourri of historical figures, including Winston Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia, Charlie Chaplin, as well as the gorak-pecked corpses of George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine.

Simmons’s beautiful prose and brutal imagery not only infuses the characters with dimension but also brings Everest vividly to life. Geography and weather serve as characters themselves in order to further the dramatic narrative. The dangerous magnitude of the mountain is deftly conveyed—and Simmons doesn’t spare his readers from the reality of what happens to human bodies that are torn asunder by extreme falls.

However, Simmons’s epic mountain journey isn’t without its roadblocks. This steep tome is indeed a slow build; particularly with its mammoth info-dump on mountaineering that occupies much of the novel’s first 200 pages. The, at times, exhaustive detailing of mountaineering techniques and 1920s equipment is certainly impressive and lends credibility to the story, and while the glacial pacing allows the reader to gradually attach themselves to the oft charming protagonists, this book is definitely not for the impatient or time-strapped. From crampons to jumars to Primus stoves, there’s not a piece of climbing gear that Simmons fails to skim over. If you’re apprehensive of long novels inscribed with borderline-excessive detail, then you’ll want to abort this climb.

Although personable many of the characters bridged dangerously on the stereotypical, from the eccentric Frenchman and his fatuous accent to the deutschbag of ruthless, Lugar-wielding Nazi villains (mind the Germanophobia; it’s not like you haven’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark countless times!). On the upside, Jake Perry proved a likeable narrator; cocksure and skilled despite his youth, he refused to let cold reality stand in the way of his beliefs.

No stranger to Simmons’s elegantly terrifying works, I entered this novel expecting the author to incorporate superstitions around the mountain, perhaps employing Buddhist mysticism or Himalayan mythology as a pretext to weave some chilling, paranormal, occult, and horror elements into the narrative a la The Terror (which told the story of Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1840s voyage to the Arctic). However, Simmons avoids the fantastical and applies a wholly different approach to the Percy Bromley mystery that, arguably, turns out to be more farfetched than the highly anticipated, yet sadly absent yetis. In the end, the underlying motivations for the mission prove both a hard sell—more so than a female heroine disrobing at 28,000-feet, which struck me as a grotesque indulgence—and a tepid payoff for such a strenuous journey.

A worthwhile read for, perhaps, climbing enthusiasts or anyone who wouldn’t get bogged down by the intricacies of mountaineering, The Abominable is an overwrought, meticulous, and gripping account of one of the most terrifying feats a man can undertake.

Posthumously transcribed from the hand-written journals of Jake Perry, mountaineer and travelogue author, who bequeathed them to author Dan Simmons in 1992—‘how do you say’…framing device?—The Abominable charts the progress of a secret attempt to summit Mount Everest in 1925 (in the disastrous wake of George Mallory’s famed 1924 expedition). After scaling the Matterhorn with two other climbers—Richard Davis Deacon (a.k.a. "the Deacon"), an emotionally damaged WWI vet with strength and endurance bordering on the superhuman, and Jean-Claude "J.C." Clairoux, a fully accredited Chamonix Guide—Perry learns that Lord Percival Bromley, a rakish Brit, and Austrian Kurt Meyer have been lost on Everest. Perry and his climbing partners convince Bromley’s wealthy mother to fund a recovery effort. Percy’s fetching cousin, Reggie Bromley-Montfort, in charge of the purse strings, insists on accompanying the trio to the summit with her personal doctor in tow. As the journey begins from the base of Everest to the top, the 35-man expedition is met with bitter frostbite, altitude sickness, and an unexpected terror with far-reaching implications in this tense, postwar period when Europe is ostensibly headed toward another great conflict.

It would seem that a hallmark of reading a Dan Simmons novel is that the reader comes away with a newfound wealth of knowledge on a specific subject; in the case of The Abominable, it’s 1920s mountain climbing. Sure, the text is highly saturated with the myriad technical aspects of climbing (more on this later), but there’s a decent story to be found within this 663-pager if you’re will to slog through the mechanical minutia. And just like with Drood and The Terror, Simmons utilizes historical events as the backdrop for his latest novel, skillfully blurring fiction with reality. Real-life people and interwar events are blended with the fictitious, as this slow, plodding tale of survival played out in the world's most inhospitable environment is peppered with cameos by a potpourri of historical figures, including Winston Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia, Charlie Chaplin, as well as the gorak-pecked corpses of George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine.

Simmons’s beautiful prose and brutal imagery not only infuses the characters with dimension but also brings Everest vividly to life. Geography and weather serve as characters themselves in order to further the dramatic narrative. The dangerous magnitude of the mountain is deftly conveyed—and Simmons doesn’t spare his readers from the reality of what happens to human bodies that are torn asunder by extreme falls.

However, Simmons’s epic mountain journey isn’t without its roadblocks. This steep tome is indeed a slow build; particularly with its mammoth info-dump on mountaineering that occupies much of the novel’s first 200 pages. The, at times, exhaustive detailing of mountaineering techniques and 1920s equipment is certainly impressive and lends credibility to the story, and while the glacial pacing allows the reader to gradually attach themselves to the oft charming protagonists, this book is definitely not for the impatient or time-strapped. From crampons to jumars to Primus stoves, there’s not a piece of climbing gear that Simmons fails to skim over. If you’re apprehensive of long novels inscribed with borderline-excessive detail, then you’ll want to abort this climb.

Although personable many of the characters bridged dangerously on the stereotypical, from the eccentric Frenchman and his fatuous accent to the deutschbag of ruthless, Lugar-wielding Nazi villains (mind the Germanophobia; it’s not like you haven’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark countless times!). On the upside, Jake Perry proved a likeable narrator; cocksure and skilled despite his youth, he refused to let cold reality stand in the way of his beliefs.

No stranger to Simmons’s elegantly terrifying works, I entered this novel expecting the author to incorporate superstitions around the mountain, perhaps employing Buddhist mysticism or Himalayan mythology as a pretext to weave some chilling, paranormal, occult, and horror elements into the narrative a la The Terror (which told the story of Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1840s voyage to the Arctic). However, Simmons avoids the fantastical and applies a wholly different approach to the Percy Bromley mystery that, arguably, turns out to be more farfetched than the highly anticipated, yet sadly absent yetis. In the end, the underlying motivations for the mission prove both a hard sell—more so than a female heroine disrobing at 28,000-feet, which struck me as a grotesque indulgence—and a tepid payoff for such a strenuous journey.

A worthwhile read for, perhaps, climbing enthusiasts or anyone who wouldn’t get bogged down by the intricacies of mountaineering, The Abominable is an overwrought, meticulous, and gripping account of one of the most terrifying feats a man can undertake.

Posthumously transcribed from the hand-written journals of Jake Perry, mountaineer and travelogue author, who bequeathed them to author Dan Simmons in 1992—‘how do you say’…framing device?—The Abominable charts the progress of a secret attempt to summit Mount Everest in 1925 (in the disastrous wake of George Mallory’s famed 1924 expedition). After scaling the Matterhorn with two other climbers—Richard Davis Deacon (a.k.a. "the Deacon"), an emotionally damaged WWI vet with strength and endurance bordering on the superhuman, and Jean-Claude "J.C." Clairoux, a fully accredited Chamonix Guide—Perry learns that Lord Percival Bromley, a rakish Brit, and Austrian Kurt Meyer have been lost on Everest. Perry and his climbing partners convince Bromley’s wealthy mother to fund a recovery effort. Percy’s fetching cousin, Reggie Bromley-Montfort, in charge of the purse strings, insists on accompanying the trio to the summit with her personal doctor in tow. As the journey begins from the base of Everest to the top, the 35-man expedition is met with bitter frostbite, altitude sickness, and an unexpected terror with far-reaching implications in this tense, postwar period when Europe is ostensibly headed toward another great conflict.

It would seem that a hallmark of reading a Dan Simmons novel is that the reader comes away with a newfound wealth of knowledge on a specific subject; in the case of The Abominable, it’s 1920s mountain climbing. Sure, the text is highly saturated with the myriad technical aspects of climbing (more on this later), but there’s a decent story to be found within this 663-pager if you’re will to slog through the mechanical minutia. And just like with Drood and The Terror, Simmons utilizes historical events as the backdrop for his latest novel, skillfully blurring fiction with reality. Real-life people and interwar events are blended with the fictitious, as this slow, plodding tale of survival played out in the world's most inhospitable environment is peppered with cameos by a potpourri of historical figures, including Winston Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia, Charlie Chaplin, as well as the gorak-pecked corpses of George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine.

Simmons’s beautiful prose and brutal imagery not only infuses the characters with dimension but also brings Everest vividly to life. Geography and weather serve as characters themselves in order to further the dramatic narrative. The dangerous magnitude of the mountain is deftly conveyed—and Simmons doesn’t spare his readers from the reality of what happens to human bodies that are torn asunder by extreme falls.

However, Simmons’s epic mountain journey isn’t without its roadblocks. This steep tome is indeed a slow build; particularly with its mammoth info-dump on mountaineering that occupies much of the novel’s first 200 pages. The, at times, exhaustive detailing of mountaineering techniques and 1920s equipment is certainly impressive and lends credibility to the story, and while the glacial pacing allows the reader to gradually attach themselves to the oft charming protagonists, this book is definitely not for the impatient or time-strapped. From crampons to jumars to Primus stoves, there’s not a piece of climbing gear that Simmons fails to skim over. If you’re apprehensive of long novels inscribed with borderline-excessive detail, then you’ll want to abort this climb.

Although personable many of the characters bridged dangerously on the stereotypical, from the eccentric Frenchman and his fatuous accent to the deutschbag of ruthless, Lugar-wielding Nazi villains (mind the Germanophobia; it’s not like you haven’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark countless times!). On the upside, Jake Perry proved a likeable narrator; cocksure and skilled despite his youth, he refused to let cold reality stand in the way of his beliefs.

No stranger to Simmons’s elegantly terrifying works, I entered this novel expecting the author to incorporate superstitions around the mountain, perhaps employing Buddhist mysticism or Himalayan mythology as a pretext to weave some chilling, paranormal, occult, and horror elements into the narrative a la The Terror (which told the story of Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1840s voyage to the Arctic). However, Simmons avoids the fantastical and applies a wholly different approach to the Percy Bromley mystery that, arguably, turns out to be more farfetched than the highly anticipated, yet sadly absent yetis. In the end, the underlying motivations for the mission prove both a hard sell—more so than a female heroine disrobing at 28,000-feet, which struck me as a grotesque indulgence—and a tepid payoff for such a strenuous journey.

A worthwhile read for, perhaps, climbing enthusiasts or anyone who wouldn’t get bogged down by the intricacies of mountaineering, The Abominable is an overwrought, meticulous, and gripping account of one of the most terrifying feats a man can undertake.