Review: Thin Air by Michelle Paver

4 stars for Thin Air by Michelle Paver.

It is that time of the year to read scary stories again. I start my Halloween reads early this year, last month in fact, because I do not think I will read more than a handful of horror stories given that I see myself busy with teaching, reading, crocheting and whatnots. For all I know, this book may well be the only horror story for me this year before I transit to the year-end festive reads.

Thin Air is one chilling and preternaturally intense story. It is slow going, yes, but having read Dark Matter by the same author last October, I have come to expect the same pace and writing style, and thus, able to enjoy every part of this story - the mountain sightings, the snow, ice and rock, the altitude, heat and glare, the superstitions and odd beliefs, the irrational fear and omens and premonitions and whatever part and parcel of the journey before the horror actually starts to creep in.

Narrated from first person perspective of a 34-year old Dr Stephen Pearce, he tells of how his team attempts to conquest Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world, by following the route of an earlier fateful expedition - the route up the south-west face - led by General Sir Edmund Lyell twenty-nine years ago.

In climbing the mountain by following in dead men's footsteps, it seems to Stephen that it is no longer just humans against mountain, but something more. Is the unseen for real? Or does the thin air alter perceptions and deceive the mind into betraying? Should the team concentrate on their own task instead of being distracted from the past, from events of the failed Lyell expedition? The remoteness of the place forces Stephen to confront his own insignificance as never before. And the mountain sickness is surely doing its work to affect the climbers, mentally, physically and emotionally. The question is, what will happen if whatever that haunts the mountain cannot be appeased and laid to rest?


Publisher: Orion; 01 Edition
Publication date: 5 Oct 2017

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THE HIGHER YOU GO, THE DARKER IT GETS

Kangchenjunga.

Third-highest peak on earth.

Greatest killer of them all.

Five Englishmen set off from Darjeeling, determined to conquer the sacred summit.

But courage can only take them so far.

And the mountain is not their only foe.

*Blurb from author's website*

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