Rating: 
Summary: The book will leave you thinking
Review: The book is only remotedly about an attempt to climb a magnificent peak of Bumori. It is rather a philosophical debate over mountains and people climbing them. Joe Simpson gives examples of climbers tragedies and shows how the others around react to them. Some people show remarkable effort to save their colleagues while others show no interest whatsoever. Simpson is wondering what motivates people do react the way they react and also tries to define some kind of a standard ethic that climbers should follow. Simpson criticizes the commercialization of mountaineering. This is a point where you might disagree with him. It is understandable that the commercialization annoys the orthodox climbers since it brings devastation of mountains, garbage to what used to be a virgin land, unnecessary deaths, etc. On the oher hand, mountains do not belong exclusively to the real mountaineers and the trend would be almost impossible to stop. In any case, the book should be on the shelf of every man or woman interesting in mountains. I would recommend to combine this book with Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.
Rating: 
Summary: Not quite what I thought it would be
Review: There's no denying that Joe Simpson is rather unique in the mountaineering community, in that he is a very talented wordsmith--although there is always an assumption that the reader is familiar with climbing terms. I'm not a climber but I've always been fascinated with literature about mountaineering. I bought this book because Into The Void literally took my breath away in places. However, I found Dark Shadows Falling to be a bit of a disappointment. Joe's story of a climb of his is interspersed with his opinion of the mountaineering society in general. In reading the book, I felt as though he didn't have enough of a story to pad out the experience of his own climb, so he decided to interweave it with descriptions of the climbs of others and his feelings about today's mass market mentality with regards to mountaineering. This approach frustrated me no end - I would have preferred the book to be about one or the other, or for there to be a clear delineation between the two subjects. There appeared to me to be no clear link between Joe's story of his climb and Joe's opinion of other climbers. As a result, Dark Shadows Falling doesn't strike me as a cohesive book. After finishing Dark Shadows Falling, I almost felt as though the whole book was a justification to include the (admittedly, jawdropping) 1989 photo by Karl Huyberechts of the South Col at Everest.
| 
