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The Abominable

As a result of deciding to read more real physical books instead of e-books I went to the library and hunted for a book to read.  I chose a book by Dan Simmons called "The Abominable" based on other books by the same author I read years ago, "Hyperion" and the rest of the "Hyperion Cantos" as the series was called.  That was a great series, though it started to get a bit tedious after a while, but I figured that was just the typical author milking a good selling book series just a bit too long.

This abominable thing is 663 pages long, but I only made it to page 178 before giving up on it as a waste of my time and effort.  I now know far more than I ever wanted to about the details of Alpine style mountain climbing.  :-(  The story was so relentlessly dull and tedious that I finally decided to look up the reviews it got on Amazon to see if the pace ever picked up.  According to one review "...the first 400 pages are an exhaustive and frankly very tedious detailing of mountaineering techniques and methods of the 1920s as our heroes prepare for an Everest challenge to find the lost remains of a previous expedition that went missing. It's not until around p.500 that the action gets going..."  That is way too much prologue for too little payoff in my opinion.

As a result, in spite of the near physical pain not finishing a book gives me, I'm going to quit reading this one.  Life is too short to waste on bad books!  :-P   I wish I had known going in that the title was describing the quality of the writing!  At least it didn't cost me anything beyond a few tedious and wasted hours of my life.  That's one big advantage to getting a book at the library rather than buying it at some store.

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