The Abominable by Dan Simmons
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve always enjoyed how Dan Simmons weaves his fictional stories so tightly around real non-fiction historical events. And while this particular story isn’t my favorite of his books of this type (The Terror and Drood were better), it is a wonderful story. It’s also one that he writes is a certain way, using certain styles (I won’t spoil it for you) that almost makes you wonder if it might just possibly be a true accounting of something that actually did happen. Of course, as a writer, if Simmons manages to get you to feel that way once you’ve closed that back cover after reading that last page, then he did his job… and did it well.
My only complaint about this book, which isn’t really a complaint, is the fact that it slowed down a bit here and there due to detailed descriptions of technical matters and procedures carried out by the characters in the story. It was all quite interesting, though, and actually got me searching Google for some more info on the things these folks were doing in this story. So, see… not really a complaint at all.
Read it. You might like it. 🙂
~Eric
Image credits: stock publisher’s photo of book provided by Goodreads. com
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