Really struggled with this at times, the geology parts and MacFarlane's personal mountain experiences were interesting, unfortunately there was not much on this, the bulk of the book was the history of mountain climbing and this is where I had issues. It felt messy, jumping about in time mentioning a bit here and there about a climber, quoting a bit from a book and chucking in a bit more of his personal experience. Things change when he gets to the chapter on Everest and he focuses on the one climber, much better writing then. Finally my favourite part of the book was the last chapter, "Snow Hare", this short chapter was what I was hoping to get from the book, a short bit about meeting a snow hare during a whiteout, reminded me of Nan Shepherd's writing, really shame there was not more like this in the book.

This is the first book I've read by this author and it hasn't put me off his others books, I will give them a go.