Disappointing, no attention to detail

Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer

Book on Amazon | My review on Amazon

3 out of 5 stars

Reviewed September 8, 2009

I do usually like Jeffrey Archer in the best seller fiction category, but this book is quite a disappointment.

“Paths of Glory” is somewhere in the grey zone between true-life chronicle and fiction. Mountaineering enthusiasts might want to read Sir Francis Younghusband’s excellent account of the same events, in his book “The Epic of Mount Everest”.

Though a very engrossing topic, Archer seems to have let slide several details, which I found quite irritating (I wondered briefly whether I had picked up a “fake” Archer)…

• the so-called medical examination before the 1922 expedition, in which the participants were put through intense and accelerated changes in pressure, temperature, and wind speed – from sea level to 29,000 ft in 60 mins. Really? It takes several days to acclimatize on the mountain, even between base camp and higher altitudes. It doesn’t seem plausible that any participant lived after such a medical examination!
• the 1922 expedition lands in Bombay and at the docks, they go about selecting sherpas and mules!! This is ridiculous – even for fiction – why would the already poor sherpas, whose home is in the hills, travel all the way to Bombay and then go back with the expedition? And transporting mules from Bombay to Everest Base Camp?? Even back in the 20’s no one would do that.
• the blithe reference to distance between Bombay and Siliguri – supposedly to be covered in 6 hrs, and Mallory in a letter to his wife, complains that it took 16 hrs….. this is impossible. Bombay to Calcutta takes over 36 hrs by train (about 1000 miles!) and an overnight train journey from Calcutta to Siligury.

Apart from factual errors, there are no descriptions of real mountain climbing. Archer makes it seem like a “very tough walk in the snow” – where climbers can walk together stopping to munch on digestive biscuits along the way. Nowadays when there are tens of well written mountaineering real life stories, this is a little too superficial.

The characters are two dimensional and sketchy, except for Mallory – whose character seems quite inconsistent – sometimes the ideal larger than life hero, sometimes an alpha male child wanting to be the first.

This book tries to blend the fiction and mountain climbing genres, leaving both wanting.