This books combines a very compelling story with the rather uninvolving narrative of a third party non-specialist. As such it joins a field that has a whole slew of much more involving books, and comes of lackluster.

I've read a lot of mountaineering books, primarily about Everest, so I was really interested in learning more about K-2, which (though smaller by just under 800 feet) is a harder mountain to summit. Given the large collection of books that have been written in recent years on mountaineering in the Himalayas, I think Graham Bowley made some writing decisions in reaction to the ouvre rather than for his book.

One of those is that Bowley does not spend much time at all on the basics of the mountain or the sport in general. There are a few very interesting anecdotes about the history of K-2 climbers, but it's a bit rushed. He doesn't spend time really walking the reader through what the climbers were facing in these situations (really giving the reader a solid base), or going through a lot of details about the basics of problems that climbers face in high altitude situations. I think that was a deliberate decision on Bowley's part -- I think that he assumed that anyone reading his book would already have read a number of similar books, and he didn't want to re-cover information. I think his lack of personal mountaineering experience also played a large role in that writing decision. I can see why he chose to avoid spending the time on basics, then, but I just don't really agree with it.

Another thing that bothered me a bit is that Bowley focuses almost exclusively on the events of the summit day and the four or so days following it when people were still in the process of being rescued. It's a complicated subject, with a great deal of conflicting opinions and necessary conjectures (particularly in the cases of small groups or people where there was no survivor left to tell what had happened), but I think he could've better served the subject and the reader by starting at the base of the mountain and following the events that *led to* the summit day. It would've given the reader a better ability to both learn the dangers of the mountain, the types of climbing specific to K-2, and also get a better idea of who these people were and how they were interacting. Without that, he essentially had to introduce each person as they met their moment of peril -- which I felt really robbed both the reader and the people in question.

Beyond these two major concerns I had, I think that this book has a place within its field. But Bowley doesn't reach beyond his primary subject -- the specifics of the disaster and what occurred with those who lived or died. There were so many opportunities to really explore the growing place (and reliance on) technology high up the mountain, and the interaction and problems faced with so many teams. But I think that Bowley allowed his own inexperience with the subject to box him in and stunt his exploration of the larger setting of this incident.

Good books to read to fill in the gaps left by this book would be "Dark Summit" and "K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain."

If you liked Into Thin Air, then you will like No Way Down. Same kind of story, but this time on K2. The author does a great job of capturing multiple perspectives on the trip and conveying the drama of several days on the mountain. It is pretty short, and you will not want to put it down until you find out who lives and who dies.