What do You think about The Wall (2006)?
Jeff Long's books are a beautiful pairing of modern day daring and old world mysticism. I will try not give anything away, but I will say that if you are familiar with Long's style of writing and various themes and notions pertaining to religion that he commonly plays with in his stories, you may not find the ending to be too much of a surprise. This is why, although a fun read, The Wall is not one of my favorite books by this author. Still, his characters of genuine, believable and honest and the narration is easy to follow. All in all, this book is a great one to pick up.
—Lindy
The first chapter is so descriptive. Absolutely amazing in its description. No spoilers here, though, but just the first chapter is well worth the read. And the last one too. Lots of surprises there which I didn't see coming. Two old friends, Hugh Glass and Lewis Cole, climbing buddies, decide to climb El Capitan in Yosemite one last time before they give up climbing. Their lives had gone in different directions and even though they had had kept in touch over the years, it's a chance for them to reconnect on the mountain. They just had no idea what would come out of that reconnection.
—Charlene Intriago
I picked this one up after Der-Shing Helmer's recommendation of Jeff Long's work (I, in turn, will enthusiastically recommend Der-Shing's work). This book is the story of two old climbing buddies who reunite for a final ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite, and how everything basically does not work out (to put it mildly). I feel like going over the plot might spoil some things, and I don't really like putting spoilers in reviews (although the book jacket does kind of give away about the first 200 pages), but there's isolation, inclement weather, some disturbing unexplained things, and demons of the past to haunt the climbers on their way up. It starts with Hugh Glass's ominous discovery of one member of a team of climbers, dead at El Cap's base. Things do not go well from here. The writing is good. I think a lot of time is devoted to describing the conditions on the eponymous wall, and I wonder if it might have been possible to pare it down a bit, but the atmosphere evoked is very real, and quite chilling. There's also quite a lot of climbing terminology, which I'm familiar with for the most part, but a quick run-through of a rock climbing glossary would be a good idea if you're not.I didn't think the dialogue was great. It wasn't bad, I just never really got the character's voices into my head. But a lot of the action, anyway, is the actual climbing and Hugh's interior monologue; it's not tremendously dialogue-based.Also, it's pretty scary. Most of the horror is implied rather than explicit, and even though I kept wondering "what. was. that.", I think a full explanation of things would have killed the mood. There's one particular part, very near the end, where... yeah. It's weird. You'll know it when you get there.So if you like extremely large rocks and the horror of isolation (sometimes in spite of companions), you might like this one. (I feel like a grade-schooler ending books with recommendations, but that's not a bad way to do it, right?)
—Howl
