Thin Air

Book Title: Thin Air

Author: Michelle Paver

Date Started: June 20th 2016

Date Completed: July 23rd 2016

Genres: Historical, Horror
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Star

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

◆ Thank you NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

I'm not one for straight-forward horror, but psychological creepy stuff is another matter. In the end Thin Air ticked the box for the spooky idea, but it wasn't used to it's potential in the end. I almost feel like this book will be adored by a select few people, but isn't overly enjoyable for anyone outside of that niche audience.

In a ghost story, when the simple sentences with facts are scarier than the haunting scenes there's a bit of a problem. The hair's on the back of my neck stood up when at the start we're told only four of the five victims of the 1907 expedition up Kangchenjunga were laid to rest, but when the ghostly figure was spotted in that moment of shock across the glacier I felt nothing. One of the reasons I prefer psychological horror instead of the more traditional violence and gore-based genres is that it relies a lot more on atmosphere than the shock of something happening: it's often more what you don't see, than what you do. Where Thin Air really fell down for me was when there wasn't enough of that tense atmosphere built up for me to be scared with Stephen when he jumped at nothing - it just came across as Stephen jumping at nothing.

If you're interested in mountain climbing, great! Otherwise you're probably going to get pretty bored with the repetitive descriptions of every glacier the group pass (they're on a mountain, there's quite a few). I knew going in that this was a book about mountain climbing, but what caught my eye was the ghost story bit, so honestly I was a little more invested in the development in that part of the story and that's where things started to fall a little flat. I still think Paver's story idea has some good potential, and right at the beginning being told that there was one unburied body somewhere up on that mountain freaked me out a bit - but that was the last time I really felt tense. A little more exploration of why there was something supernatural happening, or even some more drama once we'd realised what was happening would have done so much for this book. Instead we just skim the surface of all these potential storylines or exposition opportunities, and I wanted more to the point where I kept getting pulled out of the story. The climax was very much the same: it almost felt like an anticlimax and there was something that still had to be finished. It happened so fast and there was no real explanation or resolution and I can't even see that much development in the protagonist over the time of the story.

I wasn't particularly attached to any characters, in fact I wasn't a huge fan of any of them for the most part. The competitive brotherly relationship between Stephen and Kits was probably the most engaging aspect of any character, but I still wouldn't be able to list the names of the five main climbers and tell them apart if you asked me. Part of this was to do with genuine parts of their characters - the casual racism, while I understand was for characterisation to an extent, definitely put me off from getting attached to anyone - but I also struggled to find anything to latch onto for each character.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced a huge part of why I didn't enjoy this book was because I got very bored about hearing all the details of mountaineering that saturate the text so heavily - so of course the book felt very slow paced for me. I spent the 50% almost begging for something to actually happen, so Stephen would stop talking about this glacier, and that ledge, and this person's medical condition for long enough to engage me in the spooky happenings. In hindsight, I may have misjudged this book in being a psychological thriller - it doesn't claim to be, I'll admit, but the advertised 'ghost story' made me expect a little more of a creepy atmosphere alongside the (admittedly impressively) detailed explanations of mountain climbing.

Honestly, Thin Air wasn't terrible, it just fell flat in a lot of places for me. If you're a fan of the outdoors or specifically mountain climbing, you might be able to get more engaged with the characters and story than I was, and therefore might feel the ghostly spookiness more, but personally I was quite far removed because I found little that interested me in this book.

Image Source - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28335600-thin-air