Liam || Books 'n Beards's Reviews > The White Road

I've not read a Sarah Lotz book before, though I've heard many mixed reviews about her most well known work, THE THREE. Having now listened to THE WHITE ROAD, I can understand why.

In the mid 2000's, Simon Newman goes spelunking in a dangerous cave system to get footage of corpses buried deep within for his gritty website. Going through a near-death experience within the caves, he nevertheless is pushed into yet another dangerous endeavour, climbing Mt Everest to take footage of the myriad corpses which are left on the mountain. However there's something that he seems to be carrying with him from his time in the Cwm Pot caves.

THE WHITE ROAD starts very strong. The first chapter is one of the longest and covers Simon's delve into the Cwm Pot cave system in Wales with a guide he found on an online forum, Ed. This is very well done, and the claustrophobic terror of spelunking is well captured - Lotz clearly isn't without talent when it comes to describing environments and physical space, I had a very clear picture of everything that was happening, and several times grew quite squeamish listening to Simon trying to negotiate squeezes and crawls.

Unfortunately after this, it falls apart for me. I feel as if Lotz had two ideas for books - one, a short story covering a trip into a cave system and the traumatic events that occur to Simon there, and one, a thriller/drama/psychological horror novel set on Mt Everest, and just kind of.. slapped them together.

The conceit of going to climb Mt Everest to get footage of corpses is a bit silly on the face of it, but further, Simon actually gets quite close to topping the mountain - on 2 months of 'training' running up and down stairs in a heavy rucksack. Any suspension of disbelief I had evaporated. The physical, experiential and financial needs of joining an Everest expedition are well described - the issue being that Simon meets none of them, and basically lied on his resumé to get on the mountain in the first place - as if these organisations don't do rigorous checks to ensure that the people signing up to climb the tallest mountain in the world are actually experienced and capable.

THE WHITE ROAD tries so very hard to make Simon sympathetic, but 'shallow douche' is about the best descriptor for him. The rest of the characters in the climbing group are actually pretty well rounded, even the unlikable ones, and the way that it links into the second half of the narration - Juliet, a woman climbing Everest some years before - is satisfying. This is why I think Lotz had the idea for this FIRST, and then had to glue the caving to it, and unfortunately drag Simon Newman into it as a result.

I don't think there was enough content here for a full length novel - the final half of the book dragged for me significantly and by the end I was just listening to finish it.

A no from me, after a very promising start.