A retired academic on the lecture circuit schedules a poorly-timed expedition to the Edge in the Arctic during midsummer. He is poorly prepared and has ample time to consider all the historic explorers he has previously studied when he is marooned on an ice floe adrift in the Arctic Ocean.
I didn't like this book. The description is better than the content.
The main character isn't very likeable. He's pretty honest and up-front about his qualities, but that doesn't help much. He is a plagiarism-prone retired academic creepily aware of the sexual activities of his students. When the description calls his trip "poorly planned" and his later struggles "inept," it's an understatement: he doesn't have so much as a compass, nor did he take any training. It's difficult to feel much concern for a character who is so unconcerned about his own safety or those of his party. Maybe there's meant to be some satire about this generic American white guy, but that would be a very generous interpretation.
Although Inuit characters, myths, and vocabulary feature in the book, this is a story by a white guy about a white guy. The character's "obsession with Sedna, the Inuit goddess of the sea," which is supposed to intensify as his isolation-based and sleep-deprived lunacy unfolds, is weak, mostly reflected by hallucinated conversation with seals.
Readers who enjoy survival stories will be disappointed, as this character failed to learn anything actually useful from his years of study on the topic.
I didn't like this book. The description is better than the content.
The main character isn't very likeable. He's pretty honest and up-front about his qualities, but that doesn't help much. He is a plagiarism-prone retired academic creepily aware of the sexual activities of his students. When the description calls his trip "poorly planned" and his later struggles "inept," it's an understatement: he doesn't have so much as a compass, nor did he take any training. It's difficult to feel much concern for a character who is so unconcerned about his own safety or those of his party. Maybe there's meant to be some satire about this generic American white guy, but that would be a very generous interpretation.
Although Inuit characters, myths, and vocabulary feature in the book, this is a story by a white guy about a white guy. The character's "obsession with Sedna, the Inuit goddess of the sea," which is supposed to intensify as his isolation-based and sleep-deprived lunacy unfolds, is weak, mostly reflected by hallucinated conversation with seals.
Readers who enjoy survival stories will be disappointed, as this character failed to learn anything actually useful from his years of study on the topic.