Customer Reviews

Danger Stalks the Land: Alaskan Tales of Death and Survival

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is easily the best collection of true adventure tales ever assembled. I was blown away by the courage, danger, and pure adrenaline running through these stories. My advice: run to your nearest bookstore and BUY THIS BOOK!

Larry Kaniut is the king of Alaskan, true-life stories of adventure and survival. He has made a franchise Alaskan bear attacks and tales from tragedy to the miraculous and written a library of white-knuckled reading. It's car accident stuff that you can't put down until you know how it turns out. It at once makes you glad to be in a secure place and at the same time it calls you out to the wilds.

The individual stories were selected to represent a wide variety of themes. A few of the stories get repetitive, like the downed bush plane stories. Then again, if you read the Anchorage Daily, you get the same feeling of déjà vu.

With the thrills, comes education about being prepared. One of the amazing things about the book is that the majority of these stories do not come from isolated wilderness but mostly within just a few miles of the road. I read it just before a trip to Alaska and it changed the landscapes I was driving through. Driving down the Seward Highway I realized - that's where that lady was airlifted out, that was where newlyweds drowned, that's where a man lost his hunting buddy. It points out that this is Alaska and your decisions can be as important as life and death here.

Alaska, despite its many cities and roads, is still a land with large vistas of wild, untamed territory. Kaniut's book is a collection of several dozen Alaskan tales of death and survival, ranging from plane crashes in poor weather to bear attacks, climbing accidents, entrapment in mudflats as the tidewater poured in, winter stranding on ice floes, badger mauling, frostbite on hunting forays gone wrong, and many other true dramas. While the book is rather limited in its straightforward, no-nonsense approach (one could, without being disrespectful, call the style prosaic), it does make for good bedtime reading before drifting off to sleep. The wildness of nature that demonstrates the numinous aspect of God's creation in the last few chapters of Job can be seen in these stories, reminding us that man is not the master of everything he surveys. Nature is wild, dangerous, and commands attention and respect. Ignore this and you might die or be severely crippled (as some of these stories demonstrate.) Overall, this was not a great book, but a good one, a decent selection to take along on a camping trip.

I really enjoyed many of the stories that Mr. Kanuit wrote. I only have two complaints:

1) There is a religious overtone to the book that is annoying and unnecessary and

2) The segues to the next story are ridiculous, overdramatic and cheesy.

I don't mind a little religion to the book but there are many gratuitous references that are needless and unnecessary to the story. For example, it seems realistic for a downed pilot to get a little religion while waiting to be rescued but some of the other references are distracting. I began to believe that Mr. Kanuit was trying to put as many references to churches or pastors as he could.

The segues are silly and I stopped reading them after the second story. For example, he writes: "As we learn from our experience, we gain valued insight that might sav our lives or the lives or others we may seek to find. . . as Jerry Olson did." Then the next chapter was about Jerry Olson. Or "As you leave your driveway in Alaska, you'd better be prepared because danger stalks the land . . . as the kayakers of Blackstone Bay discovered." The next chapter is about the trials of the kayakers of Blackstone Bay. His overuse of ellipses was silly and overdramatic.

However, some of his stories are amazing. I especially enjoyed some of the mountain man stories and stories of survival that were against the odds.

I could not put this book down. It is so gruesome, but every story is true! There are bear attacks, people falling through ice, plane crashes, ice storms...you name it; if it can happen in Alaska, then someone has lived to tell about it! I find it facinating to read about unbearable situations that people have survived. This book isn't for those of you who don't want to read the gory details, but if that's what you live for, then this is your book!!

READING THESE REAL LIFE ACCOUNTS WILL LEAVE YOU MARVELING AT THE POWER OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE WILLPOWER SOME MEN HAVE TO LIVE. YOU WILL SEE HOW TRADGEDY CAN STRIKE EVEN THE WELL PREPARED AND HOW NATURE CAN PUSH MAN TO UNTHINKABLE LIMITS. BY FAR, LARRY KANIUT'S BEST BOOK.

I purchased this book because I love to read about human struggles for survival. I've had this book for 2 months and am only half way through. I'm finding it difficult to get into. Although some of the many short stories in this book are written by those who have experienced that particular accident or disaster first hand and personally faced the fight for survival, most were written by the author, Larry Kaniut. I don't think Mr. Kaniut is a very good writer. He tends to overuse names and words and his sentences are short and choppy. For instance, in a story written about Gary Franklin, the author mentions the name "Gary" 38 times in 2 pages: "...Gary heard the first plane fly over. The plane overflew the crash site several times, convincing Gary the wreckage had been spotted. Shortly the plane left. Gary began doubting. Three hours dragged by before Gary heard a C-130 aircraft overhead. It was circling Gary. Gary knew then that they'd been found". "Gary" is mentioned 6 times in one short paragraph and the word "plane" is used thrice. Another example of poor writing and overuse of words: "During that moment, the mountainside loosed part of its snowpack. Clark and Otto were slammed across the snow by the same wall of snow that buried Fred. Snow covered Clark, who resigned himself to death. Just before losing consciousness he realized two of this fingers were above the snow!" I'd learned in high school writing class not to overuse the same word, rather substitute it for another word. And how about this horribly written sentence about a man named King Thurmond: "He stepped outside his cabin and a bear grabbed him, chewed on him, and disemboweled him. When the bear had finished with him, King knew there was no hope to save him, so he took his life." I am no author, but I find it hard to believe this man has many "Best Sellers". Again, the stories written by the actual survivors are well written and exciting, especially the account related to the reader by Cynthia Dusel-Bacon regarding an attack on her by a black bear.

Good book for city slicker youth, say 14 years old and up. As opposed to video games or TV, reality just oozes from every page. Not a bad thing to hammer home the actions/consequences theme in a young'un, Lord knows Darwin isn't welcome in modern society.

Great for the short of time or attention span as it's a bunch of 1-5 page stories. I call it, "Bad *&@#$% that can happen to you if you visit Alaska". It's one of my favorite books for entertainment & I bought this one as a birthday present for my brother. Great gift item. The stories are riveting.

First of all, let me just say that I read a lot of non-fiction books about adventure (Jon Krakauer's books, Spike Walker's "Working on the Edge", Greg Child, etc.). I found this book to be boring and uninspiring. The problem is this:
Most of the stories are either far too short to get into (some are even comprised of 2 pages) or just plain boring. The overtly religious overtones of each story were kind of an annoyance, but easy to overlook, and stick with the story. Had I been Mr. Kanuit, I would have chosen 6 of the best stories, (if indeed there were 6 decent stories in here) and written them with far more detail than he does (some stories of lost persons jump from day 1 to day 5, and so on). The few decent stories are hard to come by. I would liken this book to buying a CD for 2 or 3 good songs, with the rest being just filler.
Another annoyance of Mr. Kanuit's writing style is his use of words to describe certain things (he constantly refers to snowmobiles as "snowmachines". Is he from the 19th century or something)?
I feel that I really gave this book a chance, but wouldnt recommend it to anyone. There are just far too many better written and more entertaining books about adventure out there to choose from, rather than settling for this mish-mash.