Customer Reviews

One Step in the Clouds: The Sierra Club Omnibus of Mountaineering Fiction

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Climbing just doesn't seem to produce much good fiction. I don't know why. There are some great non-fiction climbing authors, but the good fiction is sparse and the excellent fiction is almost non-existent.

Without a doubt, the best novel ever written about climbing is Elizabeth Coxhead's "One Green Bottle", and it can be found in this collection. Coxhead's novel follows a young woman from England's lower class who accidentally gets involved in climbing and finds not only an escape from a life of drudgery but also romance and adventure. I don't know if a non-climber would understand how perfectly Coxhead captures the climbing sub-culture, but even a non-climber should be able to love this story. Many people over the years, though, have found themselves shocked and saddened by the ending. Read it for yourself and see what you think.

Another decent novel in here is "The Vortex", a drug smuggling and climbing thriller which is what the movie "Cliffhanger" SHOULD have been like. (Cliffhanger has no connection with The Vortex.)

This book also includes Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mother Goddess Of The World", with the same characters who are in "Escape From Kathmandu".

It's been a while since I read this book, but those are the stories I remember well from it. It also includes many others, mostly short stories.