Customer Reviews

River of No Reprieve: Descending Siberia's Waterway of Exile, Death, and Destiny

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Burdened with a brutal history of Cossack conquest, labor camps, gulags, displaced people and rapacious resource plundering, and all but abandoned by the state that exploited it, Siberia is the perfect choice for a certain sort of travel writer to go and reflect on the state of the world.

Jeffrey Tayler ("Siberian Dawn," "Angry Wind"), a linguist who speaks Russian, Arabic, French, Greek and several other languages, writes about remote and difficult places - the Sahara, the Congo, Siberia. His previous trip to Siberia was in winter, when he traveled on the frozen Lena River by truck.

This time he goes in summer by inflatable raft down the same river, retracing some 2,400 miles of Cossack exploration, from Lake Baikal to Tiksi on the Arctic Ocean, 450 miles above the Arctic Circle. Tiksi is the sort of place where the deluxe hotel suite does not come with hot water in the "warm" months, the months of "rain and snow, not just snow."

The trip grew out of a desire to clear his head of city clamor and explore the lives of real Russians - the impoverished rural masses. Having lived in Russia for 11 years, made a life and married, Tayler, an American, finds himself despairing of the place. The collapse of communism seems only to have opened the doors to corruption and chaos. "I was seized by a desire to find out what had gone wrong? Had I really devoted my life to a doomed land?"

His guide is the misanthropic Vadim, a Muscovite and Afghan War veteran who drives a truck and spends every summer in the North. He would prefer his beloved Siberia without people and his disdain for Tayler's insistence on stopping at each down-at-heels village to talk with the inhabitants only grows with time. His enthusiasm for the land is vocal and passionate and Tayler's restraint baffles him. Their personalities chafe, but Tayler grows to appreciate his expertise - from his boat handling skills to his precision in setting up the daily camp.

The trip itself is as grim as it is adventurous. The indigenous Yakuts and Evenks, forced by the Soviets to abandon nomadic lives for villages, factories and government subsidies, now find themselves abandoned, the old ways forgotten. The Russians include descendants of prisoners - criminals, dissidents and intellectuals - as well as exiled Baptists and Germans. Others came for the high pay and benefits offered by the Soviet government to harvest the land's rich resources. And now the factories are closed and the benefits long gone.

People, even descendants of those banished by Stalin, yearn for the security and order of a strong central authority. Tayler despairs at their nostalgia for Soviet rule and their support for Putin's strong-arm tactics. Alcohol is a ubiquitous plague.

Even the weather seems to signal collapse. As the raft heads north storm follows storm, lashing the travelers with frigid rain and gale-force winds, when the season calls for balmy temperatures and alpine tundra blooms. Climate change, the inhabitants comment, has deprived them of summer.

Tayler writes with an eye for detail and a certain reserve. Though open to everyone he meets, he is also wary and not easily bamboozled. While Vadim exults over the view at every bend in the river, Tayler's enthusiasm is tempered by the (literally) choking clouds of bugs and a certain impatience with Vadim's insular chauvinism. This is a thoughtful, sympathetic, often melancholy portrait of an extreme place with an extreme history and an uncertain future.

-- Portsmouth Herald

Many of us have been interested in Russia from the Cold WAr days, and I certainly have tried my best to learn the language, and I visited three times in a backpack/student-ish way in the 1980's. When I spotted this book in the library, the outdoorsman-feel of the cover turned me off, then I browsed through the pages and realized that Taylor was a great writer about people. It's a great book for anyone to read, who would like to know how the "real Russians" are, out in the countryside - and we're talking very far out, in Siberia, on collapsing former-collective farms, living on dribs and bits and puny pensions, hunting, fishing, small gardens, minimal electricity, police or medical service, paved roads, or telephone systems.

Taylor has a sharp eye also for the various ethnic types who've made their way up there: exiled Polish gentry from two centuries back, for example, have led to beautiful young women with "aristocratic" faces. Volga Germans, exiled by cattle car in 1941, still run their farms with an admirable efficiency and cleanliness, with animals penned in and no litter, as opposed to the semi-abandoned Russian farms on the opposite side of the Lena river. Yakuts and other natives, once nomads, now settled into small towns, are mixed with the locals. All seem to have a love of cigarettes and alcohol regardless of racial origin, which destroys the young people's health, teeth, skin and handsome features quickly; people tell him that at 22, they're "old"; teens are "the young". Professionals from the poor parts of former Soviet regime, e.g. Bishkek in Kurgistan, see opportunities, and move to Siberia for better wages, sending all possible saving home for their children's educations.

Taylor's own Western mentality comes into a clash with his river guide Vadim's perversities and pride. Vadim is a rebel against modern society, used to be a well-paid manual worker under the Soviets (a Siberian truckdriver!), and loves the open forests and freedom from people that one finds in the North. Taylor also loves Siberia's nature - why else take such a ride or pay Vadim, anyway? - but he argues back against Vadim's Russophile Grizzly-Adams egotism. Things get rough between them, while Taylor is absolutely dependent on Vadim's expertise with the boat, the camping equipment, the endless flies and midges and mosquitoes, so he is not angry at him; rather, Vadim seems angry at him. This growing tension is an excellent device to hook any reader, as one wishes to know if something truly awful, some horrible river crisis, can lead even to blows or deathly injuries.

It's definitely written by a man, as one sees in his descriptions of the women working in cafes, hotels or shops. One wonders sometimes if his wife read the manuscript, or whether he cares. In describing the various men, he is not so generous in his praise; a very telltale male style.

Taylor had been living in Moscow since 1990, and was married to a Russian, speaks the language, and has travelled widely. He writes with a great incisiveness about the people, which kept me going straight through. My own memories of hitchhiking in Finnish Lapland, hooking up with hunters, and meeting people in isolated communities, came through strongly. Russians' longing for a strong central government is not unique to Russia, as one could learn from world travel or wide reading, but it is especially poignant to read such statements from people whose own parents or grandparents had been exiled or deported to Siberia. They live without regrets that they are there, instead of in their homelands.

The atrocities of Russia come alive in Taylor's words, as Siberia was filled with the Soviet and Tsarist victims.

Enjoy a suspenseful read!

Most of us who have visited or lived in Russia since 1990 have spent out time in the major cities or around them. Jeffrey Tayler takes us to places in Russia that we will probably never have an opportunity to see. He does more than look and see. He experiences. If you are familiar with Russia or parts of it, the story makes sense and we can relate. Certainly what he experiences is far more extreme than what most of us know. And yet, it is still familiar. From his travel companion's contempt for all people who aren't "real" Russians, to the wish for and fear of contact with nonRussians that others exhibit, this is a story of Russian people. I learned, I was depressed, I laughed, and this book made me want to go back to Russia and experience it again and again.

Walter Brooke

This is a good read. It covers travel in a region where nature is magnificent, but man's presence is decaying. Tayler does a good job of conveying the fearsome vastness of Siberia and its rivers. Against this are set his sad, sometimes quirky and comical, observations of Siberia's dying towns and villages. The author's companion and guide on his journey is a well-rendered eccentric character, at once irritating and heroic. This is good study of Russia, in all its terrible and tragic glory. Anyone with an interest in "the North", post-soviet Russia, or extreme travel should enjoy this.

Author Jeffrey Taylor used a custom-built boat to travel over two thousand miles to the Arctic Circle, recreating a journey first made by Cossacks over three hundred year ago, seeking a respite from the modern world. RIVER OF NO RETURN: DESCENDING SIBERIA'S WATERWAY OF EXILE, DEATH, AND DESTINY charts his journey, providing true life travel adventure at its best as Taylor comes to realize his guide is a bitter Soviet army veteran who hates all humanity - including Taylor. A vivid adventure comes to life in a compelling 'you are there' story.

Diane C. Donovan

California Bookwatch

I spent some time in the swampland on one of the tributaries of the Ob and thought I'd learned a lot about the people and situation they faced there, but reading this book I found a much deeper understanding of the tragedy of northern Siberia. It is a book difficult to put down. The writer has a wonderful command of English. Travel writing can easily get bogged down in cliches or cheap cynicism. This book shows how sparkling, inventive and lexically dense it can be. His descriptions of the land- and cloudscapes is brilliant. He shows exquisite sensitivity and humility in his description of the relationship with his guide and the various people he meets along the way. It would be easy to sink to stereotypical descriptions of the Russians, Evenks, Yakuts and Tatars, but he understands them all in their own terms. Though I am a voracious travelogue reader I can think of few books that match this: R.F. Burton's "Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al Medina and Mecca" equals it in literary qualities, but lacks the deep introspection of Tayler. I read "River Dog" prior to this...it's no contest.

Don't read this book if you want to learn a ton about Siberia and its people. The way they live...the way they think...their feelings about Mother Russia........

After reading this book you will understand why we need never fear Russia ......they are harmless in every way. The Country and its people are a diaster.........in every way.........shape....and form......The book is OUTSTANDING!!!!!! Jeffrey Tayler is fast becoming my favorite author

Very interesting. The author does an excellent job weaving in historical backgroung. He describes a very harsh environment inhabited mostly by drunks. Moves along quickly for a 2500 mile boat ride.

Tayler wanders off a bit in trying to make his language too flowery and poetic, but I guess it comes from living in Russia maybe where poetry is still respected. That or he is just trying to add a little more flavor to this rather depressing tale. There was one reviewer who gave this book only 2 stars because there was not more pictures and he thought the cover photo didn't look like the guy on the back flap. All I can say is try a trip like this yourself and see what you look like in two months. If you need more pictures, stick to the children's section. Having live in Russia for 4 years now I found it very believable. Vadim the guide is exactly as I could imagine having know a few Russians much like him.

What bothered me the most is that Tayler never mentions contacting his wife even once on the whole trip. I'm sure he must have, but didn't think it worth mentioning. All-in-all, a good adventure, and a good read.

I've enjoyed several of Mr. Tayler's books ... more, actually than River of No Reprieve. For some reason, his writing in this book seemed ponderous and excessively flowery ... and kind of didactic, hammering a lot of history and personal viewpoints into the narrative -- passages that one (I!) felt tempted to skip over.

His accounts of meeting with people dwelling along the Lena didn't quite ring true ... although wonderfully descriptive. People just don't speak that way, it seemed to me. His portrait of Vadim, his fearless, windbaggy guide, was especially wearisome ... felt like pitching that guy into the drink their first day out.