Dark Matter: the gripping ghost story from the author of WAKENHYRST

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This book made me scared of the word Glacier. If I had any desire to climb a mountain it's totally erased now(I am scared) The atmosphere is impeccable. I literally walked together with Stephen and his groups through the ice monster. If you love a slow-building, atmospheric ghost story DON'T MISS THIS! This is a tense, atmospheric novel set in India in the 1930s. An expedition set on the way to a mountain that claimed many before. The story is told from the viewpoint of Stephen, who is a doctor and the younger brother of the group leader Kits. The novel starts in a soul very likely to Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 days but as Stephen meets with an ex-mountaineer that had climbed the killer in the past, we immediately get the picture- this is no happy adventure...Something terrible awaits on the mountain. Hmm. I have no doubt at all that Michelle Paver is a talented author, she certainly writes about the cold and snow very well, but... well I wasn’t at all scared. Not once. I felt the same way about 'Dark Matter,' I couldn’t see what everyone else was talking about, I still don’t. The two novels are very similar and sadly I was underwhelmed by both of them.

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My second trip on one of Michelle Paver’s icy cold ghost stories, the first being Dark Matter. I loved that one, and this one proved to be just as good. There are about three parts in this that are really frightening. So much so that I found myself actually gasp out loud! More of this throughout and I would have given a 5 star review. A week before the expedition, Stephen meets the reclusive Charles Tennant himself, but he reacts badly to Stephen’s questions and his news that they intended to follow Lyell’s route. Still, it is obvious that Kit is jealous that it was Stephen who managed to meet one of his heroes. Indeed, the two brothers seem to be carrying old resentments into the present, even as the men set out. I had a good time. That's pretty much all. It has brotherly angst, a fight against the elements, tragedy, pettiness, and above all, really great foreshadowing. Most of my enjoyment came from trying to find out what Kind of ghost story it would become, and when I learned, I was mightily pleased. Nuff Said about that.

Set in the Himalayas, 1935. Five Englishmen set off from Darjeeling determined to conquer the sacred summit of Kangchenjunga.

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver | Goodreads Dark Matter by Michelle Paver | Goodreads

In 1935 Dr. Stephen Pearce and his brother Kits are part of a five-man mission to climb the most dangerous mountain in the Himalayas, Kangchenjunga. Thirty years before, Sir Edmund Lyell led an ill-fated expedition up the same mountain: more than one man did not return, and the rest lost limbs to frostbite. “I don’t want to know what happened to them. It’s in the past. It has nothing to do with us,” Dr. Pearce tells himself, but from the start it feels like a bad omen that they, like Lyell’s party, are attempting the southwest approach; even the native porters are nervous. And as they climb, they fall prey to various medical and mental crises; hallucinations of ghostly figures on the crags are just as much of a danger as snow blindness. Once we get further into the story, and higher up the mountain, the creepiness begins. At the start, there are just small occurrences of unease, a shadow at the edge of Stephen’s vision or the dark shape of a man further up the mountain. But as we read on, weirder things begin to happen. I loved the atmosphere Paver created in this novel, you can really lose yourself in scenario’s and feel the plummeting sense of fear and dread that plagues Stephen. Having really enjoyed, “Dark Matter,” I was keen to read this, new novel, by Michelle Paver. Normally, I dislike comparing an author’s novels, but there is much to compare in, “Thin Air,” to “Dark Matter.” Both deal with remote places and extreme temperatures. Both are, essentially, ghost stories… It is 1935 and our narrator, Dr Stephen Pearce, has left London, and the woman he was supposed to be marrying, to join his brother, Kit, on a mountaineering expedition. In 1906, Kit’s hero, Sir Edmund Lyell, led an expedition up Kangchenjunga, which ended in disaster. His book, “Bloody but Unbowed: the Assault on Mount Kangchenjunga,” presented Lyell as a hero; even though he and Charles Tennant, were the only survivors of a tragedy, which saw five members of the party perish in the attempt to climb the mountain.I could feel the chilly winds and the cold in this one and the eerie feel of the mountain really comes to life in her vivid writing. Paver develops these tensions very well. Then the gradual development of a sense of haunting, initially denied by the empirical Stephen: Once more we are in a cold, secluded, location, the Hilamayas instead of the Arctic. At first glance, this is quite similar to her previous story but the feel is quite different. I would guess that this kind of tale requires a remote and dangerous setting, somewhere secluded and cut off the real world. Kangchenjunga, as well as other mountains, are places of wonder, where the immense scale becomes alien, and where euphoria morphs with desolation. Additionally, opting for the 1930s golden era of mountain climbing adds somehow that fashionable 'old' feel to it. This is pacey, readable historical fiction with a good sense of period and atmosphere. I enjoyed Pearce’s narration, and the one-upmanship type of relationship with his brother adds an interesting dimension to the expedition dynamics. However, I never submitted sufficiently to Paver’s spell to find anything particularly scary. I’ll try again with her other ghost story, Dark Matter, about an Arctic expedition from the same time period.

Dark Matter: the gripping ghost story from the author of

It’s a hypothesis, and it makes me feel slightly better. I’ve put a frame around the wrongness. I’ve contained it.” Thin Air: A Ghost Story fitted the bill perfectly for me, this is more the the sort of story that is eerie and chilling and unsettling as opposed to scary.Michelle Paver was born in central Africa, but came to England as a child. After gaining a degree in biochemistry from Oxford University, she became a partner in a city law firm, but eventually gave that up to write full-time.

Book Review: Dark Matter by Michelle Paver - The Book Smugglers Book Review: Dark Matter by Michelle Paver - The Book Smugglers

This novel felt a little bit slow to get off the ground and I was worried that it wasn’t really going to build up to any sort of crescendo. The beginning of the book focuses heavily on building the characters, all of who are great to get to know. Our narrator Stephen is a likeable guy from the get-go, he’s a little bit clumsy and his self-deprecating humour adds a lighter tone to the novel. We also meet the team with which he’s trekking the mountain, which includes his brother Kits. Kit’s is everything that Stephen is not – he’s successful, well-loved, and confident. It was really interesting to see the sibling dynamic throughout the book. Paver makes it an interesting relationship where they have love for each other, but only due to the fact they’re related, otherwise, they readily admit they wouldn’t get along at all. Also, for a horror novel, it's just not that scary. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer's nonfiction account of the 1996 Mount Everest Disaster -- which contains zero ghosts -- is much spookier and more unsettling than this book.However, the setting on its own would not be enough. Paver creates a small cast, well drawn, but focuses on one man and his difficult realtionship with his conceited older brother. Through this narration, we become immersed not only in the sibling relationship but also the harsh conditions of the expedition. Our group is trying to reach to summit of the yet unconquered third highest peak of the Himalayas, retracing the steps of a previously ill-fated team. The Sherpas are wrong. This mountain has no spirit, no sentience and no intent. It’s not trying to kill us. It simply is.” [famous last words…] Ghosts - or fictional ones, at least - tend to haunt inhabited places, whether houses, churches, castles or hospital wards. So used are we to the traditions of the genre that a description of a decrepit mansion full of dark corners and unexplained creaks is enough to raise in us readers expectations of phantoms and ghouls. In this regard, Michelle Paver's "Thin Air" - much like its predecessor Dark Matter - is not your typical ghostly tale since it is the very remoteness of the haunted spaces which makes the setting particularly eerie. The context of "Thin Air" is a 1935 expedition to the summit of the Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas, the third highest peak in the world. A team of five Englishmen, including narrator Stephen Pearce and his brother "Kits", set off in the footsteps of a disastrous 1907 expedition, made famous through the memoirs of its leader Edmund Lyell. It turns out, however, that Lyell's memoirs might have left out some of the more unsavoury details of that doomed attempt, as our intrepid protagonists will discover to their dismay. Indeed, memories and relics of the Lyell expedition seem to cast a pall over the new climb. Following Lyell’s route are Kits, Stephen, Major Cotterell, McLellan and Garrard – Kit’s best friend. Despite Captain Tennant’s request that they do not follow the same route up the South-West face, the party ignore his plea and continue as planned. Dr Pearce finds the jungle oppressive and dislikes the superstition and fear which surrounds the mountain. However, it is once they begin the climb that his unsettled feelings gradually turn to fear. Is he imagining things, or is there something - or someone - on the mountain, that is watching them? I love stories about climbing expeditions so I try to read as many as I can. This one focuses more on the ghost story aspect versus a lot of climbing details which is still great but if you are looking for more of a technical perspective then you probably want to read a true account instead of this.