Review: Dead Mountain by Donnie Eichnar
I listened to the audiobook for this book, and if you are a person who does not speed up narration, then I cannot recommend this experience to you. I am typically a 1.25 speed listened but will go all the way up to 2 (or 2.5 if I hate it and am doing nothing else), but I tend to listen to nonfiction at actual speed. The first half of this book, I listened at the normal speed and found it so unbearably slow; I don't think it was purely the play speed, but I speed it up to 1.5, and that felt much closer to human speech speed. The author narrates the book and speaks so slowly, and in such a measured and almost monotone, it was not my optimal listening experience.
Dead Mountain is about the Dyatlov Pass Incident, a tragedy where a group of college student hikers mysteriously died on a mountain referred to the native population of this area of Russia as Dead Mountain. We follow two narratives, the journals of the hikers, along with information about them that is provided by those who know them and the story of Donnie Eichar coming to acquire this information.
I didn't really like this book much. I found his constant reiteration of other people asking why he cared about this frustrating. I didn't initially question why he was interested, people get interested in stuff that isn't weird, and if your job is nonfiction writer, it is logical you might want to write about your new interest. But the book brings it up multiple times, and it isn't really adequately addressed. If you are going to draw attention to something repeatedly, you should provide a satisfying explanation. I found most of the sections about him to be self-congratulatory and not really interesting to me. I totally get that this works for some people, I liked the parts of I'll Be Gone in the Dark that were about Michelle McNamara (though would argue that it was a much smaller section of the book and that she really explored the question of why in an interesting manner and she literally died writing it, so that added an extra layer), but it didn't work for me in this case. It came across to me that there wasn't enough credible information to fill 250-300 pages. The author didn't just want to go through the whole book, systematically explaining then debunking every wild theory about these people's deaths, so he structured himself as a main player. I just wasn't that interested in him.
I could have read the first like 50ish pages than the last chapter, which probably would have been enough information for me. Or just reading the sections that give an account of the hikers. I just feel like about an hour of this six-hour audiobook would have been sufficient time to say this is what we know happened, this is why it is hard to say for sure, and this is what I think happened. Maybe 2 hours. Just to play it safe.
I am giving this book 3 stars because I don't think there is anything really wrong with it; I just think it is kinda an overly long, slightly boring account of what is probably an interesting and sad mystery. I can see why other people would like it even if I found it very boring. I might be back to bump it to a 2 because that was my level of enjoyment probably. If you are into wilderness stories, mysteries that aren't crime, and want to read this book (as opposed to listening to the audio version), then go forth and read this book, you will hopefully like it more than I have.
