Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Amazing what they did, but told in a very undignified, uninspired manner. After finishing this I went immediately to Mawson's "Home of the Blizzard" and the contrast not only in writing style but personal qualities is startling. Fiennes complains endlessly, in a petty manner, about his companion-. He keeps teling the reader he is tougher, faster, better navigator, etc. yet he made some major screwups in planning (although he did a good job of avoiding the polar bears!). And the recollections are so self-centered, down to numerous photos of frostbitten toes, fingers etc, plus an hourly update of the status of every blister and hangnail. And he wrote the book after the fact! Scott, Mawson, Shackleton and many other earlier explorers didn't gripe one tenth as much even in their diaries, written in the midst of the pain and agony. And those earlier guys actually noticed their surroundings and wrote of them poetically. Since Fiennes took the trip mainly as fodder for a book (he says so in the book) you'd think he could have offered the reader much more. The earlier explorers accomplished things for the greater good - mapping, meteorlogical recordkeeping, collecting biological specimens, etc. They wrote their books, or published their journals, to finance exploration, not the other way around. And the MS cause seems dubious, considering it wasn't Fiennes' idea, but rather a condition placed on them to get funding. I found it depressing all in all. Much more inspiring to read about Scott freezing out there than this guy surviving.
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