Book of the week: Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth by James M. Tabor

(Random House, 304 pages, $26)

There are many ways to die in a cave, said Alexandra Alter and Cynthia Crossen in The Wall Street Journal. Mountain climbers die in only about four ways, according to author James Tabor’s calculations, but the less-celebrated adventurers who explore the world’s deepest holes can lose their lives in more than 50. Often operating in total darkness, they risk deadly falls and avalanches. They can also succumb to lethal microbes, poisonous gas, drowning, electrocution, rabid bats, or a bout of darkness-induced madness known as “the Rapture”—which Tabor likens to “a panic attack on meth.” Such were the dangers confronted in 2004 by two teams, on opposite sides of the world, as they set out on simultaneous attempts to plumb the planet more deeply than anyone before.

The contrasting styles of the two teams’ leaders provide one of Blind Descent’s great pleasures, said Bill Marvel in The Dallas Morning News. American Bill Stone, leading assaults on two enormous cave systems in southern Mexico, at times acts “strangely indifferent to the welfare of his team members.” Hard on himself and others, he views his mission as easily worth sacrificing one’s life for. Far away on the edge of the Black Sea, meanwhile, mild-mannered Alex Kilmchouk spoils his crew with Cognac and pâté as they undertake a more methodical probe of their own, 7,000-foot anti-Everest. By pairing the stories of the two teams, and making their competition into a race, Tabor has produced “a perfect adventure read for armchair or beach.”

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Well, maybe not “perfect,” said Stephen Harrigan in The Washington Post. Tabor, a veteran magazine writer and television producer, “employs the breathless techniques that become second-nature to storytellers accustomed to shrinking word counts and intrusive commercial breaks.” So deduct a few style points for hyperbole and overuse of cliff-hanging chapter endings. “But just try to stop reading.” Tabor has found “a great subject and a relatively fresh one,” and part of what makes reading Blind Descent so pleasurable is “the author’s own barely contained excitement that he might be on to a big, thumping man-book” in the manner of A Perfect Storm or Into Thin Air. It may not belong quite in that class, but it’s still a “satisfying, shivery read.”