(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.
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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.”
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