An excellent piece of good old fashioned, intelligent, thought provoking storytelling surrounding the mystical Mount Everest. The author expertly blends two timelines; 1939 and Josef Becker has been blackmailed by the growing power of the Nazi party who want him to be the first person to scale Mount Everest and by doing so bring power and prestige to a fanatical national socialist party; 2009 Neil Quinn, hired by the ruthless Jean Philippe Sarron, is tasked with the mission of guiding Nelson Tate Junior to the summit. Both events create a masterful and visual reading experience, the two stories run seamlessly side by side but with a connection running throughout and beautifully blended and concluded in the final chapters. The only slight criticism I have is in the length of the novel and, I felt it might have benefited from a slightly shorter page count. ( )