Book Review: Hell on High by Michael Clark
Title: Hell on High
Author: Michael Clark
Release date: March 15, 2023
Huge thanks to Michael for sending me a digital ARC of this one!
Michael Clark is the author of the The Patience of a Dead Man series, a trilogy of novels that own, all of them on my Kindle, but have yet managed to get to any of them. My good pal, George, has told me to read them close to a dozen times, but like many of you out there, my TBR is a mile high and I’m hoping to get to them shortly (like within a year or so… haha!).
‘Hell on High’ caught my interest (not from the fantastically ominous cover art) but from the climbing synopsis. As you’ll be aware, I’m a huge fan of wilderness based dark fiction. But I also love watching/reading non-fiction set in the wilderness. Extreme athlete documentaries and works such as ‘Into Thin Air’ by Jon Krakauer. There’s been a few horror novels I’ve read that deal with high-up mountain stuff, ‘Ararat’ by Christopher Golden and ‘The Mourner’s Cradle: A Widow’s Journey’ by Tommy B. Smith, so I was really intrigued with what Michael was going to do.
What I liked: The story follows two characters before their plots become interwoven. We have Juliana, who discovers the truth of her father and is whisked away to the US in the hopes of being safe and finding a way to get her sister out of South America as well, and Patrick, a douchebag, spoiled son of dentist’s. He himself is now also a dentist, but being a total dick, he likes to travel and spend money as though it grows on trees.
Their worlds intersect when Juliana, now having changed her name, meets Patrick in the US. Patrick has returned after being detained in Greece, the results of him letting his girlfriend die while on a hiking trip. He tries to play it off as though he desperately attempted to help her, but the evidence is stacked against him and without his parents paying off the government officials, he’d still be in jail.
Juliana is constantly worried about her father catching her. One big aspect of this is his connection to black magick and it works well to keep a growing sense of dread. No matter the distance she puts between them, she knows he has the ability to find her.
When Patrick and Juliana go to Everest, things really ramp up another level and we get some wonderful environmental revenge/supernatural elements that leak in and show just how much doing wrong to someone can get you in deep water over your head.
Clark does a great job of keeping these two at polar opposites of who the readers will side with, while also having us desperately want things to work out very differently than you can expect it to happen.
The ending is a blast, it rips along and I really loved seeing the tides turn and the various elements get wrapped up.
What I didn’t like: I spend an awful lot of time on Twitter and interacting there. With that in mind, I found myself constantly pulled out of the realm of the story with the significant amount of characters named after people I interact with a lot. It made it hard to suspend some disbelief in parts because all I could picture was the real life person. I know some people don’t mind, but for me it was a tougher aspect to ignore throughout.
Secondly, I know Michael has discussed his usage of short chapters before, but this is a roughly 225 page book with 225 chapters. At times the shorter chapters worked to slow the pace in places it would’ve been great to have it ramp up.
Why you should buy this: This has a ton of elements that’ll have dark fiction fans happy. We get some great characters, tons of back story and ‘why’s’ over various actions and of course a ton of action involving the outdoors and mountains. Clark has really delivered a fun read, one that definitely does the cover art justice.
Really engaging read.
4/5
