Review: Excellent, Compelling Read
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 19, 2011
I haven't been writing reviews in the last few months due to personal issues, so please forgive the rambling nature of this one, I'm still not really 'up to it' yet.If you read The Girl on the Swing (excellent), this book is a very different premise, but equally well-written.Cave kept me enthralled from start to finish and that's no easy task these days, I'm very easily distracted; I must have 10 books on my Kindle that I'm still working on.It's written from the POV of Marty Wite, a chemist and former caver going through a separation. He decides to catch up with old caving buddies from his university days and decides to start caving again. His former first love returns from years spent in the US and life gets even more complicated for him.The characters are well-drawn and interesting in their own right. I thought that the author pulled off narrating as a male quite well.The book begins with Marty hearing a shouted "Die Happy!", as he's shaken off a ladder, falling 60 or so feet into a smooth-sided cave entrance. When he comes to, he find the ladder gone and no known way out.Part action piece, part thriller (though the author denies the thriller part) and part character study, Cave had more than a couple of interesting plot twists and really fascinating descriptions of caves and the sport itself.I had no trouble following the flashbacks and there was good flow to the story.Even though the book is written in British English and has one or two tongue-twisting Welsh names, I didn't find it hard to follow at all. I'm one of those readers who has to 'pronounce' words in my head and that usually stops me dead in my tracks with books based in Wales, but it wasn't a problem this time.There is a defintion of a caving term at the beginning of each chapter, which I found to be very helpful.You don't have to be outdoorsy or into caving to enjoy the book. It was also well formatted and edited for the Kindle.In the interest of transparency, the author was kind enough to give me a free copy of Cave when I posted that I didn't have the money to buy it. I am not a personal friend of the author, but we have 'chatted' in forums. I was not under any obligation to write a review, but I was very impressed with the book.