Though I agree with other readers that this is, indeed, an excellent account of the early exploration of Tibet and Everest, I found the book to be long and at times rambling. There are points where the story slows down to a crawl, the story was often bogged down extraneous, unnecessary detail -some of the gory details of the early Afgan wars could have been easily omitted. I am an avid reader of all things related to Everest, and yet I found this book didn't meet my expectations.