Enjoyable adventure tale, maybe a little lightweight
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This book is the story of Bear Grylls' attempt to cross the arctic Atlantic ocean in an open inflatable beat. Bear leads a team of five on this challenge, and he tells the story of how the trip was organised and how close it came to disaster.
I've read Bear's tale of climbing Everest (Facing Up) which is, to be honest, the better book. Facing the Frozen Ocean was an enjoyable holiday read but it didn't grip me in the same way that the Everest adventure did. Partly, I suspect that's because Bear himself loses the impetus to continue these adventures part-way through the trip; there is one appalling leg of the journey where death was very, very close. An angry Atlantic is no place to be in an open boat -- running out of fuel and left helpless in 20-foot swells. Bear questions why he is involved in this kind of escapade when he could be at home with his young family... and that sense of disengagement is obvious to the reader.
However, you also learn all about prepping for an expedition like this, and get a vivid description of what it was like. Bear's writing (or editor!) improves in this book so the text flows more easily than in Facing Up.
Overall, it's a fast-paced adventure tale -- just not one to rank among the classics.
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Facing the Frozen Ocean
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This book was amazing. It left me speechless. I was hardly able to put the book down. I guarantee your feet will be itching and you will want to get out there and see and do the same things that the Bear and his crew did. I felt like I had had been a part of his journey, at times imagining what they must have gone through and the sheer determination that they all showed put a lump in my throat. An excellent book, I would recommend it to anyone.
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Too light to be gripping.
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This is a great adventure story for lovers of 'cold weather travel writing'. I love Everest and North/South Pole literature and this was great as something other than that. The pace is good and the author relays a lot of his feelings to the reader.
But.
After reading David Hempleman-Adams or Jon Krakauer I felt there was something missing in this narrative, there wasn't enough.
There wasn't enough information and there wasn't enough emotion.
The author gives over the odd paragraph for the other team members to have their say and I think this deflects from what could be a gripping narrative. For example they may be in the middle of a storm and suddenly the narrative will break - and so and so says -. I think it would have better if the author had relayed how he felt.The information is adequate but compared to say The Kon-Tiki Expedition, where every little detail is given and therefore draws the reader right in, this is sparse and skeletal. I hugely admire Bear Grylls and his team but the emphasis is on 'his team' which he points out every five minutes, he needs to remember that in situations like this a leader is in name only, one member is pretty useless without the other and I started to find it a little irritating after a while that he saw the need to point out that he was the leader on every page. Overall it's a great story and I would recommend it. It will never be a travel classic but to be fair to the author he isn't a travel writer, he's an explorer with a story to tell and he does this well enough.
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Facing the Frozen Ocean: One man's dream to lead a team acro
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One of the best books l have ever read and inspired me to book Bear to tell his story at our last Sales Conference....needless to say he was as good as his book and l felt very humbled to be sat there listening to his story.
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can't wait for publication
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I followed this expedition in the press and cannot wait to hear what they felt when they were in those storms!
What a story.
Rod
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