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Title: Death on Ice

Author: Robert Ryan

Narrator: Ray Chase

Format: Unabridged

Length: 17 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-07-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

The tragic story of Robert Falcon Scotts quest for the South Pole is brought to sparkling new life in this adventure novel.

It is one of the most famous quotes in the history of exploration: I am just going outside. I may be some time.

The story of how former cavalry officer Lawrence Oates came to deliver his brave last words, before walking bootless into a Antarctic blizzard so that Robert Falcon Scott and the other members of the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition might have a better chance of survival, is brilliantly reimagined in this epic novel based on fact. A hero of the Boer Wars, Oates joined Scotts second journey to Antarctica with dreams of winning the race to the South Pole for England. But small mistakes and bad luck plagued the mission from the start, and when they finally reached the Pole on January 17, 1912, Oates and Scott were heartbroken to find that Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten them thereby more than a month. Little did they know, things were about to get much, much worse.

Members Reviews:

Five Stars

Excellent

Ninety South

Robert Ryan's "Death on the Ice" is a novelization of Robert Falcon Scott's attempts on The South Pole.

In 1901, his first - "The Discovery Expedition" - achieved the feat of "The Furthest South" - just beyond 81 degrees, but he was beaten back by appalling weather before he could reach his ultimate goal. The 1911 "Terra Nova Expedition" won Scott his immortality. He and four companions reached The Pole, but died on the return journey, barely a day's march from salvation.

Scott's reputation has waxed and waned in the 100 years since his death. Initially lauded as the archetypal heroic Englishman, he has more recently been portrayed as a hapless incompetent. Even more recently, biographers such as Sir Ranulph Fiennes have returned to the man's defence. Robert Ryan takes a fairly even-handed view of the man in this dramatization. He is neither hero nor fool, rather a relatively ordinary man driven to extreme undertakings; flawed in some ways, resilient in others and, ultimately, as much a victim of bad luck as of his failings.

"Death on the Ice" tells the story from the points of view of Scott's companions and colleagues as well as his own; chiefly Ernest Shackleton, who accompanied Scott other first expedition and Lawrence Oates who died on the second. Again, Ryan steadfastly avoids the veneration of men who have been greatly lionised since and, as a result, presents us with a story that reads realistically, believably and sympathetically.

It is, nevertheless, a gripping read. Ryan's description of the terrible privations suffered by the polar explorers is deeply compelling and I struggled to put the book down. It's well written as a novel; Ryan is a prolific and accomplished novelist and it is clear that he researched his subject well enough to write with some considerable authority. Of course it remains "only" a novel, but, if of you know little or nothing of Scott's adventures, you may well be tempted to seek out his more authentic biographies.

A highly recommended boy's own adventure.

Well written and well researched - a good read

I enjoyed reading this book, even if we all know what happened to Scott's expedition to the South Pole.