{"id":1678,"date":"2016-06-01T14:13:03","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T21:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1678"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:30:59","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:30:59","slug":"review-the-eiger-sanction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/01\/review-the-eiger-sanction\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Eiger Sanction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>
\n The Eiger Sanction<\/a> by Trevanian<\/a>
\n My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

Third time I\u2019ve read The Eiger Sanction<\/em>, first time reviewing. And both times I reread the novel, I\u2019d forgotten the \u201ctwist\u201d endings. Most likely because it\u2019s a bit anti-climactic. Or because I\u2019ve never written a review for it before, and I tend to forget things easily. I\u2019d make a lousy spy.<\/p>\n

Actually, Jonathan Hemlock isn\u2019t a spy, he\u2019s an assassin. An assassin who likes fine art, his solitude, hates people, his job. You know, every assassin trope you can think of. Or clich\u00e9, if you want to be mean. (The difference between a \u201ctrope\u201d and a \u201cclich\u00e9\u201d is whether you like what you see or not). We\u2019ll forgive Trevanian for this, though, since the book was written back in the early 70s.<\/p>\n

You remember the 70s, don\u2019t you? When racism and sexism where just part of the picture. When a man could sit in a chair gazing at a mountain, and a woman he\u2019d never met before would simply bend over in front of him to signal she was eager to have sex. You know, the good old days.<\/p>\n

Trope, clich\u00e9: more like male fantasy. But again, we let it go, for just as Herman Melville had to hide his essay about the whaling industry inside a revenge novel, so too does Trevanian wrap his love of mountain climbing in, well, a kind of revenge novel.<\/p>\n

Yes, I compared Trevanian to Melville. And why not. The novel uses the word \u201cinsouciance\u201d twice. It describes an un-climbed mountain as retaining its \u201chymen.\u201d Trevanian himself once said, \u201cI read Proust, but not much else written in the 20th century.\u201d For crying out loud, he uses a one-name name, like Cher or Madonna. Or Voltaire. Or Ludacris.<\/p>\n

Rodney Whitaker (Trevanian\u2019s real name) claimed that The Eiger Sanction<\/em> was a spoof. I\u2019m not sure how a man who doesn\u2019t read books written before 1901 knows enough about man-fantasy assassination-thriller-revenge novels to spoof then, but, benefit of the doubt and all that. If you want a decent little vacation novel, and have access to a dictionary, The Eiger Sanction is a goodread.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Eiger Sanction by Trevanian My rating: 3 of 5 stars Third time I\u2019ve read The Eiger Sanction, first time reviewing. And both times I reread the novel, I\u2019d forgotten the \u201ctwist\u201d endings. Most likely because it\u2019s a bit anti-climactic. Or because I\u2019ve never written a review for it before, and I tend to forget … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: The Eiger Sanction”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-r4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1679,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1678\/revisions\/1679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}