the dyatlov pass incidents is one of those real life creepypasta stories that just draw you in. its got everything you need. a government conspiracy! UFOs! secret weapons testing! crazy tribespeople! a dark and stormy night on a place called mountain of the dead! but then, when you take a closer look, its really not that interesting, while also becoming interesting in a new way.

first of all, the author is obnoxiously american and im going to take a star off for forcing me to read a fucking robert conquest quote. how dare you. like honestly. and i should seriously give this two fucking stars for taking the gulag archipelago at face value, like the guy didnt lie out of his ass. oh youre saying that in the middle of WW2, prisoners got their whole ass bodies dipped in a massive vat of acid? really? just a big ol' vat of acid in every gulag for every single prisoner? youre saying that the USSR used both prison labor AND tortured their prisoners to the point where they were incapable of doing any labor whatsoever? americans are beyond stupid. the stuff alleged in the gulag archipelago is worse than what the dictatorship here had done to communists and i think thats the point. its bad when communists put nazis in prison for being nazis and make them sweat it out a bit doing some hard labor but when nazis literally do unfathomably EVIL shit to everyone else, we handwave it and say 'well the soviets had prisons!' literally drop dead immediately

and the reason im going off on such a tangent is because halfway through the book, i genuinely thought eichar was going to suggest the ghost of stalin himself strangled each and every one of the hikers. granted, he attempts to do this obnoxious thing americans do where they view other non europeans as, like, wildlife or something, and mentioned all the ways those wacky russians were different yet similar. i hate that. shut up gringo, tell me what killed those hikers

once again im being a little unfair, but it is a serious pet peeve of mine because it so often goes unexamined by americans who truly feel they have absolutely nothing to examine. they dont have to consider their position in the world relative to others because they are the default, and thus all their observations have an air of objectivity. the rest of the world, particularly brazil, has a sort of wounded dog mentality in comparison, and i think thats fucking unfair. so whenever i see americans in another country, particularly in russia, a conflict that they have largely won and yet today still believe they have to further destroy that country, i believe they need to challenge their own ego.

i still havent gotten to the real meat of the book yet and thats because theres not that much to it. it tries to piece together the dyatlov groups known path and the ensuing investigation while also weaving in eichars own journey to find the answer to a nearly 60 year old mystery. it was a nice way of creating cliffhangers to a story where presumably the audience knows most of the story already.

while ive criticized eichars general american-ness, i think his writing is mostly solid. i was never really bored, and i enjoyed reading his reconstruction of events. they were heartbreaking, knowing how talented and well loved the hikers were, and eichar takes special care to humanize not only them, but everyone they met along the way. and the interview with yuri yudin, the only survivor of the dyatlov group, was very cool. yudin outright says he loves stalin lmfao

this is a pretty solid read and it doesnt really indulge nutty conspiracy theories for too long, though for a long time i thought it might go for the government cover up angle (again, american....). its a pretty fast read so if youve got a long commute like i do, it wouldnt hurt to give it a go.