3.5 Stars.
I've been reading a lot of horror lately, so I thought I'd have a break with some survival-based non-fiction. How wrong I was! This story contains plenty of horror.
I've read loads of stories of survival from both poles, various mountains, and on the ocean, but the difference with Alive is that these aren't explorers or adventurers. They're just young men who like playing rugby. I think that makes the story even more astonishing.
The descriptions of the home they made for 70 days on the mountain is chilling, and their will to survive shows the determination of the human spirit. Many stories of exploration end with a bit of cannibalism, but the shocking thing about the Andes survivors is that they nearly ran out of that as a source of food, so slim were their options.
It's a shame there weren't more maps throughout the book, or any photos at all of the survivors. Also, without sounding heartless, the sections on the search efforts were not very interesting to me, and I found it difficult to keep track of dates between the different sections.
But this is a shocking story of courage and determination, as well as depicting the survivors as human and flawed.