Is The Summit of the Gods Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Overview

The Summit of the Gods is a mountaineering manga drawn by Jiro Taniguchi, adapting Baku Yumemakura's novel. It opens with a hook: a Japanese photographer named Fukamachi spots an old camera in a Kathmandu shop that may have belonged to George Mallory, the climber who vanished near Everest's summit in 1924, which would mean Mallory got there decades before Hillary. Chasing that camera pulls Fukamachi into the orbit of Habu Joji, a legendary, half-vanished solo climber, and the book slowly shifts from a mystery into a study of the men who give their lives to the mountains. Taniguchi's version won a major art prize in France, and one look at the pages tells you why.

What it does well

The art is the headline, and it lives up to the hype. Taniguchi draws the Himalayas with a scale and precision that makes you feel the cold and the drop. Climbing sequences that could be dull on paper turn genuinely tense, panel by panel, because the environment feels so real and so lethal. It's some of the most immersive artwork in the medium, full stop.

But it's not just pretty. The story is really about obsession, about why a sane person would keep climbing something that keeps trying to kill them, and it takes that question seriously. Habu is the heart of it: cold, single-minded, hard to like and impossible to look away from. As his history unfolds you start to understand the pull, and by the end the mountain feels less like a setting than a character. The pacing is patient in a way that pays off; Taniguchi lets a climb breathe, so when something goes wrong, it lands with real weight.

Where it falls short

This is a slow book, and it wants you to meet it there. The Mallory mystery that opens things is more of a doorway than a plot: it fades into the background, and if you came for a tight thriller about a lost camera, you'll be waiting for a payoff that isn't the point. The middle leans hard on flashbacks and climbing detail, and casual readers can drift.

The tone is reserved throughout, as well. Taniguchi keeps the emotion cool and understated, which suits the material but can feel distant if you want warmth or big dramatic swings. This is a story you sink into rather than get swept up by, and that restraint won't click for everyone.

Verdict

The Summit of the Gods is a quiet masterpiece, the kind of manga people press into your hands and say just look at it. It's slow, cool, and single-minded, and those are features rather than bugs, but they do mean it's not for every mood. If you want gorgeous art and a patient, immersive story about why people risk everything for a summit, few things do it better. Fanfare/Ponent Mon puts it out in English and has reprinted it, so it's worth tracking down and reading unhurried.