Hardcover, 659 pages
Published Oct. 31, 2009 by Subterranean.
The bestselling author of Ilium transforms the story of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition into a devastating historical adventure that will chill you to your core.The men on board Her Britannic Majesty's Ships Terror and Erebus had every expectation of triumph. They were part of Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition – as scientifically advanced an enterprise as had ever set forth – and theirs were the first steam-driven vessels to go in search of the fabled North-West Passage. But the ships have now been trapped in the Arctic ice for nearly two years. Coal and provisions are running low. Yet the real threat isn't the constantly shifting landscape of white or the flesh-numbing temperatures, dwindling supplies or the vessels being slowly crushed by the unyielding grip of the frozen ocean. No, the real threat is far more terrifying. There is something out there that haunts the frigid darkness, which stalks the …
The bestselling author of Ilium transforms the story of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition into a devastating historical adventure that will chill you to your core.The men on board Her Britannic Majesty's Ships Terror and Erebus had every expectation of triumph. They were part of Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition – as scientifically advanced an enterprise as had ever set forth – and theirs were the first steam-driven vessels to go in search of the fabled North-West Passage. But the ships have now been trapped in the Arctic ice for nearly two years. Coal and provisions are running low. Yet the real threat isn't the constantly shifting landscape of white or the flesh-numbing temperatures, dwindling supplies or the vessels being slowly crushed by the unyielding grip of the frozen ocean. No, the real threat is far more terrifying. There is something out there that haunts the frigid darkness, which stalks the ships, snatching one man at a time – mutilating, devouring. A nameless thing, at once nowhere and everywhere, this terror has become the expedition's nemesis. When Franklin meets a terrible death, it falls to Captain Francis Crozier of HMS Terror to take command and lead the remaining crew on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Eskimo woman who cannot speak. She may be the key to survival – or the harbinger of their deaths. And as scurvy, starvation and madness take their toll, as the Terror on the ice become evermore bold, Crozier and his men begin to fear there is no escape...
Seemlessly crafting a fictional horror out of the true (as we know it) events of the Franklin Expedition.
The last 10% of this harrowing novel feels nothing at all like the rest. Nothing. My first reaction was disappointment, as I'd been comfortable with the rise and flow of the words, and this last bit felt like it was written by a different author -- tacked to the end of an Arctic journey it didn't match like some belated MadLibs.
It wasn't until I started writing this review that the ending finally clicked for me: the ending is so vastly different than the rest of the book because it represents a massive perspective change for the narrator. Whether this works for a reader, I suppose, would depend on how consistent you like the tone of your narrative. I found the transition jarring, but I can now appreciate narratively why that was done.
The HMS Terror may well have been the most aptly named ship in all of history, first for its opponents in the Second American War (of 1812), then for its inhabitants when England turned its attention back to the Northwest Passage. I can't imagine that even the two prior expeditions were anything less than terrifying for the crew to overwinter in, but the final, Franklin's voyage... that was something special.
Dan Simmons created a very slow burn, here, with an enormous amount of description to help you understand everything there is to know about ship life in the era, woven in with memories of England and expeditions that don't pan out. The writing begins so prosaic but becomes more lyrical and surreal as the chapters go on. When a mythical thing starts killing people, a few at a time, and then a lot at a time, the horror just keeps …
The HMS Terror may well have been the most aptly named ship in all of history, first for its opponents in the Second American War (of 1812), then for its inhabitants when England turned its attention back to the Northwest Passage. I can't imagine that even the two prior expeditions were anything less than terrifying for the crew to overwinter in, but the final, Franklin's voyage... that was something special.
Dan Simmons created a very slow burn, here, with an enormous amount of description to help you understand everything there is to know about ship life in the era, woven in with memories of England and expeditions that don't pan out. The writing begins so prosaic but becomes more lyrical and surreal as the chapters go on. When a mythical thing starts killing people, a few at a time, and then a lot at a time, the horror just keeps ratcheting up, and really, it's the long delays between the swift killings that keep you most on edge, just like the characters. And among all the desperate human attempts to survive, the human horror still outweighs anything supernatural.
The book keeps morphing and becoming something else right up to the end. Every page is worth turning.
