It's not as good as the book about the Erebus & Terror that I just read. I say that because it tries to tell a dramatic story rather than give me an idea of how likely which facts are to be true. But I came to appreciate it for not omitting colonialist racist bullshit, and for writing about it critically.

So my main points of frustration are actually the historical facts (of whichever level of facticity, shrug, ok we can call it the story, I don't care). I find the Erebus/Terror expeditions relatable because, while also being colonialist bullshit, they are about exploring areas unknown to the people doing the expeditions, about drawing maps and uuuuh collecting (cough eating cough) new-to-them species. I get why someone would want to do that. But this? This was some war bullshit, people were literally forced to go, and gosh "capturing the treasures from the Spanish" is such a petty goal.

Also! I'm irritated that this happened before people figured out how to prevent scurvy! Couldn't they just have waited until that was solved? Sounds like such an unnecessary way to suffer and die, and like, a bunch of increasingly sick people forced to keep the ship going sounds like such a nightmare.

That brings me to the island! Cold year round, bad storms, celery? Celery as the only-ish edible plant? When you're on such an island you'd better not scare off the indigenous people who know how to live with this, but also, it's such a bad place to have a shipwreck in in the first place! Who does that!

And then the big conflict is "we have to serve our country to the death" vs "I wanna go home, it's cold and there's no food". It's...... yeah idek. Did this really have to happen?? Could they not just have said "no, we're going to a warmer place with less dangerous storms"?