The Terror

Title: The Terror

Author: Dan Simmons
Pub Date: 2007
Genre: Historical Fiction/Psychological Horror
Nutshell: The crews of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, stranded in the Arctic wastes while searching for the Northwest Passage, are being hunted by something on the ice.

Oh my gosh, you guys, this book is LONG. I read it on the Kindle, so I didn't have a real good idea of the length, but one reviewer said the book won't kill you unless it falls on your head. That may be true. But the length may be part of the point of the book, since the characters in the book are stranded in the high Arctic for years. The seeming endlessness of the book echoes the endlessness of the days. But boy howdy is this a slog in parts.

But anyway. The tale is told from the points of view of various sailors aboard the two ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, who are on yet another expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage, which Great Britain seemed to be obsessed with in the 19th century. Something goes hopelessly awry and the ships get completely stuck in the solid pack ice of the high latitudes, and after a while it becomes apparent that something is hunting them. After that, it becomes a slow winding down unto eventual death between the ice, the unrelenting cold, starvation, the thing, mutinous sailors, and various forms of illness. 

The story is based on the historical ill-fated Franklin Expedition to the Arctic of 1845, from which there were no recorded survivors. Of course, Simmons takes some liberties with the plot to add the element of horror to the story and twists the ending to make it more interesting than the likely more factual result. And for all that it was so incredibly long and I do admit to skipping parts, I did keep going to the end. Volumes upon volumes of Patrick O'Brian have made me used to longer seagoing narratives than I might otherwise be accustomed to reading. The main narrator, Captain Francis Crozier, was a compelling enough character that I couldn't leave him completely behind, and some of the other sailors, namely Lieutenant Irving and Surgeon Goodsir, were also interesting enough to keep me slogging. The beast/terror on the ice is presented vaguely enough that it remains mysterious until the end, which was a good choice. And, in the end, the fact that I started reading this in the end of August in Kentucky, when the temperature is 90 degrees and the humidity is staggering was likely the best possible environment for hundreds of pages of ice and snow and subzero temperatures. 

I would hesitate before recommending this book to any but the heartiest readers, honestly. I read this on a recommendation for psychological horror, and it's definitely not one for obvious gore or anything, but it is a long walk to get to much of anything. If you're interested in naval fiction, it's not bad for that. In terms of bleakness, it's no worse in its way than O'Brian's Desolation Island or The Unknown Shore, just infinitely longer. If you're really into Arctic exploration, have at it. If you're into Inuit mythology, there's a bit for you here too. But otherwise, it's a very, very long book.