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The Terror: A Novel Hardcover – Big Book, January 8, 2007
| Dan Simmons (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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The Terror swells with the heart-stopping suspense and heroic adventure that have won Dan Simmons praise as "a writer who not only makes big promises but keeps them" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). With a haunting and constantly surprising story based on actual historical events, The Terror is a novel that will chill you to your core.
- Print length784 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherLittle, Brown and Company
- Publication dateJanuary 8, 2007
- Dimensions6.5 x 2 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-100316017442
- ISBN-13978-0316017442
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About the Author
From The Washington Post
The fate of Sir John Franklin's last expedition remains one of the great mysteries of Arctic exploration. What we know, more or less, is this: In the balmy days of May 1845, 129 officers and men aboard two ships -- Erebus and Terror -- departed from England for the Canadian Arctic in search of a Northwest Passage to the Pacific. They were never heard from again. Between 1847 and 1859, Franklin's wife pushed for and funded various relief missions, even as the expectation of finding survivors was replaced by the slim hope for answers.
It's a story perfectly suited for fiction, if only because we have so little else to go on. Dan Simmons's new novel, The Terror, dives headlong into the frozen waters of the Franklin mystery, mixing historical adventure with gothic horror -- a sort of Patrick O'Brian meets Edgar Allan Poe against the backdrop of a J.M.W. Turner icescape. Meticulously researched and brilliantly imagined, The Terror won't satisfy historians or even Franklin buffs, but as a literary hybrid, the novel presents a dramatic and mythic argument for how and why Franklin and his men met their demise.
The book opens well into the middle of things, at the onset of the ships' third winter beset in sea ice. Months after Franklin's own death, his second-in-command is now in charge. Gothic imagery pervades, as "Captain Crozier comes up on deck to find his ship under attack by celestial ghosts." This "attack" turns out to be an artful description of the aurora borealis, though Simmons never tells us that directly. Indeed, the power of his metaphoric language comes from the archetypal superstitions of the crew, who, despite their anchor of Protestant Christianity, are a pagan lot deep down.
But the crew's belief in witches and magic may or may not explain their main fear: a "Thing on the ice" that stalks, beheads, eviscerates and otherwise kills off crewmen one by one. For 200 pages or so, we aren't sure if this beast is a figment of their overactive imaginations, maybe a giant polar bear or a yeti of Northern lore, a monster suggesting the "beastie" of Golding's Lord of the Flies -- the terror within -- or Beowulf's Grendel, not to say Grendel's mother -- a preternatural, evil intelligence bent on destruction.
Faced with mutinous threats, general starvation, intense cold and something wrong with their tinned food supply (scurvy and lead poisoning appear rampant), Crozier provides leadership without arrogance. As the novel's protagonist, he is a man of the people, a realist, unlucky in love. As an Irishman in the British Royal Navy, he has been largely ignored by the Admiralty despite his stoic competence.
By contrast, Franklin represents most of what was wrong in early British Arctic exploration. His prior expeditions had met with minimal success, making him best known in England as "the man who ate his shoes," though given all the other things men ate to stay alive on Arctic expeditions, it's unclear why shoe leather would be singled out for ignominy. Goaded by his very public failings, Franklin retained his penchant for arrogant idealism and wasteful ritual. He brought along fine china and monogrammed silverware, among other "necessities." In the end, his primary mistake is cultural: Out of xenophobia he refuses to adopt local methods of travel, shelter and hunting. Yet to say that Sir John gets his just deserts is unfair if only because 128 others suffer the same fate.
Crozier recognizes the captain's weaknesses, and therein lies the novel's poignant sense of loss. He dispenses shipboard justice out of practical necessity rather than lofty idealism. In their desperate hours, he preaches not from the Bible favored by Franklin but from the "Book of Leviathan" -- his own recitations from Thomas Hobbes, which, among other things, explains the birth of superstition and religion: "There was nothing which a Poet could introduce as a person in his Poem, which [man] did not make into either a God or a Divel." As the novel descends toward its hellish climax, the "Divel" chasing our crew -- that "Thing on the ice" -- transcends its monstrous nature and becomes the manifestation of earthly retribution, wild payback for the hubris of Western civilization.
The vehicle of that transcendence is Lady Silence, a mute Inuit girl who lives on the ship and goes at her own whim, providing a portal to Eskimo mythology and shamanism. Northern spiritual philosophy gives the world -- and this novel -- its ultimate balance, predicting the coming of kabloona ("pale people"), whose arrival brings "drunkenness and despair," melts the sea ice, kills off the white bear and calls forth the "End of Times." While Franklin's men are unable to escape the realities of starvation, brutal cold and the violent urge, Crozier's instinct for survival pushes the novel to its ethereal end.
This mix of historical realism, gothic horror and ancient mythology is a difficult walk on fractured ice, and anyone without Simmons's mastery of narrative craft would have undoubtedly fallen through. Despite its Leviathan length, The Terror proves a compelling read, while making the average meal consumed by the average American seem a precious gift from warm-weather gods.
Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Terror
A NovelBy Dan SimmonsLITTLE, BROWN
Copyright © 2007 Dan SimmonsAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-316-01744-2
Chapter One
CROZIERLat. 70;-05'N., Long. 98;-23' W. October, 1847
Captain Crozier comes up on deck to find his ship under attack by celestial ghosts. Above him - above Terror - shimmering folds of light lunge but then quickly withdraw like the colourful arms of aggressive but ultimately uncertain spectres. Ectoplasmic skeletal fingers extend toward the ship, open, prepare to grasp, and pull back.
The temperature is -50 degrees Fahrenheit and dropping fast. Because of the fog that came through earlier, during the single hour of weak twilight now passing for their day, the foreshortened masts - the three topmasts, topgallants, upper rigging, and highest spars have been removed and stored to cut down on the danger of falling ice and to reduce the chances of the ship capsizing because of the weight of ice on them - stand now like rudely pruned and topless trees reflecting the aurora that dances from one dimly seen horizon to the other. As Crozier watches, the jagged ice fields around the ship turn blue, then bleed violet, then glow as green as the hills of his childhood in northern Ireland. Almost a mile off the starboard bow, the gigantic floating ice mountain that hides Terror's sister ship, Erebus, from view seems for a brief, false moment to radiate colour from within, glowing from its own cold, internal fires.
Pulling up his collar and tilting his head back, out of forty years' habit of checking the status of masts and rigging, Crozier notices that the stars overhead burn cold and steady but those near the horizon not only flicker but shift when stared at, moving in short spurts to the left, then to the right, then jiggling up and down. Crozier has seen this before - in the far south with Ross as well as in these waters on earlier expeditions. A scientist on that south polar trip, a man who spent the first winter in the ice there grinding and polishing lenses for his own telescope, had told Crozier that the perturbation of the stars was probably due to rapidly shifting refraction in the cold air lying heavy but uneasy over the ice-covered seas and unseen frozen landmasses. In other words, over new continents never before seen by the eyes of man. Or at least, Crozier thinks, in this northern arctic, by the eyes of white men.
Crozier and his friend and then-commander James Ross had found just such a previously undiscovered continent - Antarctica - less than five years earlier. They named the sea, inlets, and landmass after Ross. They named mountains after their sponsors and friends. They named the two volcanoes they could see on the horizon after their two ships - these same two ships - calling the smoking mountains Erebus and Terror. Crozier was surprised they hadn't named some major piece of geography after the ship's cat.
They named nothing after him. There is, on this October winter's dark-day evening in 1847, no arctic or antarctic continent, island, bay, inlet, range of mountains, ice shelf, volcano, or fucking floeberg which bears the name of Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier.
Crozier doesn't give the slightest God-damn. Even as he thinks this, he realizes that he's a little bit drunk. Well, he thinks, automatically adjusting his balance to the icy deck now canted twelve degrees to starboard and down eight degrees by the bow, I've been drunk more often than not now for three years, haven't I? Drunk ever since Sophia. But I'm still a better sailor and captain drunk than that poor, unlucky bastard Franklin ever was sober. Or his rosy-cheeked lisping pet poodle Fitzjames, for that matter.
Crozier shakes his head and walks down the icy deck forward to the bow and toward the only man on watch he can make out in the flickering light from the aurora.
It is short, rat-faced Cornelius Hickey, caulker's mate. The men look all the same out here on watch in the dark, since they're all issued the same cold-weather slops: layers of flannel and wool covered with a heavy waterproof greatcoat, bulbous mittens protruding from voluminous sleeves, their Welsh wigs - heavy watch caps with floppy ears - pulled tight, often with long comforters - scarves - wrapped around their heads until only the tips of their frostbitten noses are visible. But each man layers or wears his cold-weather slops slightly differently - adding a comforter from home, perhaps, or an extra Welsh wig tugged down over the first, or perhaps colorful gloves lovingly knit by a mother or wife or sweetheart peeking out from under the Royal Navy outer mittens - and Crozier has learned to tell all fifty-nine of his surviving officers and men apart, even at a distance outside and in the dark.
Hickey is staring fixedly out beyond the icicle-sheathed bowsprit, the foremost ten feet of which are now embedded in a ridge of sea ice, as HMS Terror's stern has been forced up by the ice pressure and the bow is pushed lower. Hickey is so lost in thought or cold that the caulker's mate doesn't notice his captain's approach until Crozier joins him at a railing that has become an altar of ice and snow. The lookout's shotgun is propped against that altar. No man wants to touch metal out here in the cold, not even through mittens.
Hickey starts slightly as Crozier leans close to him at the railing. Terror's captain can't see the twenty-six-year-old's face, but a puff of his breath - instantly turning into a cloud of ice crystals reflecting the aurora - appears beyond the thick circle of the smaller man's multiple comforters and Welsh wig.
Men traditionally don't salute during the winter in the ice, not even the casual knuckling of the forehead an officer receives at sea, but the thick-clad Hickey does that odd little shuffle and shrug and head dip by which the men acknowledge their captain's presence while outside. Because of the cold, the watches have been cut down from four hours to two - God knows, thinks Crozier, we have enough men for that on this overcrowded ship, even with the lookouts doubled - and he can tell just by Hickey's slow movements that he's half-frozen. As many times as he's told the lookouts that they have to keep moving on deck - walk, run in place, jump up and down if they have to, all the while keeping their attention on the ice - they still tend to stand immobile for the majority of their watch, just as if they were in the South Seas wearing their tropical cotton and watching for mermaids.
"Captain."
"Mr. Hickey. Anything?"
"Nothing since them shots ... that one shot ... almost two hours ago, sir. Just a while ago I heard, I think I heard ... maybe a scream, something, Captain ... from out beyond the ice mountain. I reported it to Lieutenant Irving, but he said it was probably just the ice acting up."
Crozier had been told about the sound of the shot from the direction of Erebus and had quickly come up on deck two hours ago, but there'd been no repetition of the sound and he'd sent no messenger to the other ship nor anyone out on the ice to investigate. To go out on the frozen sea in the dark now with that ... thing ... waiting in the jumble of pressure ridges and tall sastrugi was certain death. Messages were passed between the ships now only during those dwindling minutes of half-light around noon. In a few days, there would be no real day at all, only arctic night. Round-the-clock night. One hundred days of night.
"Perhaps it was the ice," says Crozier, wondering why Irving hadn't reported the possible scream. "The shot as well. Only the ice."
"Yes, Captain. The ice it is, sir."
Neither man believes it - a musket shot or shotgun blast has a distinctive sound, even from a mile away, and sound travels almost supernaturally far and clearly this far north - but it's true that the ice pack squeezing ever more tightly against Terror is always rumbling, moaning, cracking, snapping, roaring, or screaming.
The screams bother Crozier the most, waking him from his hour or so of sound sleep each night. They sound too much like his mother's crying in her last days ... of that and his old aunt's tales of banshees wailing in the night, predicting the death of someone in the house. Both had kept him awake as a boy.
Crozier turns slowly. His eyelashes are already rimmed with ice, and his upper lip is crusted with frozen breath and snot. The men have learned to keep their beards tucked far under their comforters and sweaters, but frequently they must resort to hacking away hair that has frozen to their clothing. Crozier, like most of the officers, continues to shave every morning, although, in the effort to conserve coal, the "hot water" his steward brings him tends to be just barely melted ice, and shaving can be a painful business.
"Is Lady Silence still on deck?" asks Crozier.
"Oh, yes, Captain, she's almost always up here," says Hickey, whispering now as if it made a difference. Even if Silence could hear them, she couldn't understand their English. But the men believe - more and more every day the thing on the ice stalks them - that the young Esquimaux woman is a witch with secret powers.
"She's at the port station with Lieutenant Irving," adds Hickey.
"Lieutenant Irving? His watch should have been over an hour ago."
"Aye, sir. But wherever Lady Silence is these days, there's the lieutenant, sir, if you don't mind me mentioning it. She don't go below, he don't go below. Until he has to, I mean.... None of us can stay out here as long as that wi- ... that woman."
"Keep your eyes on the ice, and your mind on your job, Mr. Hickey."
Crozier's gruff voice makes the caulker's mate start again, but he shuffles his shrug salute and turns his white nose back toward the darkness beyond the bow.
Crozier strides up the deck toward the port lookout post. The previous month, he prepared the ship for winter after three weeks of false hope of escape in August. Crozier had once again ordered the lower spars to be swung around along the parallel axis of the ship, using them as a ridgepole. Then they had reconstructed the tent pyramid to cover most of the main deck, rebuilding the wooden rafters that had been stowed below during their few weeks of optimism. But even though the men work hours every day shoveling avenues through the foot or so of snow left for insulation on deck, hacking away ice with picks and chisels, clearing out the spindrift that has come under the canvas roof, and finally putting lines of sand down for traction, there always remains a glaze of ice. Crozier's movement up the tilted and canted deck is sometimes more a graceful half-skating motion than a stride.
The appointed port lookout for this watch, midshipman Tommy Evans - Crozier identifies the youngest man on board by the absurd green stocking cap, obviously made by the boy's mother, that Evans always pulls down over his bulky Welsh wig - has moved ten paces astern to allow Third Lieutenant Irving and Silence some privacy.
This makes Captain Crozier want to kick someone - everyone - in the arse.
The Esquimaux woman looks like a short round bear in her furry parka, hood, and pants. She has her back half turned to the tall lieutenant. But Irving is crowded close to her along the rail - not quite touching, but closer than an officer and gentleman would stand to a lady at a garden party or on a pleasure yacht.
"Lieutenant Irving." Crozier didn't mean to put quite so much bark into the greeting, but he's not unhappy when the young man levitates as if poked by the point of a sharp blade, almost loses his balance, grabs the iced railing with his left hand, and - as he insists on doing despite now knowing the proper protocol of a ship in the ice - salutes with his right hand.
It's a pathetic salute, thinks Crozier, and not just because the bulky mittens, Welsh wig, and layers of cold-weather slops make young Irving look something like a saluting walrus, but also because the lad has let his comforter fall away from his clean-shaven face - perhaps to show Silence how handsome he is - and now two long icicles dangle below his nostrils, making him look even more like a walrus.
"As you were," snaps Crozier. God-damn fool, he mentally adds.
Irving stands rigid, glances at Silence - or at least at the back of her hairy hood - and opens his mouth to speak. Evidently he can think of nothing to say. He closes his mouth. His lips are as white as his frozen skin.
"This isn't your watch, Lieutenant," says Crozier, hearing the whip-crack in his voice again.
"Aye, aye, sir. I mean, no, sir. I mean, the captain is correct, sir. I mean ..." Irving clamps his mouth shut again, but the effect is ruined somewhat by the chattering of his teeth. In this cold, teeth can shatter after two or three hours - actually explode - sending shrapnel of bone and enamel flying inside the cavern of one's clenched jaws. Sometimes, Crozier knows from experience, you can hear the enamel cracking just before the teeth explode.
"Why are you still out here, John?"
Irving tries to blink, but his eyelids are literally frozen open. "You ordered me to watch over our guest ... to look out for ... to take care of Silence, Captain."
Crozier's sigh emerges as ice crystals that hang in the air for a second and then fall to the deck like so many minuscule diamonds. "I didn't mean every minute, Lieutenant. I told you to watch her, report to me on what she does, to keep her out of mischief and harm's way on the ship, and to see that none of the men do anything to ... compromise her. Do you think she's in danger of being compromised out here on deck, Lieutenant?"
"No, Captain." Irving's sentence sounds more like a question than an answer.
"Do you know how long it takes for exposed flesh to freeze out here, Lieutenant?"
"No, Captain. I mean, yes, Captain. Rather quickly, sir, I think."
"You should know, Lieutenant Irving. You've had frostbite six times already, and it's not even officially winter yet."
Lieutenant Irving nods dolefully.
"It takes less than a minute for an exposed finger or thumb - or any fleshy appendage - to freeze solid," continues Crozier, who knows that this is a load of horse cobblers. It takes much longer than that at a mere fifty below, but he hopes that Irving doesn't know this. "After that, the exposed member will snap off like an icicle," adds Crozier.
"Yes, Captain."
"So do you really think there's any chance that our visitor might be ... compromised ... out here on deck, Mr. Irving?"
Irving seems to be thinking about this before replying. It's possible, Crozier realizes, that the third lieutenant has put far too much thought into this equation already.
"Go below, John," says Crozier. "And see Dr. McDonald about your face and fingers. I swear to God that if you've gotten seriously frostbitten again, I'll dock you a month's Discovery Service pay and write your mother to boot."
"Yes, Captain. Thank you, sir." Irving starts to salute again, thinks better of it, and ducks under the canvas toward the main ladderway with one hand still half raised. He does not look back at Silence.
Crozier sighs again. He likes John Irving. The lad had volunteered - along with two of his mates from the HMS Excellent, Second Lieutenant Hodgson and First Mate Hornby - but the Excellent was a damned three-decker that was old before Noah had fuzz around his dongle. The ship had been mastless and permanently moored in Portsmouth, Crozier knew, for more than fifteen years, serving as a training vessel for the Royal Navy's most promising gunners. Unfortunately, gentlemen, Crozier had told the boys during their first day aboard - the captain had been more than usually drunk that day - if you look around, you'll notice that while Terror and Erebus were both built as bombardment ships, gentlemen, neither has a single gun between them. We are, young volunteers from Excellent - unless one counts the Marines' muskets and the shotguns secured in the Spirit Room - as gunless as a newborn babe. As gunless as fucking Adam in his fucking birthday suit. In other words, gentlemen, you gunnery experts are about as useful to this expedition as teats would be on a boar.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Terrorby Dan Simmons Copyright © 2007 by Dan Simmons. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Little, Brown and Company; First Edition (January 8, 2007)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 784 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0316017442
- ISBN-13 : 978-0316017442
- Item Weight : 2.35 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 2 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #266,444 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,693 in TV, Movie & Game Tie-In Fiction
- #1,927 in Historical Thrillers (Books)
- #15,189 in American Literature (Books)
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About the author

Dan Simmons was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1948, and grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source of his fictional "Elm Haven" in 1991's SUMMER OF NIGHT and 2002's A WINTER HAUNTING. Dan received a B.A. in English from Wabash College in 1970, winning a national Phi Beta Kappa Award during his senior year for excellence in fiction, journalism and art.
Dan received his Masters in Education from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971. He then worked in elementary education for 18 years -- 2 years in Missouri, 2 years in Buffalo, New York -- one year as a specially trained BOCES "resource teacher" and another as a sixth-grade teacher -- and 14 years in Colorado.
His last four years in teaching were spent creating, coordinating, and teaching in APEX, an extensive gifted/talented program serving 19 elementary schools and some 15,000 potential students. During his years of teaching, he won awards from the Colorado Education Association and was a finalist for the Colorado Teacher of the Year. He also worked as a national language-arts consultant, sharing his own "Writing Well" curriculum which he had created for his own classroom. Eleven and twelve-year-old students in Simmons' regular 6th-grade class averaged junior-year in high school writing ability according to annual standardized and holistic writing assessments. Whenever someone says "writing can't be taught," Dan begs to differ and has the track record to prove it. Since becoming a full-time writer, Dan likes to visit college writing classes, has taught in New Hampshire's Odyssey writing program for adults, and is considering hosting his own Windwalker Writers' Workshop.
Dan's first published story appeared on Feb. 15, 1982, the day his daughter, Jane Kathryn, was born. He's always attributed that coincidence to "helping in keeping things in perspective when it comes to the relative importance of writing and life."
Dan has been a full-time writer since 1987 and lives along the Front Range of Colorado -- in the same town where he taught for 14 years -- with his wife, Karen. He sometimes writes at Windwalker -- their mountain property and cabin at 8,400 feet of altitude at the base of the Continental Divide, just south of Rocky Mountain National Park. An 8-ft.-tall sculpture of the Shrike -- a thorned and frightening character from the four Hyperion/Endymion novels -- was sculpted by an ex-student and friend, Clee Richeson, and the sculpture now stands guard near the isolated cabin.
Dan is one of the few novelists whose work spans the genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror, suspense, historical fiction, noir crime fiction, and mainstream literary fiction . His books are published in 27 foreign counties as well as the U.S. and Canada.
Many of Dan's books and stories have been optioned for film, including SONG OF KALI, DROOD, THE CROOK FACTORY, and others. Some, such as the four HYPERION novels and single Hyperion-universe novella "Orphans of the Helix", and CARRION COMFORT have been purchased (the Hyperion books by Warner Brothers and Graham King Films, CARRION COMFORT by European filmmaker Casta Gavras's company) and are in pre-production. Director Scott Derrickson ("The Day the Earth Stood Stood Still") has been announced as the director for the Hyperion movie and Casta Gavras's son has been put at the helm of the French production of Carrion Comfort. Current discussions for other possible options include THE TERROR. Dan's hardboiled Joe Kurtz novels are currently being looked as the basis for a possible cable TV series.
In 1995, Dan's alma mater, Wabash College, awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contributions in education and writing.
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Simmons bases The Terror on the historical 1845 Franklin Expedition and the journey to the Northwest passage. He fuses historical elements along with supernatural and horror to create the timeline and plot.
I would venture to say the term “terror” has several meanings and manifestations with regards to the novel. It is the name of one of the primary vessels that is used by the men as they traverse the regions; it is also symbolically refers to the bitter cold and harsh conditions the explorers face. Moreover, it also refers to the Abominable Snowman like “creature” that begins to bump off the men one by one. I will also add that the book itself, at its 769 pages, was also a bit of a terror as well to finish.
The novel was a bit of excess in too many places.
I do not mind a bit more detail in a historical based novel if it goes somewhere, but here the extra superfluous details here did not really add much. (For example, do we really need to read page after page of meticulous details about someone suffering from scurvy?) I had to skim ahead during some of these parts.
Likewise, there are portions of the novel that are overwrought/excessive. Some of the “death” scenes were over-the-top and also the characterization was mediocre, as the character interactions were lacking and the characters themselves seemed like interchangeable parts difficult to differentiate for the most part.
Finally, I know many readers liked how the book finishes, but I was disappointed in the final section. This novel seemingly sets the reader up for something throughout and then pulls the proverbial rug from under them in the book’s final seventy plus pages. I thought this was kind of weak, as the book sets up questions, conflicts, and plot lines that are answered or explained in a murky, unsubstantial, unbelievable manner.
I was going to go with two stars based on all of this, but I did appreciate the ambitiousness of the novel itself. It seems to be well researched, (the author clearly did his homework before putting this together), and the author tries to create an “epic” sort of feel to the book as a whole which works at points. (At points, whether they like it or not, the reader feels like they are along on this desperate and failed journey). Alongside this, there were some intriguing and compelling parts of high tension and suspense as the men explore the unknown and have to deal with so many different elements.
So, in the end, I’ll say 2.5 stars that will round up to 3 stars.
I am currently watching the 2018 miniseries and it seems to be a little better than the book right now in how it presents the story.
The Terror deals with the two ships and 126-man expedition into the Arctic Circle region in 1845 by Sir John Franklin, who hoped to find the infamous Northwest Passage. In September of 1845, the two ships (H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror) found themselves trapped in a pack of crushing ice with no visible escape in sight. There was no worry at that time since both ships were heavily loaded with coal for heat, canned goods and salt pork for food, and the belief that the ice would eventually thaw and allow them to search for the waterway that would carry them to Alaska and then Russia. That wasn't to be. The ice never thawed, and the ships and men were trapped for three incredibly long years with dwindling supplies, poisonous canned food, the illness of scurvy takings its toll, and the freezing temperatures that averaged -50 Below Zero and colder. But, that wasn't the worse of it by far. Something roamed the ice that was both vicious and cunningly intelligent, and it had a distinct taste for human flesh. This uncanny creature began to slowly kill the members of the expedition one and two at a time, including the Commander of the crew, Sir John Franklin. When the Commander is killed, the duty of saving the remaining men falls onto the shoulders of Captains James Fitzjames and Francis Crozier, but it's Crozier who takes the lead, having a strong instinct for survival and an intrinsic authority for leading men. The only way to escape their perilous predicament is to walk back out the way they'd come, across hundreds of miles of frozen ice while being stalked by something that doesn't want them to get away.
As the Nova television show explained, as well as previous non-fiction books and records, no one from the expedition was ever seen again. But, what happened to everyone? This is what Dan Simmons tries to convey with his stark imagination and monstrous size novel. He gives his version of what might have happened to the 126 men of the Franklin Expedition, and it isn't a pretty one. Though I'm aware of the tremendous amount of research that Mr. Simmons had to do in order to write this novel, the book is so damn good and detailed oriented that it's like he was actually there himself. I could feel the unbelievable cold to my bones, the hunger and weariness of the men, the pungent smells and the hundreds of strange sounds below deck on both vessels, and the utter terror that was out on the ice just waiting for its chance. This novel is so well written that it should win every award that's out there, not to mention hitting the New York Times Bestseller list. I'm not kidding, either. This should at least win the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award for 2007. During the course of reading The Terror, you will be there in the Arctic Circle experiencing the same trials and tribulations as the rest of the expedition. You'll know what it's like to be hunted, yet never knowing from what direction the attack will come or when. You'll slowly come away with a clearer understanding of what it truly means to be afraid. As an example, there's one scene where the mysterious and deadly creature gets below deck on the Erebus and hunts the members of its crew through the pitch-black darkness with screams of terror ringing out from every direction. Mr. Simmons captures the atmosphere and sense of desolation perfectly. He brings all of the characters to life. There's going to be those you care for and those you hate with a grim passion. Captain Francis Crozier, of course, is the hero of the expedition, but even he isn't prepared for the frightening challenges that face both him and his men. The Terror is certainly movie material. All through the novel, I kept seeing the British actor, Clive Owen, as Francis Crozier. If I were Dan Simmons, I'd have my agent send Mr. Owen's agent a copy of the book. Who knows what may happen. The Terror by Dan Simmons is by far the best novel of 2007 and is highly recommended to those who love vividly written stories with a strong dose of horror thrown in for good measure.
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Told through first and third person narratives The Terror is the name of the ship charged with finding and navigating the Arctic Northwest passage in the mid nineteenth century. However, those not interested (or actively disinterested) in seafaring tales should take heart that the ship manages virtually no 'seafaring' at all thanks to fact that it is iced-bound and serves only as the setting for the nerve-fraying and horrific series of events that beset the expedition. Stranded with no hope of a thaw, starving, sick, mutinous and tormented by an unseen and deadly predator on the ice, crew members die or are picked off one-by-one until they are forced to ever more drastic and desperate measures to survive.
As well as being fast-paced and tense, The Terror also manages to fascinate with details about these early, ill-prepared and frankly foolhardy explorers and provides shameful insights into the mindset of a group of people who actively look down on the native populations of the arctic, despite their seemingly effortless ability to thrive in such a hostile environment whilst the white men around them perish. Dan Simmons' ability to convey the claustrophobic confines of the ship and the crippling, debilitating and merciless Arctic environment elevates them almost to leading character status and this ensures the reader develops the appropriate empathy needed to fully appreciate the hardship and horror that these ill-fated expeditions were subjected to.
I found The Terror hard to put down and am delighted to now be embarking on Dan Simmons' other work.
The unadorned story would be fascinating in it's own right but Dan Simmons adds another layer to the the account by incorporating a supernatural monster that is preying on the ship's crew. Although this monster is always a menacing presence on the ice, there are plenty of other dangers too which make this book a real page-turner. In addition, the crew is supplemented by the addition of a mute Inuit girl who mysteriously disappears and re-appears and who seems to have some understanding of the threat out on the ice but cannot explain. The beasts random attacks on the expedition are some of the most exciting moments in the book.
I think a core factor in making the story so plausible is that the account is wholly located in the site where the two boats HMs Terror and HMS Erebus are frozen in with earlier elements of the expedition told in flashback. Immediately, the writer plunges us in to the horror of the situation and the fact that this part of the world is so alien and disturbing, the incorporation of the monster does not feel at all incongruous. In fact, the book ultimately concludes with an explanation from the Inuit perspective of what has actually happened.
What I really liked about this book is that, having read non-fiction accounts of the expedition, Simmons has woven in elements we know to be true about this expedition into his fiction and reimagined some of the issues such as the cannibalism into the story whereby they serve to explain particular events or as a conclusion to one of the plot threads. The account of the poorly sealed tins of food is also accurate. Simmons has also cleverly allowed the story to be told through a number of different characters , each with a distinctive voice and therefore you get a different perspective on what is happening. There are sub-plots a -plenty and also some fascinating dynamics amongst the officers and their crew which change as the situation becomes ever more hopeless as the events progress.
I also feel obliged to say that I cannot see how anyone can suggest that this story sags at any point. If anything, it is a book in three parts. Initially the crew of the two ships appear to be coping until an event occurs which prompts a change in fortunes where life becomes increasingly parlous in the middle third. Throughout these pages we get to understand and appreciate the various characters and their efforts to survive in increasingly difficult circumstances. Tellingly, Simmons reveals the flaws in his principle characters and you get to understand the difficult decisions that need to be made, even if you know they may have consequences later on. In the final third of the book the pace picks up as the story moves out on to the ice where the numerous plot strands in the book ultimately play out to often shocking conclusions. I don't think that I have read 300 pages so quickly!
Science Fiction is usually an oeuvre that I tend to avoid. "The Terror" is does combine elements of the supernatural and horror yet, for the most part, this is essentially a historical adventure story . Few genres are quite as disappointing as Science Fiction in my view and they are usually let down by poor endings. By contrast, "The Terror" works really well with some elements of the novel worked through to a satisfying conclusion and others left to remain a mystery until the final pages. There are moments which are really poignant, others where you are rooting for the villain to get his come-uppance and an over-riding desire to see that the survivors reach Back's River inlet. The story does not effectively end until the last few pages but which time the reader would be excused for taking in a few deep breaths to take in a really good yarn told exceptionally well. Thoroughly recommended.
So, watching and then reading The Terror (at times simultaneously), I was hugely impressed with the historical accuracy about the expedition, the ships, the costumes, the speech, the personalities. I decided in the first instance that “The Terror” – or the Tunbaaq, as we had to learn to call it – was a symbol of all the many unknown factors that caused the demise of the entire Franklin expedition. Except the all-knowing and heroic Dr Goodsir and his compatriot, Dr McDonald, had sussed the faulty lead seals and possibly the botulism, although they didn’t know its exact composition. Not to mention the dreaded scurvy, exposure and later starvation, but it did help explain the unusually high mortality rate in the early stages of the expedition, particularly amongst the officer cadre. Oh, okay, I thought, it’s a symbolic(ish) Inuit spirit animal.
Simmons’ bibliography proved that he had read all the standard Franklin works then available, and thank you, Mr Simmons, had pored over contemporaneous naval terms – nothing annoys an old Navy hand more than botched Naval terminology! So, given the “Thing” was wreaking havoc, rather repetitively, it must be said, and things were going from bad to worse, it was initially quite a pacey yarn. He’d clearly studied the famous daguerreotypes of EREBUS’s Wardroom (plus only Crozier from TERROR) and based his characters on these pictures and what was known about the various officers. Unfortunately, William Battersby’s excellent biography of James Fitzjames came out a year or so after “The Terror” was published, and quite gave the lie to the lisping aristocrat portrayed in the book. Massive kudos to Ridley Scott for updating the film version, with Fitzjames fessing up to Crozier on their trudge back from writing the Victory Point note, and they then becoming best friends ever! Simmons played very fast and loose with Crozier, making him out to be almost born in a hovel, “not a gentleman”, an atheist, and moaning that nothing was named after him, which was patently untrue – Cape Crozier in the Antarctic of course playing a central part in the later woes of Apsley Cherry-Garrard. Crozier, although lacking a formal education, came from a perfectly respectable background, had a comfortable and relatively privileged upbringing and his French sounding name is claimed by HIS biographer to indicate the family came over with the Conqueror. Although his depression post his Antarctic voyage was known, it was his great friend James Clarke Ross who probably had the drink problem. However, heroes and villains, etc, and this was a work of fiction.
So far so good, but as the book went on and yet more decimating attacks were wreaked by The Thing from the Ice, I began to think, “Oh, no, not again”. But I suppose it usefully disposed of large numbers of the party, which subsequent investigations have proved had split up. Dr Goodsir (about whom there is a fair amount of information, as he came from an eminent medical family) was a super goody, and his character, both in the book and on the TV, was appealing and felt authentic.
It was clever to turn Cornelius Hickey into the villain, as one of the recovered Franklin artefacts is a knife, clearly belonging to someone else, but on which Cornelius Hickey had superimposed his name/initials. In the book, (and towards the end and the time I was beginning to lose the will to live), he pretty well rivals the dreaded Tunbaaq for evil.
And then it really all went wrong for me. The author had clearly done a lot of research on Inuit foundation myth, legends and shamanism and the chapter on this was a step too far (thanks to Ridley Scott for excising it). Throat singing, now tongueless Crozier living out his life in cosy, if chilly, domesticity with his Inuit wife and children, signalling by cat’s cradles, was a step even further too far. True, there are many conflicting myths and possible sightings about Crozier surviving later than everyone else, but I was disappointed in this ending, and felt that as is so often the case, that a not too wonderful book, was better for being cleverly edited and simplified for TV/Film.













