The Terror by Dan Simmons

Rating: 5.0

The Terror is a pretty engrossing story. It's quite lengthy but it really held my attention.

Two ships set sail, Erebus and Terror, in 1846 in search of the fabled Northwest Passage. The ships end up getting frozen in the ice far from any civilization. After a couple of years scurvy sets in, their food supply becomes poisoned, and a huge beast that seems otherworldly is stalking them. They end up hiking it across the ice in search of open water as the beast continues shadowing them. Many die either from the cold, scurvy, poisoned food, the beast or each other.

The Terror is a very dismal story. The mens situation leaves little to celebrate. The landscape is pretty bleak as well. Simmons did an excellent job at really making the reader feel the -60 degree weather and hear the ice popping and snapping all around. The scene is set wonderfully in The Terror. The environment is a perfect one for the creepy beast that claws at their ship to get in and dismembers sailors at every turn. I loved the historical fiction aspect of this novel mixed with the horror. It really kept the book gripping and the reader on their toes just waiting to see what would happen next. So, if you aren't intimidated by the over 900 pages and you feel in the mood for an atmospheric thriller, I would totally recommend The Terror. But beware of cannibals.

The Washington Post says: "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."