The Terror: A Novel
by Dan Simmons
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dan SimmonsEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-01-01
ISBN: 0316008079
Number of pages: 992
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Book Reviews of The Terror: A Novel
Book Review: Awesome
Summary: 5 Stars
Perhaps the best thing I can say about Dan Simmons's The Terror is that it would be a brutal and harrowing read even without the gigantic ice monster terrorizing its protagonists. Taking place in a frozen Arctic landscape that's as desolate spiritually as it is physically, it's part meticulously detailed and researched nonfiction novel and part supernatural thriller, with each aspect contributing equally to the air of sustained dread that hangs over it. The doomed mid-19th-century Franklin expedition to force the mythical Northwest passage provides the real-life inspiration, but Simmons adds to the darkness and isolation of the great white North a vicious and implacable man-killer that's all the more horrific for its mysterious origins and apparent (and sadistic) intelligence. As the book opens the sailors, officers, and marines on board the ships HMS Erebus and Terror are trapped in ice for the second consecutive winter, cut off from rescue and facing dwindling supplies of just about everything, and coming under attack by an assailant whose nature they can't begin to comprehend. Unfortunately for them, things only get worse from there on out. Much like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, it endows acts taken by most of us for granted--finding food, keeping warm, not being torn apart by cannibals or a giant polar bear-like being--with a wrenching immediacy sure to keep pages turning. In the end The Terror is a thriller driven as much by characters and setting as suspense or scares, with the supernatural elements serving as just one more hardship besetting the already troubled crew.
It becomes apparent quickly that Simmons has a gift for set pieces, ranging from one man's desparate flight from certain death on the ice during an attack to a Poe-inspired masked ball that's frighteningly eerie even before the monster shows up, and he brilliantly captures the bone-cracking cold and mounting hunger that relentlessly dog the sailors. More importantly, Simmons shows a keen psychological insight througout, with an eye for the attempts to retain their humanity by men facing endless misery with death as the only possible release. Mixed with the death and privation is a story of astonishing perseverance and determination, led by the dominant figure of Captain Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier. Crozier (like the other expedition leaders, a real person) becomes in Simmons's hands one of the great characters in recent literary history--a gruff, hard-drinking Irish lifetime sailor embittered by his shoddy treatment at the hands of the Royal Navy but imbued with a penetrating intelligence and an unfailing will to surive. While much of the story is conveyed through Crozier's eyes, Simmons does keep things interesting by shifting the third-person perspective among a revolving cast of characters--some good, some decidedly less so--and even throwing in some diary entries by an increasingly overwhelming doctor who adds a welcome first-person viewpoint to the horrors surrounding him.
While it would be an understatement to say this book isn't exactly a heartwarmer, Simmons still manages to make it compulsively readable by building a mood of ever-increasing fear and atavism that's only partly contained by the naval codes that have guided the men their entire adult lives. Even at over 700 pages the book rarely hits a dull spot because Simmons manages to fully encapsulate the horrific extent of each of the maladies grinding down the men. The handling of the monster is especially well-done, its appearances frequently conveyed only in the retelling or the fevered perspectives of terrified crewmembers, and its origins kept a secret until the final act. As those who have seen Jaws as many times as I have know there's always something to be gained by keeping your killer largely hidden, and this book serves as just one more confirmation of that lesson. It's just one more aspect of the totality of vision and oppressive craftmanship that makes The Terror a must-read, so pick it up now if you haven't already.
Summary of The Terror: A Novel
The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of finding the Northwest Passage. When the expedition's leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the Terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear there is no escape. A haunting, gripping story based on actual historical events, The Terror is a novel that will chill you to your core.Historical Books
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