The Terror: A Novel
by Dan Simmons
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Book Reviews of The Terror: A Novel
Book Review: Recommended for All But the Most Ferocious Adherents to Realism
Summary: 4 Stars
On July 26, 1845, the Royal Navy ships Erebus and Terror, bound on yet another journey to discover the theoretical Northwest Passage, left two whaling vessels in Baffin Bay. These ships and the hundred odd men of the Franklin Expedition were, as the saying goes, never seen again - at least not by any white man. The Franklin Expedition became a legend in the annals of polar exploration. Discovering what happened to it became the object of many other journeys into the Arctic down to our day.
Franklin's men faced the horrors of the polar cold, starvation, food poisoning, scurvy, and cannibalism. Did Simmons really need to add mutineers? No, but he gets away with it, makes it seem natural and not unnecessary sensationalism.
And did he need to add a monster to the horrors of real history? Well, no, but I probably wouldn't have read this novel if he hadn't given my impatience with most historical fiction. I'd have just read another nonfiction book on the expedition. And, while he gives several possible explanations for the monster, the one he goes with at novel's end is probably the one most likely to appeal to the fan of historical fiction. Or so I imagine.
It's a long novel, but Simmons grabs you from the beginning. The first chapter starts out with the trapped ship, shivering men, the mysterious and tongueless Eskimo woman Lady Silence, and a monster. To be sure, Simmons does repeat himself sometimes, perhaps more than he needs to even to keep track of over a hundred characters. There is a bit of cleverness involving a work of Edgar Poe but Simmons engages in some too obvious and unconvincing, in context, explanation of his allusion.
More serious is that I don't think he quite lays the psychological foundation for the decisions and fate of one of his characters at novel's end. And I think he waits too long to reveal a crucial characteristic of that character. But that is, relatively speaking, a minor flaw in a novel that should appeal to all but the most diehard disciples of realism in their historical fiction. Simmons blending of horror and history works, his jumping back and forth in time never confusing.
Book Review: Dan Simmons' expedition into historical fiction is his best ever
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow. Having finished 'The Terror' a few minutes ago, that's the first word that comes to mind....wow.
I've read other Dan Simmons novels over the years....Summer of Night, Children of the Night, Fires of Eden, and A Winter Haunting. The first two I loved, but the latter two left me greatly disappointed, and I avoided further works by the same author.
However, having had a desire over the last few months to locate a copy of 'Alone', by Admiral Byrd, I read the synopsis of this book and thought it might be an interesting precursor to Byrd's work....so I decided to give Simmons another try. Having now completed 'The Terror'...it's easy to see just how far Dan Simmons has come as an author.
Taking the ill-fated John Franklin expedition to find and forge the fabled Northwest Passage and using it as a backdrop to produce a tale of bitter cold, isolation, and unspeakable horror, Dan Simmons flexes literary muscle that has left me in awe of the man, and more than eager to read his just released 'Drood', which uses as a central character one of my favorite authors, Charles Dickens, and one of my other favorite authors, Wilkie Collins, as a narrator.
With 200+ reviews here and Amazon's own synopsis, I cannot add any insight into a plot description that is not already here. Where this novel succeeds (in spades) is that the author has taken great pains to balance the terror of both landscapes, that of the frozen arctic ice that traps the ship which shares its name with the title of this work, and the landscape inside the stranded sailors' minds as they face diminishing supplies, food, and hope...and face an unknown predator on the ice which surrounds them that is slowly lowering their numbers.
I cannot honestly find a weakness with this book..while some might think it overly long, it is a testamonial to the strengths of the author and the tale that it never becomes boring or overwrought in an attempt to flesh out a tale rife with possibilities.
Bravo, Dan Simmons.....you've come a long, long way as an author...and I can't wait to read more.
Book Review: A captivating, awe-inspiring epic.
Summary: 5 Stars
Every now and then, a new book will come out that redefines the boundaries of its respective genre. Dan Simmons's THE TERROR is one such novel--with its clever blending of historic fact, scientific research, mythological surrealism, and adventurous bravado, THE TERROR has turned the horror genre on its head.
The whole novel revolves around a rather intriguing concept: What really happened to Sir John Franklin's 1845 voyage to the Northwest Passage? All we really know is that the two ships--the Erebus and the aptly-named Terror--vanished. Simmons has decided to take advantage of his literary license, and has crafted a nine-hundred-page-plus epic spanning the plight of the men stranded on the ice. The novel picks up roughly two years into the ordeal, after Sir John Franklin has perished, leaving Captain Crozier in charge. The men are running out of food; the winters are getting colder; and there is something on the ice, some monstrous creature that is toying with the dying men. Captain Crozier now faces a challenge: Should he stay and fight, resulting in almost-certain death; or should he and his men make one last-ditch effort to escape the frozen Hell that surrounds them?
Do not underestimate THE TERROR. It is perhaps the most literate horror novel I have read in years; it is intelligent, well-researched, and thoroughly gripping. The fact that it is based upon a true-life mystery adds a bit of allure, granted; but the action here is all Simmons's creation, and his imagination is feverish and frightening. THE TERROR is as much an adventure novel as it is a horror novel; there is a monster on the ice, but there are other monsters: the cold, scurvy, encroaching insanity...THE TERROR is truly an epic novel, one that is engrossing from first to last page. If this were a just world, Simmons would be winning awards right and left. For now, it looks as though he'll have to settle for having written a novel that, I'm willing to bet, will stand the test of time.
Book Review: Disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a long winded 766 page no holds bar boring book. Historical-maybe. But, the only terror is the tremor in the reader's hands afraid the next page may be more boring than the page before.
Apparently, around 1845 the Erebus and Terror ships did exist and did mysteriously disappear. The author used his imagination, if you can call this rubbish that, to fill in the squares. The 2 ships get caught in ice and the hundred or so crew endure starvation, scurvy, cannibalism, murder and fear of some mysterious thing stalking and killing them. The usual human greed occurs such as a man who hid/ate a can of peaches and died of food poisoning and no one grieved. The men even run into "Esquimaux". Sounds like a good plot but it fails miserably. Capt Crozier reluctantly takes charge and plods along. I always thought sailors, even civilian sailors, were like Marines/Army soldiers and never left a man behind. These sailors left behind a 31 year old sailor named Jopson without a second glance. They were undisciplined and killed each other and were killed. Karma.
The plot jumped around as did the time sequence possibly in a vain attempt to liven it up. The only constant was unending boredom.
I read some of the other reviews and one person said "The size and heft of the novel make it great for a door stop or to press flowers in. It's not one that you'd want to re-read" which was hilarious. Another person said she normally respected books but was so disgusted with "THE TERROR" she left it in a campground laundry room. And another said "the book was more padded than a prom bra" which is incredibly funny because it is incredibly true. My copy was used as a paperweight to keep recycled papers from blowing out of the recycling box. Hopefully, "The Terror" will be ground up and reused into a more productive paper product like toilet paper.
Book Review: BONE-CHILLING...
Summary: 4 Stars
I enjoy the horror genre. I also enjoy stories of arctic exploration and survival. This book is a perfect meld of the two genres. The author takes the mystery of the real life Franklin expedition of 1845, which sought the Northwest Passage and disappeared in the process, and combines it with a supernatural reason for their disappearance.
With their two ships, Erebus and Terror, trapped in the artic ice through the poor judgment exercised by their Captain, Sir John Franklin, the crew struggles to survive the harshness of their environment as well as a fearsome predator, the likes of which they have never seen. Mixing and blending the real with the surreal, the author vividly brings to life what life must have been like on that ill-fated voyage and injects a deep sense of dread of the thing that hunts them.
This work of historical fiction and horror is beautifully researched and written, despite its daunting length, as it is nearly a thousand pages long, it is not a book for those who are looking for lots of blood and gore. It is more of a thoughtful rumination of the everyday horrors this ice bound crew had to endure from the lack of adequate and decent food to bone-chilling temperatures, coupled with an acute fear of the unseen thing that stalks them, killing them off one by one in horrific ways. The book is replete with well-fleshed characters that come to life and are perfectly joined with an intriguing storyline. The only thing that I did not like about the book was that the timeline jumped back at forth, at times, which I found a bit confusing.
Those who enjoyed "The Ruins" by Scott Smith will probably enjoy this book, as well, as the story unfolds in that same slow and thoughtful way with a pervasive sense of dread present throughout the telling of the story.