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The Terror

by Dan Simmons, Simon Vance (Goodreads Author) (Read by)

3.92 · rating details · 5,507 ratings · 1,061 reviews

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 th...more

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Published January 27th 2009 by Hachette Audio (first published 2007)

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Dec 23, 2011

karen rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: it-is-for-class, tastes-like-people

oh my god, let me never get scurvy.

i am glad i am such a grad-school overachiever. for both the horror/sci-fi and mystery portions of my readers' advisory class, i have read one extra title from the selection list, and both times, i have liked the extra title best. (i did not choose to read an extra romance title, so we will never know how that would have turned out, alas)

this book is a rare combination of to the lighthouse, and the thing, with hardy-esque occurrenc...more

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Mar 26, 2008

Christy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: travel-narratives-and-guides, arctic-and-antarctic, 21st-century-american-lit

Dan Simmons' The Terror may be one of the few novels I've read that makes me grateful to live in Texas. This imaginative re-telling of the doomed Franklin expedition of 1845 to find the Northwest Passage is overwhelming in its details of life and death in the Arctic north. The cold is constant, the dark is depressing, and the wind, snow, ice, fog, and (when it appears) water are life-threatening. These are things Texans don't have to worry about. I must remember this book when I want to complain...moreDan Simmons' The Terror may be one of the few novels I've read that makes me grateful to live in Texas. This imaginative re-telling of the doomed Franklin expedition of 1845 to find the Northwest Passage is overwhelming in its details of life and death in the Arctic north. The cold is constant, the dark is depressing, and the wind, snow, ice, fog, and (when it appears) water are life-threatening. These are things Texans don't have to worry about. I must remember this book when I want to complain about 110 degree temperature in August. I must remember temperatures of 70 below zero with wind and wet and blindness on top of that.

The two ships of the expedition, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, sail from England in 1845 and explore the area around Beechey Island and Cornwallis Island before attempting to sail south between Prince of Wales Island and Boothia Peninsula to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic Circle to the Pacific Ocean. However, they press on southward along this path in the face of glaciers, oncoming winter, and dwindling supplies, only to become stuck, frozen in the ice for two years along the west coast of King William Island. They press on at the insistence of the expedition leader, Sir John Franklin, and against the advice of other seasoned explorers and naval officers, including Francis Crozier, the book's central character. Eventually, the men have to abandon ship and take off on foot across King William Island to try to find a passage south and, hopefully, rescue.

The men die slowly from disease, starvation, and exposure as time wears on, and sometimes they also die suddenly as the land or its inhabitants betray them and their expectations. The Terror is a long novel at 766 pages, and it is long for this very reason. The slow death of over a hundred men cannot be represented quickly. It is also a surprisingly suspenseful novel, given the facts of the case. We know, with the assistance of some quick internet research, that there were no survivors, there was no rescue. To this day, no one really knows exactly what happened to this expedition. Yet we read on, willing the men to survive, to find a way out of this awful mess.

There are fanciful (less than strictly factual) elements to the story, too, including a large creature that stalks the ships and kills men easily, a creature that is not merely physical, but spirit. And the final chapters of the book turn from realist representations of attempts at survival in the fatal north to mythic representations of Inuit culture and finally to a synthesis between the two.

I haven't fully decided yet how to feel about these inclusions. Do they weaken the very vivid realism of the novel and diminish the terror of the terrain itself as well as the terror of the evil that grows in some men in such situations? Or do they reinforce these elements, standing in as metaphors for the dangers of the north and the dangers of some humans?

One thing these inclusions certainly do is reveal the stark contrast between the European expedition's goals and methods (and the madness of these goals and methods) with the knowledge and skill the native people have in this land. The Englishmen carried with them, from England and then from their ships, cutlery, books, jewelry, trinkets. They did not know how to survive and yet they thought they would conquer this frozen world. Franklin's very insistence on pushing forward, his insistence that any day now the pack ice would melt away from the ships and reveal the Northwest Passage is, in this context, nothing short of insanity. The things that are described in the Inuit culture (communion with spirits, communion between humans that requires no speech, etc.) may seem like insanity to outsiders, but no more so than the European methods of exploration and survival seem like insanity when seen from the perspective of those who survive the severity of the Arctic circle.

The Terror is about the terror of the Other, the terror borne of a lack of understanding. The Terror is also about how we deal with that terror. Do we flail against it, try to beat it into submission, as did the Englishmen? Or do we learn to live with it, learn to appease it and live alongside it, as did the Inuit?(less)

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Jan 26, 2012

Sean rated it

· review of another edition

The Terror is the ultimate tale of the human struggle for survival. Dan Simmon’s huge tome is based on Sir John Franklin’s failed 1845 exploration of the Northwest Passage. In real life the crew of the two ships, the Terror and Erebus, all perished. However, Simmons portrays a fictionalized account of this expedition by expanding this historical narrative into a horror story by dropping in a man eating ice monster to make everybody’s day just a little bit shittier.

My initial reactio...more

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Nov 24, 2010

Robert rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: historical, supernatural-horror

The Terror was a ship - a state-of-the-art ice-breaker - and it had a sister-ship, Erebus. If you know mountains you may note that two volcanoes in Antarctica share these names. They were, in fact, named after the ships. These ships later saw service on an expedition to find the North-West Passage - and never returned.

Simmons takes what is known of this expedition and uses it for the basis of a novel very aptly named The Terror, because up there, trapped in the sea-ice, the sailors f...moreThe Terror was a ship - a state-of-the-art ice-breaker - and it had a sister-ship, Erebus. If you know mountains you may note that two volcanoes in Antarctica share these names. They were, in fact, named after the ships. These ships later saw service on an expedition to find the North-West Passage - and never returned.

Simmons takes what is known of this expedition and uses it for the basis of a novel very aptly named The Terror, because up there, trapped in the sea-ice, the sailors find themselves stalked by something nameless and even more deadly than the ice-bears, ursus maritimus.

Yet another ambitious work from Simmons, this one combining horror/supernatural elements with historical/adventure fiction. Compared to his other books it is most similar to Drood, since the time-period is not much different and the story is told from the perspective of Britons (it was a British expedition, after all). This, as with Drood, leads to some oddities regarding the English. For instance, "arse" is used through-out, even outside dialogue, except for one instance, which must be considered a mistake. Contrastingly, the American "whiskey" is prefered to "whisky" at all times. Not sure what to make of this type of inconsistency, except that if he had a Brit editor read it carefully before publication with this sort of thing in mind, he could probably have published it entirely in British English. Similar issues come up in Drood, where it is clear cut that, since it is a 1st Person narrative, it should be British through-out.

The story is strange in that it is both gripping and seemingly endless at once. I'd read 50+p at a go, easily, look at my over-all progress and think, "good-grief, I've hardly started." Not knowing anything of the expedition prior to starting the book, I had little idea where the plot would take me and was more than a little startled by the ending and the stylistic switch associated with it. This switch is, however, necessary - indeed, for me, the point of the book. I was also a bit annoyed that one plot thread is left dangling. Inevitably there are some scenes where a couple of characters start name-dropping famous authors. This is getting tiresome and Simmons should completely eradicate it from future books - it is too often unnecessary and jars the reader out of the story.

So once again, Simmons reaches just beyond his grasp. Nevertheless, this is an exceptionally worthwhile book, showing men who are aliens in the environment they are trapped in trying to maintain not only their lives but their dignity when everything is going against them.

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Jul 26, 2008

Barney rated it

· review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. GIANT SUPER-LONG ALL SPOILER CROSS-TALK REGARDING DAN SIMMONS THE TERROR - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

A few friends of mine and I read this last month. I've not had the time to back through all the traffic this has generated but there seem to be questions, particularly about the end of the novel. I have an interpretation, particularly with regard to "the rat-thing in the bunk." The following is a back and forth between myself and two friends not on this list. Everything from this p...more

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Sep 28, 2007

Alex rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: anyone with brain damage

'The Terror' is the name of a ship. We join the ship in 1847 as it plows through chilly waters looking to chart new territory in the extreme North. It is rare that I go in for period pieces and I really can't abide the whole Master & Commander/we're-at-sea-in-days-gone-by literary movement that seems to have captured the hearts of so many old men. What I do go in for is man vs. nature set in extreme cold (child of the South- lover of mountains and winter -go figure). I thought once these folks g...more'The Terror' is the name of a ship. We join the ship in 1847 as it plows through chilly waters looking to chart new territory in the extreme North. It is rare that I go in for period pieces and I really can't abide the whole Master & Commander/we're-at-sea-in-days-gone-by literary movement that seems to have captured the hearts of so many old men. What I do go in for is man vs. nature set in extreme cold (child of the South- lover of mountains and winter -go figure). I thought once these folks got off the boat and onto the ice this book would have a chance to entertain me.
The book opens with a very nice description of the northern lights at play in the night sky as the boat sails through a fog bank with the temp holding steady at a balmy -50 degrees Fahrenheit. The opening description is nicely done; the prose was impressive enough that I thought I might have stumbled on a real find here. Then after two very nice pages we slip into the mind of captain. These are the first character thoughts we read, "Well... 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 was sober. Or his rosy-cheeked lisping pet poodle Fitzjames, for that matter."

I shit you not.

These characters need to be fleshed out before you could call them two dimensional. I've seen my son (age three months) make puddles of piss with more depth than these characters have. After the opening- Simmons not only proves that he is incapable of creating readable characters, he also demonstrates that he has reached the point in his career in which he is allowed to write without an editor's influence. We are all the worse for it. In the subsequent pages (the few I could stand to read) the man fires off an array of detail so nonsensical that it truly boggles the mind. Who wants to know the exact degree of pitch change in the bow and stern in the middle of a character's unrelated thoughts? The ship is rolling- he has to adjust his stance. We get it already. "...he thinks, automatically adjusting his balance to the icy deck now canted twelve degrees to starboard and down eight degrees by the bow..."

When we move past thoughts and into dialogue I actually become sea-sick. 750 pages of this? Are you shitting me? You have to be really fucking desperate to escape into a particular fantasy to have this novel work for you. This is a novel for people without imagination - pure and simple.

Another gem:

"Lady Jane stood, aghast. 'You looked cold John. I put it over you as a blanket.'"
"'My God!' cried Captain Sir John Franklin. 'My God, woman, do you know what you've done? Don't you know they lay the Union Jack over a corpse!"

A nice touch using the exclamation point at the question's conclusion as well as the double use of 'My God!' Flourishes like that really drove the emotion home for me when I read Dan's prose.

Dan Simmons has written a great many books. My God! My God, how many more do you think I'll be reading!

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Jun 03, 2008

Cheryl rated it

· review of another edition

This is a very haunting and well written book. I finished this book in just a few days. Dan Simmons digs into the unanswered questions and writes what he thinks might have happened and does it brilliantly.

Don’t let the length of this book (almost 800 pages) intimidate you, otherwise you won’t know what you are missing!

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:...moreThis is a very haunting and well written book. I finished this book in just a few days. Dan Simmons digs into the unanswered questions and writes what he thinks might have happened and does it brilliantly.

Don’t let the length of this book (almost 800 pages) intimidate you, otherwise you won’t know what you are missing!

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.

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. 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.

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.(less)

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Jun 03, 2007

Trin rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: horror, historicalfiction, american-lit

This novel takes a historical event I am already very interested in—the doomed Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage—and turns it into a horror story. A lot of what Simmons does is interesting: the character arcs of two of the main players, Captain Francis Crozier and Dr. Goodsir, are very well done, and there are some excellent set pieces—in particular a staging of Edgar Allen Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" amid the snow drifts and the polar ice. However, this was one of...more

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Feb 09, 2011

Amanda rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: book-club-made-me-do-it, crap

September 7, 2010: I don't want to talk about it right now. It's too soon and the pain is still too fresh. I shall review on another day.

September 17, 2010: It's been well over a week since my encounter with The Terror and the thought of writing a review still exhausts me, but here it goes.

I have read many glowing reviews of The Terror. That is, in fact, why I bought it. I mean, check out this kick ass plot:

Two British ships, the Terror and the Erebus...more

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Aug 17, 2007

Stiv_Matters added it · review of another edition

Three weeks in to this 700+ page book and I'm only at page 336. Much like the icebound ships and crew, I am far from comfort and stuck for the duration. Dan Simmons is a genius and has written many wonderful books. But Dan Simmons writes what Dan Simmons wants to write and all else be damned! This book is well-researched and the quality of the writing is above reproach. It's the glacial pacing that's really killing it for me. Around page 175 I was completely disheartened by yet another fla...more

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Oct 21, 2011

mark monday rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: horrortime, past-masters, soul-sucking-reviews

To: Mr. Dan Simmons
From: Associated Publishing Industries Unlimited, Ltd.
Subject: Your Recent Submission The Terror

Thank you for your recent submission. Unfortunately, at this time, we do not see a fit between your product and our company's goals.

Although our senior staff appreciated your technical ability, we noted several serious issues with your submission that need to be resolved prior to your product finding placement. These include, but are not ...more

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Apr 23, 2009

Sandi rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: horror, cross-genre, 2009, historical-fiction

"The Terror" really came close to that 5-star rating. However the last 75 pages or so were so out of character with the rest of the book, they really seemed like they didn't belong. "The Terror" is 90% historical fiction and 10% horror. The historical part is much more terrifying than the horror part. Simmons obviously did a lot of research on 19th century Arctic exploration in general and Franklin's Lost Expedition in particular. He fleshes out what little is known abou...more

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Nov 06, 2008

Maggie rated it

· review of another edition

On May 19th, 1845, British bombships Erebus and Terror set sail from the Thames River stocked will three years worth of food, 126 men, and the mission of seeking out the elusive Northwest Passage. Being that they are traveling on the first steam-powered vessels ever to explore the icy Arctic waters, the men think they have every reason to be confident, but by 1848 all passengers were presumed dead and neither ship was ever seen again. Unsuccessful expeditions charged with finding the missing shi...moreOn May 19th, 1845, British bombships Erebus and Terror set sail from the Thames River stocked will three years worth of food, 126 men, and the mission of seeking out the elusive Northwest Passage. Being that they are traveling on the first steam-powered vessels ever to explore the icy Arctic waters, the men think they have every reason to be confident, but by 1848 all passengers were presumed dead and neither ship was ever seen again. Unsuccessful expeditions charged with finding the missing ships produced clues as to how the men may have met their end, but to this day the individual fates of the men of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror are at best a speculation.

Dan Simmons blends what little is known of this doomed Arctic excursion into The Terror - a fictionalized account of Sir John Franklin's final voyage. Simmons' story opens on Francis Crozier, Captain of the HMS Terror, who has been landlocked in a frozen landscape for the better part of a year thanks to Franklin's poor decision making. Beset by ice, Crozier and his fellow captains had hoped for a summertime thaw that never came, and so are in the middle of their second winter spent trapped on their quickly failing ships. As if things were not bad enough, their dwindling food supply is feared to be contaminated by poisonous lead, several restless sailors are in danger of becoming mutinous, and they are being slowly stalked by a supernatural polar bear-ish monster that is methodically hunting and eating the crew. One-by-one, the men of Erebus and Terror begin to meet their terrible ends - victims of either the elements, their poisonous rations, or the strange monster that seems able to appear and disappear from the ice as if by magic. It eventually falls on Crozier to led these men off their ships and into the barren landscape, desperate for a chance at a salvation that seems impossible.

With Halloween just around the bend, my craving for a scary book led me to The Terror, despite approaching it with some hesitancy due to the fact that I'm not the biggest fan of historical fiction, frankly couldn't care less about nautical journeys, and - weighing in at a whopping 771 pages - The Terror looked like a beastly tome requiring the sort of time I wasn't really sure I was willing to commit. But it quickly became clear that the time it would take to tackle The Terror would be time well spent, as I quickly found myself drawn into the world of Crozier and his men.

Ultimately, The Terror reads like two separate novels - one a nautical disaster and the other a supernatural thriller -and while I can understand why some would see this as a point of critique, it totally worked for me. I loved the supernatural element every bit as much as I loved reading about the trials and tribulations of the doomed exhibition. For me, the presence of the monster really elevated a misadventure story into something much more imaginative and unique, and although it didn't terrify me exactly, it certainly provided me with a fair share of moments that made my hair stand on end.

All and all, I've never read anything quite like The Terror. It's a tale of survival, of adventure, of horror and of Inuit mythology, and it's also an immensely satisfying read. I can't recommend it enough.
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Feb 16, 2008

Tim rated it

· review of another edition

If I read a better book than "The Terror" in 2008, I will be a very happy man. This harrowing, bleak, yet occasionally hopeful story of survival (or not) in the arctic is clearly the best of the four Dan Simmons novels I've read so far and, really, one of the 20 best books I've ever read.

"The Terror," a fictitious account of the ill-fated and mysterious Franklin Expedition that tried to find the Northwest Passage, shouldn't work as well as it does. A realistic, de...moreIf I read a better book than "The Terror" in 2008, I will be a very happy man. This harrowing, bleak, yet occasionally hopeful story of survival (or not) in the arctic is clearly the best of the four Dan Simmons novels I've read so far and, really, one of the 20 best books I've ever read.

"The Terror," a fictitious account of the ill-fated and mysterious Franklin Expedition that tried to find the Northwest Passage, shouldn't work as well as it does. A realistic, detailed account of the struggle to survive when the two ships "The Terror" and "Erebus" become locked in the polar ice for two years, coupled with what really is (at least most of the way) a pure horror element -- some horrible creature stalking and killing the men one by one (and in handfuls) -- well, it sounds like a wildly uneven, odd approach. But boy, does it work.

I read this massive novel in the midst of a brutal stretch of Midwest winter, amid bitter cold. It was awesome! I highly recommend reading this in winter.

The book nicely builds from a creeping, unspecific menace of some creature "out there" to harrowing passages of sheer bloody terror. Some of the scenes with the thing on the prowl are absolutely thrilling. There was a point at which I wondered whether it would all come together, when the "thing" seemed just too damned omnipotent. Simmons' narrative brushed those worries aside, however.

I don't want to overemphasize the horror element, though. At its heart "The Terror" is a month-by-month account of how men struggle to survive, how they break down, what comes to the surface when men are pushed to the breaking point in a brutal climate in which survival seems doubtful. The "thing" in fact, largely disappears for the last 300 pages or so, and, amazingly, the book shines even more during this stretch.

There's some nice, almost mystical details about the native people who finally show themselves, and this becomes a big thread as the book comes to a close.

But, wow, what a book! If you're frightened by the juxtaposition of a realistic arctic tale coupled with horror, I would completely understand. But those of you who are intrigued by this idea, and especially those who, like me, have a soft spot for tales of polar exploration, by all means read "The Terror." It's brilliant.(less)

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Jun 03, 2008

Natalie rated it

· review of another edition

This novel is a stunningly detailed portrait of human suffering. It is like slowly crawling down a deep, freezing tunnel till you reach hell frozen over.
Simmons take on this historic mystery is slow in parts and sometimes the nautical details and ice jargon were tedious. But I think the length of the book accentuates the atmosphere, it starts to mirror the dread of being trapped for two and a half years in the unforgiving arctic. There is only white pain ahead and you have no choice but ...moreThis novel is a stunningly detailed portrait of human suffering. It is like slowly crawling down a deep, freezing tunnel till you reach hell frozen over.
Simmons take on this historic mystery is slow in parts and sometimes the nautical details and ice jargon were tedious. But I think the length of the book accentuates the atmosphere, it starts to mirror the dread of being trapped for two and a half years in the unforgiving arctic. There is only white pain ahead and you have no choice but to keep going.
There is no leap from order and peace to chaos and mutiny. The book startswhen circumstances are bleak and works its way back and forth through a few terrible years. We are introduced to men trapped in a frigid landscape. They endure temperatures so low, at times it burned off their skin and claimed limbs with frostbite. Rampant Loneliness, fatigue, scurvy, low morale, starvation, poisoning, and being stalked by a huge monster with intelligence and sharp teeth took its inevitable toll.
Whatever happened to the men aboard the Erebus and the Terror, must have been horrid and extraordinary. Their inability to adapt to this cold, cruel part of the world is one of the main themes of the story. They were like space travelers stuck on a distant planet, with no knowledge of how to survive without their shelter, fuel, and - all the things they brought from their civilized world, and in their ignorance they paid the price.
The supernatural element does not detract from the story. The gore, horror, and depravity are softened by the mystical component. I like how this outside factor affected their fate. The creature stalking them is a huge problem, but it wasn’t necessarily the most damning, it was a combination of bad luck, lack of, or improper preparation, certain people in high positions making poor choices, and arrogance regarding their environment.
There are many characters to keep track of, but Captain Crozier and Dr. Goodsir are the most compelling and they are the ones we keep reading for.
This book consumed me for a couple weeks. No matter where I was or what was going on, part of my mind was stuck, fascinated by the misery facing these long lost men. At the very least, it put my own trivial discomforts in perspective.

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Oct 01, 2007

linnea rated it

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I could not put the book down. It's about Sir John Franklin's lost expedition to find the Northwest passage in 1855. The Erebus and The Terror were the two ships sent. They got trapped in the ice in the winter of 1856-1857, and apparently never got out again. A cold summer prevented the thaw that would have freed the ships.

Franklin having died, Francis Crozier, the captain of The Terror took the surviving men on a grueling 105 mile overland journey. None of the men were heard fr...moreI could not put the book down. It's about Sir John Franklin's lost expedition to find the Northwest passage in 1855. The Erebus and The Terror were the two ships sent. They got trapped in the ice in the winter of 1856-1857, and apparently never got out again. A cold summer prevented the thaw that would have freed the ships.

Franklin having died, Francis Crozier, the captain of The Terror took the surviving men on a grueling 105 mile overland journey. None of the men were heard from again.

These are the known facts. Skeletons were discovered later with marks of cannibalism on them. An Inuit witness spoke of the 105 mile trek, and the men who dropped and died along the way. In The Terror Dan Simmons recreates their voyage and journey, telling the story from the perspectives of several of the officers and crew. He also posits another terror on the ice, a giant polar bear, demon or god, stalking and killing the men. This was well done, and terrifying, but like so many things, the horror of this monster is dwarfed by the reality of freezing, starving, dying of botulism and scurvy, the amputations, the mutiny and final cannibalism.

Simmons does an interesting job weaving Inuit myths into the story, and giving it a magical realism that I think works, but may not be necessary. It gives the story a more positive ending than it would have otherwise had, and now I want to re-read it for clues that was going to happen all along.

But the true horror and terror of this story is the real physical hardships that the men endured. On Everest, people freeze to death and die, but that's nothing to the hardships endured by the early Arctic and Antarctic explorers. What they endured is both heroic and horrifying, and this book bears witness to that.

It really is hard to put this book down, as the death tolls and maimings mount, as factions are carved out, as the endless arctic night takes its victims. Scurvy was a horrible way to die, and this book shows that in vivid detail.(less)

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Apr 26, 2008

J.D. rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: hardcore Simmons fans only

I'm a big Dan Simmons fan, but at several points during this book, I found myself thinking, "will someone get this man an editor?"

There's a great horror tale in here. Unfortunately it's buried under layers of fat. Ironic, since lengthy descriptions of starvation and scurvy take up so much space in the book.

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Nov 27, 2008

Kirsten rated it

· review of another edition

I don't know anything about sailing, the Arctic, 19th century England or Dan Simmons, but I liked this book anyway. Well, 'liked' may be too strong a word. This book got inside my head and I'm fairly sure it has given me nightmares for the past week. Simmons did an excellent job with his description of place...the Arctic circle, King Williams Island and the ice itself are as important of characters as any sailor or officer on either ship. The constant and unending cold, damp, darkness, hunge...moreI don't know anything about sailing, the Arctic, 19th century England or Dan Simmons, but I liked this book anyway. Well, 'liked' may be too strong a word. This book got inside my head and I'm fairly sure it has given me nightmares for the past week. Simmons did an excellent job with his description of place...the Arctic circle, King Williams Island and the ice itself are as important of characters as any sailor or officer on either ship. The constant and unending cold, damp, darkness, hunger, fear, fatigue and suspicion these men faced are felt acutely by the reader.

This is definitely a 'historical novel', and there are different parts of the book where one of those words seems to trump the other. Sometimes it feels like a very close retelling of what it must have been like to be on a ship in such a situation. Other times, there's some crazy shit going on, to say the least. I could have done without the extremely technical details about masts, rigging, spars, sails...I don't know what any of those words mean (OK, I know what a sail is, I guess) and the technicality of the descriptions of the ships did not help me to visualize the settings at all. And it didn't get better as I went through the book. I just kept being confused. However, knowing that the mast or the spar is listing 20 degrees starboard is not really important. What's important is that these two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, were *stuck in the ice for two years* while their crews tried to fend off starvation, scurvy, insanity, frostbite, gangrene, mutiny, botulism and exposure in increasingly bewildering and heartbreaking ways. The reader knows from the beginning they're doomed, and so do the officers and crew, although they spend the better part of 760 pages acting like they're not.

I'm not sure if this story actually needed to be as long as it was. It took a long time for me to be able to remember who all the characters were and, not knowing anything about sailing or being in the Royal Navy, what all their jobs on board entailed. Maybe the main characters should have been clearer and better formed or fleshed out from the beginning, but the way it was written lets the characters who are significant near the end of the book emerge as they must have to Captain Crozier-- gradually and over a series of seemingly disconnected events.

In some ways, this is a really typical thriller, complete with a series of chapters narrated by different characters in order to increase the tension and suspense and circle around to the climax. On the other hand, this book points to some interesting questions: what does it mean to be human-- and how much 'civilization' can you take from someone before they shed their humanity like an ill-fitting coat? What do tragedy and adverse circumstances do to people-- do they become more like themselves or less? What is the nature of good and evil? You know, questions like that. My high school English teacher would've had us analyze the conflicts set forth in the book: man v. man, man v. nature, or man v. himself. The Terror contains plenty of all 3 and I thought they were well done, with a satisfying and surprising ending to the story.

I need some time to decompress from this book. It got to me. Enough so that I'll never look at a polar bear the same way again. Enough so that I'm pretty sure I'll never be taking a cruise to Alaska, if I ever decide to set foot on a ship again. Enough so that I'm feeling the need to read something light and humorous...preferably set in the tropics.(less)

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Jun 07, 2008

Matt rated it

· review of another edition

This book is like a cross between Master and Commander and John Carpenter's The Thing. Two British ships try to force the Northwest Passage in the late 1840s and get frozen in place deep in the Arctic Circle. Their nightmare includes starvation, lightning storms, poisoned canned foods, mutinous sodomites, scurvy, unbelievable cold (60 degrees below zero is considered a decent day), crushing loneliness, and months of total darkness. To make matters worse, a giant ice creature (similiar to a Y...more

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Feb 19, 2008

Mama Kaye rated it

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Wow, what an amazing book. Haunting, exhausting, horrifying. Reading this book is not easy, but well worth the effort -- it's an adventure you'll never forget. The writing is terrific: you'll feel like you were with those men on the ice. Partway through the book, I wondered why Simmons felt he needed to add a supernatural element to the story, as it could have been just as strong as a realistic narrative. However, I think the supernatural dimension was critical in the "real" story he w...more

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Sep 11, 2007

Peggy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: darkforcesbookgroup

Those of you who crave pages upon pages of
realistic detail spiced up with a soupchon of "What
the hell?", take a look at Dan Simmons' newest, The
Terror.

It is the age of sail and two ships set out on
an expedtion to find the Northwest Passage through the
Arctic. Things go badly, and the two ships are iced in
for more than a year with incompetant leaders, rotting
food, the onset of scurvy, and the usual accidents. So
far so good. Sim...more

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Mar 24, 2008

Judah rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: fans of the supernatural, horror, history, and scurvey

Shelves: ooooooh-scary

Bleak is how I'd best describe this fictional account of what happened to the crew of the USS Terror...a ship which attempted to discover the Northwest Passage in real life, and went missing. (there are many non-fiction books out there on the same subject)

Don't interpret "bleak" as necessarily a bad thing, however! The book is quite interesting in it's description of what an arctic voyage in the mid 1800's would have been like...and what happens when the voyage goes awry.

...more

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Dec 04, 2008

Dennis D. rated it

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This is another book that I picked up after reading good reviews, without knowing anyone who had read it. And I chose to write this review as I'm coming to the end of Denis Johnson's "Tree of Smoke," because this struck me as curious: "Tree" was 600-some pages long, and took me weeks and weeks to slog through. "The Terror" is almost 800-pages long, and I blew through it in 10 days or less.

"The Terror" is the author's supposition of what happe...more

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Apr 16, 2009

Woowott rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Yes

This is my first foray into Arctic exploration. I've harbored (no pun intended) a fascination for naval literature for years, since I read Avi's The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle years and years ago. I just find ship life very interesting. And I had encountered this particular book many times in the bookstores, so I just decided to go for it one day. I had a few false starts, but then--after reading some Indian literature, unrelated--I got completely into it.

Now, this boo...more

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Jan 15, 2012

Kelanth, in tenebris lux tua rated it

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Shelves: avventura

Amo questo autore, nella sua veste di scrittore di fantascienza dalla saga di Hyperion, una perla rara. Un esempio massimo di science-finction.

Appena ho visto questo libro in libreria non ho potuto esimermi dal comperarlo, anche attratto dalla storia (vera e poi romanzata) che narra di quel 19 maggio 1845, quando l'Erebus e la Terror, due velieri agli ordini di Sir John Franklin e di Francis Crozier, salpano dall'Inghilterra alla ricerca del leggendario Passaggio a Nordovest; verrann...moreAmo questo autore, nella sua veste di scrittore di fantascienza dalla saga di Hyperion, una perla rara. Un esempio massimo di science-finction.

Appena ho visto questo libro in libreria non ho potuto esimermi dal comperarlo, anche attratto dalla storia (vera e poi romanzata) che narra di quel 19 maggio 1845, quando l'Erebus e la Terror, due velieri agli ordini di Sir John Franklin e di Francis Crozier, salpano dall'Inghilterra alla ricerca del leggendario Passaggio a Nordovest; verranno ritrovati anni dopo intrappolati nel ghiaccio artico.

L'aspetto veramente positivo di questo libro per me è stato il fatto di appassionarmi a questa fantastica avventura delle due bombarde: la "Erebus" e la "Terror" che mi ha fatto passare delle ore su internet per leggere di Francis Crozier (capitano della Terror) e delle sue imprese in Artide.

Da sottolineare, ancora una volta, l'incomprensibile traduzione del titolo originale "Terror" in "La Scomparsa dell'Erebus"; ma questo è un discorso già fatto molte volte in passato.

Per il resto ho fatto davvero fatica a completare la lettura, non per lo stile di scrittura di Simmons che trovo sempre molto particolare, suggestivo ed evocativo ma perchè il libro è davvero troppo lungo in quanto infarcito di troppe "romanzature" come la comparsa del mostro mitologico esquimese e le troppe descrizioni marinare (per me indigeste e solo per esperti marinari); personalmente avrei trovato la storia meravigliosa se fosse stata lunga la metà.

Diciamo che l'idea dell'ibrido letterario, che fonde ricerca storica, romanzo horror e narrazione mitologica non mi ha convinto più che tanto, avrei preferito un romanzo che parlasse solo dell'avventura in sè, soprattutto visto la spettacolare e particolare ambientazione.

Anche il finale poi mi ha lasciato molto, molto perplesso; ho trovato decisamente più affascinante il finale nella realtà dei libri di storia.

Uno spunto per conoscere un pezzo di storia e nulla più.

http://kelanthsblog.blogspot.com/
(less)

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Sep 08, 2009

Matt rated it

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(There were entire chapters of this book where I couldn't shake the song "The Cold Part" by Modest Mouse from my head, and so I put it on now as I attempt to write this review, sleep-deprived though I may be. Rambling may or may not ensue; blogging is a past-time of mine. I'm going to attempt to write as generally as possible and not divulge any details of the plot so as not to spoil anything.)

I first attempted to read this book a couple of years ago. Its cover caught my ey...more(There were entire chapters of this book where I couldn't shake the song "The Cold Part" by Modest Mouse from my head, and so I put it on now as I attempt to write this review, sleep-deprived though I may be. Rambling may or may not ensue; blogging is a past-time of mine. I'm going to attempt to write as generally as possible and not divulge any details of the plot so as not to spoil anything.)

I first attempted to read this book a couple of years ago. Its cover caught my eye when it was a featured new release at Barnes & Noble, and a simple Stephen King blurb bid me buy it (even though I'm no extensive reader of his). As soon as I started the book I had a problem with it: I didn't like the present progressive tense in which it was written. For whatever inexplicable reason, I just couldn't get over it. I wasn't accustomed to reading fiction written thus, and wasn't very fond of it. I tried to get past it, and failed some two or three hundred pages in, abandoning the book to my shelves and proceeding from there to read other material, but it always nagged at me to finish it. Ultimately, it became a mental block, and I blame my recent lack of literary activity on this festering failure from my past. I'm a bit neurotic, but I knew that if I didn't go back and finish it, I wouldn't have the motivation to read anything else for an undetermined length of time. I manned up and started the book again, for the betterment of my mind.

Now, I'm not sure whether or not my suffering through War and Peace in between attempts at Terror helped to alleviate the disinterest that initially marked the work, but I found it just a fraction easier to get into the second time around, and by the time I'd passed my previous high score, I was mildly enjoying the book, dreariness and all. Towards the midway point, I was absolutely captivated.

For those not familiar, The Terror is about an ill-fated English attempt to force the Northwest Passage sometime around the mid-nineteenth century. Two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, set out to navigate this much sought-after trade route through the arctic, however, the ships never returned, nor were they found, and of course, there were no survivors of the expedition recovered. What Simmons does in this book is take this moderately intriguing nautical footnote and turns it into a tense and deliberate thriller.

The word thriller is perhaps a bit misleading. The majority of the book sees its (expansive) cast of characters, all of whom are the real crew members on those ships, facing the many perils of arctic travel, where there are nights without end (an hour or less of sunlight), where temperatures get to be -100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the ships are frozen solid in the ice for months (even years). Dwindling food supplies and frostbite harry the men, as well as scurvy and malnutrition. None of which is very suspenseful on paper. I confess, it's dreary reading about these conditions time and again, as they inflict more and more members of the expedition. An 800-page novel consisting of this would fail miserably. Simmons instead has the men encounter a preternatural (and predatory) creature in that icy nightmarescape in which they're stuck. More cunning and sadistic than any natural animal on earth, and far more terrifying. (Indeed, the double entendre of the book's title is in fact referring to this same monster.)

Now, what I call the book's 'genius' did not strike me at first. In fact, it didn't hit me until about 500 pages in, to be honest, but when it did, it gave me the sort of clarity of mind to retroactively appreciate everything I'd read thitherto, and I was very impressed. The novel can be said to drag at times. I've read a number of people complaining about Simmons's attention to detail (nautical detail at that, which I know absolutely shit about), and I admit that it is a bit tiresome, but one gets used to it. The reader is swept up and eventually beaten down by the trudging pace of the book -- broken up only in parts by suspenseful encounters with aforementioned creature -- by the naval chain of command, by the constant night, the ever-present threat of exposure, the depletion and subsequently strict rationing of food stores, etc.. Simmons focuses on a vast array of characters, so it's hard to identify very much with one of them, or become emotionally invested in just one (the men range from likable to absolutely detestable), but what he does instead is mimic and recreate for his readers, via just such literary technique and repetition of bleakness, the sort of hopeless and never ending atmosphere of certain death that marked the expedition. The book itself becomes the slow death its characters face, and the reader begins to lose hope with every turned page.

But it is after much hardship, death, mutilation, starvation and murder that the members of the expedition see the forest for the trees. They know that they are doomed if they do not do something to remove themselves from their conditions. Remaining frozen in the arctic desert as they were proved only to wear them down slowly but surely. So, it is when they take action, and abandon the notion of outside rescue and take it upon themselves to survive that one truly gets into the book. Without having dealt with the monotony of the earlier pages, and the growing despair of their reality, one would not be so absolutely invested in the outcome, the book's conclusion, and the fates of the survivors. I most certainly was. This was a very clever (albeit tedious) bit of psychology on the author's part, but it works brilliantly, in my humble (and perhaps masochistic) opinion. Not everyone will have the patience to appreciate and see such a deliberate method of storytelling through (as I was once unable to do), but those who do will have their emotional investments rewarded with poignant betrayals of trust, plot twists and other developments. I've not read a book that I can recall that does this so well, and so effectively. For this, I commend it, and now count it among my favorites.

(I'll come back with a well-rested mind and edit any superfluousness or grammatical errors after I've slept.)(less)

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Feb 06, 2008

Fiveoneeight rated it

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A combination historical fiction-supernatural horror epic, The Terror details a failed 19th century English expidition to find the Northwest Passage in as amazingly detailed a portrait as I could ever imagine. I defy you to not shiver every time you finish a chapter in this book.

But it's not enough that the characters in the story are losing limbs and lives to scurvy, frostbite, and a host of other debilitating conditions, author Dan Simmons throws in a mystery beast/monster/presen...more

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Aug 13, 2007

Jed Repko rated it

· review of another edition

Someone recently asked me to describe this novel, and I responded "chilling." It wasn't a pun, although the author does an exceptional job of conveying the extreme cold the explorers withstood. What is more chilling perhaps even than the arctic winters the story is set against, are the obstacles faced by those of the crew who wish to survive until rescue. It's a story of humanity unraveling into desperation. The crew is forced to deal not just with the cold temperatures that turn e...more

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Sep 02, 2011

Marvin rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: horror, kindle

Dan Simmons has written some very long and excellent novels but this may be the first in which every sentence is needed to tell this fictional account of Sir John Franklin's ill fated voyage to find the Northwest Passage. While the author included a supernatural element to the tale it does not extracted from the chilling account (no pun intended) of survival, or more precisely the lack of, in the cold Arctic of the 1840s. In fact the supernatural elements successfully resolve the story in ways t...more

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Jul 16, 2007

Gar rated it

· review of another edition

Sometimes good authors desperately need an editor who's unafraid to call them on their shit. This is the case here. There's a great horror novel lurking in here, but that great novel is about half the length of this one, with its deeply uneven pacing, a huge cast of characters who almost all receive no characterization, and the occasional unexplained switch in verb tense from chapter to chapter at the start.

Despite that, there are some great setpieces in here. There's a chapter in...more

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SciFi and Fantasy...: Chapters 16 - 20 no spoilers after Chapter 20	6	16	9 hours, 41 min ago
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About Dan Simmons

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...moreDan 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.

ABOUT DAN
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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, his daughter, Jane, (when she's home from Hamilton College) and their Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Fergie. He does much of his writing 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.(less)

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“We are all eaters of souls.” — 3 people liked it

“Luckily, even as a young man not yet become himself, John Bridgens had two things besides indecision that kept him from self-destruction - books and a sense of irony.” — 3 people liked it

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