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The Terror

3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 · rating details · 10,247 ratings · 1,445 reviews

The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish lan...more

Hardcover, 769 pages

Published January 8th 2007 by Little, Brown and Company (first published January 1st 2007)

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Dec 23, 2011 karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 occurrences of misunderstanding and som...more

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Mar 26, 2008 Christy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: maps-and-travel, arctic-and-antarctic, 21st-century-american-lit, watery

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...more 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 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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Apr 14, 2013 Jon added it

Recommended to Jon by: SciFi & Fantasy Book Club Feb 2012 Selection

Shelves: fiction, fantasy, historical-fiction, read-in-my-40s, liked-it

4 stars

Due to the acquisition of GoodReads by Amazon on March 28, 2013 and my existing and continuing boycott of all things Amazon, the review I wrote after reading this book now resides, safe and secure, at my blog. You can read it by following this link: http://bit.ly/wGx8FR

10 likes · like · see review

Jan 26, 2012 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2012, 19th-century, gothic, sci-fi

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 reaction was that t...more

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Nov 24, 2010 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars · 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 find themselv...more 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 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 5 of 5 stars

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 point forward is SPOI...more

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Sep 28, 2007 Alex rated it 1 of 5 stars 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 fol...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 5 of 5 stars

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: In the balmy days of May 1845, 129...more 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: 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 2 of 5 stars

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 those boo...more

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Feb 09, 2011 Amanda rated it 1 of 5 stars

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, are frozen in the polar sea for years, wa...more

27 likes · like · see review

Aug 17, 2007 Stiv_Matters added it

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 flashback...more

5 likes · like · see review

Oct 21, 2011 mark monday rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: horrortime, into-the-past, rain-man-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 limited to:

1. Extensive and Excessive Length...more

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Apr 23, 2009 Sandi rated it 4 of 5 stars · 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 about the fate of the Erebus...more

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Nov 06, 2008 Maggie rated it 5 of 5 stars

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...more 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 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 5 of 5 stars

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, detailed account of the struggle t...more 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, 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 5 of 5 stars

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 to keep...more 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 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 5 of 5 stars

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 from again.

These ar...more 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 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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Aug 30, 2012 Petr rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Příběh ztracené Franklinovy expedice byl literárně zpracován mnohokrát, protože je prostě neodolatelný. Dvě lodi, Erebus a Terror, a sto třicet čtyři mužů na nich vyplulo z Anglie v květnu 1845;zmizeli beze stopy někde mezi kanadskými arktickými ostrovy při hledání tajemného Severozápadního průjezdu. Jejich osud není dodnes úplně jasný, přestože se díky novým archeologickým výzkumům dá poměrně spolehlivě rekonstruovat.

Dan Simmons se drží faktů velmi důsledně, vychází z historických pramenů, nik...more

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Apr 26, 2008 J.D. rated it 2 of 5 stars 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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May 04, 2012 aPriL MEOWS often with scratching rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: awesomely-horrifying-loved-it, historical-fiction, horror

This book can be shelved under several genres: historical fiction, horror, adventure. Wherever it is shelved, it is a fantastic read. However, it is long, with horrifying and graphic descriptions of illnesses, injuries and violent attacks. Since it is a fictionalized story about people who really existed and disappeared on a real life exploration of the arctic, it has a lot of interesting details about what it was like to be a ship-based explorer in the mid-1800's. The story never falters or fal...more This book can be shelved under several genres: historical fiction, horror, adventure. Wherever it is shelved, it is a fantastic read. However, it is long, with horrifying and graphic descriptions of illnesses, injuries and violent attacks. Since it is a fictionalized story about people who really existed and disappeared on a real life exploration of the arctic, it has a lot of interesting details about what it was like to be a ship-based explorer in the mid-1800's. The story never falters or falls apart, but you as the reader might if you tend to empathize with likable characters.

I loved the book. I think it was metafiction, so most things were both symbolic and physical expressions. I think the monster, for instance, was both actual mythic monster and symbol of the brutality of nature.

A book this relentlessly awful and depressing HAD to have a Hollywood ending for me, otherwise I would have felt too horrified by it to like it. I'm glad for my sake it wasn't more sad than it was. I realize that the real life explorers very likely died horribly of starvation, and accident, and scurvy, but 900+ pages of death death death death would have been too much for a novel for me to finish feeling I had closure (I know that word is overused, but it fits).

Hickey goes on my list of the most horrifying fictional evil bad guys, alongside Hannibal the Cannibal. His homosexuality, in my opinion, was a means to hook him up with Magnus, otherwise it would have been harder to set up the relationship. I looked at it as the corruption of a child-like mentality, not with his sexuality, but by taking advantage of Magnus's very innocent love. I saw it as further evidence of Hickey's evil as a person manipulating another who trusted him without judgement. If you take the homosexuality away, you have a grievous moral betrayal of an innocent by someone who didn't give a damn who he destroyed. It seemed to me more like the relationship of a pimp who takes an innocent off the bus and slowly manipulates that person into depravity, in the case of the book that being cannibalism and murder, not the sexual relationship. Frankly, I thought the author was presenting homosexuality as a simple fact of life, not with any moral presumptions at all. I thought the takeaway was demonstrating how evil Hickey was, not how homosexual he was.

As far as cannibalism, if I'm in my full senses I could NEVER keep such meat down. But if I was feverish and half insane with scurvy and food poisoning and exhaustion? Walking for ten hours hauling fully loaded sleds in -60 F temperatures and doing it on two moldy biscuits and a slice of salted beef a day, with my skin and body rotting while I lived? I don't know.
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Nov 27, 2008 Kirsten rated it 4 of 5 stars · 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, hunger, f...more 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, 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 3 of 5 stars

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 Yeti,...more

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Feb 19, 2008 Mama Kaye rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 was telling...more

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Sep 11, 2007 Peggy rated it 5 of 5 stars

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. Simmons makes these characters sing, and
given my soft-spot for nautical f...more

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Mar 24, 2008 Judah rated it 4 of 5 stars 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.

For entertainments sake,

...more

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Dec 04, 2008 Dennis D. rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 happened to a pair of actual English sailing vessels that w...more

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Mar 29, 2013 John Hughes rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Dear Diary, I've been kidnapped by hungry bad people who keep chopping bits off me. If this keeps up I'll have no fingers left to write with. More soon."

The Frankin Expedition has attained an also mythic status in the annals of polar exploration: the search for the North West Passage, the ships entombed in polar ice for years, the British public's fascination and outcry, the fruitless search expeditions, that song, and of course the recent tantalising archeological discoveries that hint of scur...more "Dear Diary, I've been kidnapped by hungry bad people who keep chopping bits off me. If this keeps up I'll have no fingers left to write with. More soon."

The Frankin Expedition has attained an also mythic status in the annals of polar exploration: the search for the North West Passage, the ships entombed in polar ice for years, the British public's fascination and outcry, the fruitless search expeditions, that song, and of course the recent tantalising archeological discoveries that hint of scurvy, food poisoning, and cannibalism amongst the survivors.

It's an epic tale in every sense: the history itself confonts, inspires and repels. And then Dan Simmons adds a little something extra to keep you awake at night.

However, in fleshing out and extrapolating this epic mystery, Simmons does a merely perfunctionary job. The detail is there, and the research (though the Antipodean flashback has a few howlers), and the atmosphere, and the slowly rising sense of desolation and dread. Yet the overall dramatic arc is uncertain, with the Inuit and mythological themes under-utilised, and perhaps tacked on: explanation is largely confined to a few chapters at the very end, with some badly integrated mythology at odds with the tone of the rest of the story. Characterisation is indifferent and often hazy throughout. The novel is weighed down with detail, some of which seems unnecessary and repetitive; an info-dump of historical sources. The last chapters collapse entirely, given to increasing abstraction and haste as though the author, like the reader, just wants the damned thing to end.

The Terror also suffers from some embarrassing (and lazy) cliche: the central evil crewman is of course a sodomite, who calls his shipmates 'my dear'. Every woman introduced is rendered naked within a few pages. And worst of all, the hoary (ahem) old cliche of the diarist who just keeps writing is pushed far beyond any semblence of believability. And while the external horror and atmosphere is portrayed with effectiveness, there is little insight into the psychological effects of the continuous tension and deprivation on the crew.

A fascinating historical epic, indifferently rendered. Compelling yet flawed. Read with the electric blanket up high.

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Aug 22, 2012 Michael Fierce rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: fans of historical fiction and oldschool books by Poe, Kipling, Algernon Blackwood & Ambrose Bierce

Shelves: alternate-history, adventure, cryptid-horror, favorite-book

For anyone fascinated with historical adventures, and for the select group that enjoy a more oldschool antiquated storytelling approach to their cryptid horror. If that describes you than this is a must!

It takes an investment of time and patience but I can assure you it will pay off.

This is a fictional tale of the real life experience of the notoriously doomed John Franklin Expedition. They first traversed hundreds of miles of water by sea voyage in the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and the...more

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Apr 16, 2009 Woowott rated it 5 of 5 stars 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 book isn't flawless,...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Dan rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was flat-out fantastic. It's one of the most engaging and thrilling novels I've read in awhile. It's based on a real event, the Franklin Expedition to the find the Northwest Passage to Asia through the arctic. We don't know much about what happened to the expedition, but Dan Simmons is brilliant by filling in the details for you. And scaring you quite a bit in the process.

There are a few characters, too, that you become especially attached to because they reveal themselves in stages th...more

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paced reading hor...: the terror spoilers to 100%	98	35	Apr 23, 2013 09:33pm
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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 fiction,...more 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.

ABOUT DAN
Biographic Sketch

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)

More about Dan Simmons...

Books by Dan Simmons

The Fall of Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #2)

The Rise of Endymion (Hyperion Cantos, #4)

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“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.” — 10 people liked it

“We are all eaters of souls.” — 5 people liked it

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