The Terror by Dan Simmons

The Terror was a bit of a mixed bag for me. It was a novel that was certainly epic in size, but not necessarily epic in scope and the story it told. Set in the middle of the 19th century, two ships from the British Royal Navy, the Erebus and the Terror, are stuck in ice as they are trying to explore the Northwest Passage. They are in essence doomed as they have ships that are unequipped to travel through this type of ice, their cache of food is poisoned and they don’t know how to fish or hunt in the Arctic. To make matters worse, there is some sort of supernatural creature that is stalking them as they wallow away in misery, dying of starvation, exposure, scurvy, and getting eaten alive. To make matters worse for Captain Crozier, there is mutiny afoot.



The novel was a slow moving in spots and riveting in others, but it was uneven in that way. The writing was solid and tight except for the times where it meandered and seemed to lose its way. I also found the novel to be a bit depressing. It seemed like nothing ever went right for the sailors aboard the Terror. It just kept getting worse and worse and more hopeless as the novel progressed. I supposed the ending was supposed to be uplifting, but I didn’t find it to be particularly satisfying. There were many interesting aspects of the novel and the characterization was strong, so I don’t want this review to sound overly negative.