The Terror by Dan Simmons
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 landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.
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. With them travels an Inuit woman who cannot speak and who may be the key to survival, or the harbinger of their deaths. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear that there is no escape.
For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #TBD)
The Reason
I love big books, and I love horror, and I love historical fiction, and I love books about exploration. This book seemed like a culmination of many things I love.
The Quotes
“The beauty of being dead, he knows now, is that there is no pain and no sense of self.”
“Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It has no plan, no point, no hidden mysteries that make up for the oh-so-obvious miseries and banalities.”
“Every time I believe I know one of these men or officers, I find that I am wrong. A million years of Man’s Medicinal progress will never reveal the secret condition and sealed compartments of the Human soul.”
“Why does our species always have to take our full measure of God-given misery and terror and mortality and then make it worse?”
The Narrator(s)
Tom Sellwood. Loved his narration!
My Thoughts
Although this story is based on a real lost expedition that happened, I wasn’t sure how much of it would stay true to life and what would be embellished. I was also unfamiliar with the true events so I wouldn’t have realized where the story diverged, which maybe added to my enjoyment of the book as I was taking everything at face value. I loved a few of the characters, hated a couple of others, and found myself rooting for the ones I loved and wishing horrible things on the bad guys.
I loved the whole experience of reading this book. It started really slow-paced, but it kept building and building and building on the tension and in the end the slow burn was so worth it. I read it as a buddy read with my online bookclub and one of the things I said is that this is one of the best books I’ve read and I loved the writing, but I don’t think I’ll ever want to read it again because of how intense it is.
Give me enough time to forget the experience and I may read it again, but right now I’m still reeling from all the feelings.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
