The Terror: A Novel | Dan Simmons | A TRIUMPH of the imagination!!

The Terror: A Novel | Dan Simmons | Beyond Wonderful!

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The Terror: A Novel

	The Terror: A Novel Dan Simmons Back Bay Books, 2007 - 784 pages average customer review:based on 217 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"Dan Simmons writes with the salty grace and precision of Patrick O'Brian. But in piling supernatural nightmare upon historical nightmare, layering mystery upon mystery, he has produced a turbocharged vision of popular doom." -Men's Journal

Greeted with excited critical praise, this extraordinary novel-inspired by the true story of two ice ships that disappeared in the Arctic Circle during an 1845 expedition-swells with the heart-stopping suspense and heroic adventure that have won Dan Simmons praise as "a writer who not only makes big promises but keeps them" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). THE TERROR chills readers to the core.

"Brutal, relentless, yet oddly uplifting, THE TERROR is a masterfully chilling work." -Entertainment Weekly

"In the hands of a lesser writer than Dan Simmons, THE TERROR might well have dissolved into a series of frigid days and three-dog nights. But Simmons is too good a writer to ignore the real gold in his story-its beleaguered cast." -Bookpage

"Guaranteed to have readers pulling their covers up to their noses, THE TERROR will make for a blood-freezing, bedtime read this winter-and any season thereafter." -Pages

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A TRIUMPH of the imagination!!

I'm going to have to be careful that I don't gush too much over Dan Simmons' triumph of the imagination THE TERROR. The book has plenty of flaws...but the power of its story smashes most of those into rubble by the time the end is reached.

The best place to start is with a recap of the basic story...which is not easy for a book that runs nearly 800 densely packed pages. In the 1840's, the British Empire (as with a number of other nations), was VERY interested in finding the fabled "Northwest Passage" through the far Northern reaches of the arctic from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. (Honestly, I'm not sure why, because even if one learned the way, the waters themselves were so dangerous that just knowing HOW to go would not help much in surviving the trip.) So, Sir John Franklin led an expedition of two ships, The Erebus and The Terror, along with 129 men...to see if they could find the passage. The ships became encased in ice in uncharted waters, and NONE of the crew members was heard from again. Over the decades and centuries, a few clues to their fates have been found...but VERY little is known about what may have happened.

What Simmons has done is taken this true story (yep, what I just told you really happened) and he has taken all the few tantalizing clues that have been found scattered around the ice packed islands where the ships were last known to have been stuck, and he's created an EXTREMELY detailed account of what happened to those men. In telling his story, he examines the character of ice in the arctic, life aboard British vessels, the camaraderie and betrayals of men in close quarters, the never-ending freeze cold, the methods for survival, the culture and hierarchy of these ships, their structure, their storage capacity, their provisions. He also delves into the legends and lives of the native people (we call them Inuit these days...in 1847, they were "Esquimaux." In particular, he proposes as REAL an Esquimaux legend of a creature of the ice who about six times the size of a polar bear, with supernatural powers and nearly human intelligence. This creature begins to terrorize the two ships.

(Let me say right here that I've read some "reader" reviews that chide Simmons for too liberally mixing fact with fiction in this book. Nowhere in the book does it say "based on a true story." Nowhere would one get the idea that this is anything other than a work of fiction. This is one writer creating an imaginary story out of a few known facts. He's not presenting it as a "theory" of what happened to these two ships. If he WERE, that WOULD be a cause for criticism. As it stands, I think it's pretty much a worthless criticism.)

So what we've got is a richly researched and highly detailed account of what the brutal (and to modern man, unimaginable) conditions these men endured for YEARS were like. This alone probably would have made for a fascinating book. As you can imagine, two years stuck in ice with nowhere to go and dwindling fuel and food might cause a wide variety of strains on the men. But Simmons has added the "creature," making the story also one of the supernatural.

I REALLY don't want to tell you more about how this adventure unfolds (and this is, at its heart, a truly old-school adventure story. In many ways, it is old-fashioned...in the best possible ways...it feels much like ROBINSON CRUESOE must have felt to the readers in ITS day). Suffice it to say that the book moves from one event to another in an ever increasing pace.

As I said, the book would have been interesting without the supernatural "creature," and I was thinking that very thing through about 700 of the 800 pages of the book. "Yeah," I thought, "it's an unusual element...but it makes the book a little unrealistic too." But when the final section of the book blazes to its conclusion...you see that Simmons had a couple of surprises in store for his patient readers...ones that pack an emotional wallop.

Here's what is tough about the book, and I must make a confession in order to make my point. These days, with my busy job, just about the only time I read is in bed before going to sleep. Most days, this means 20 minutes of reading before my eyelids grow heavy and I can't go on. So it can take longer than I'd like to get through a book. Sometimes I'll grab extra time on the weekends...but even then, I'd rather be doing something with the family. When I started THE TERROR, it was VERY slow going at first. I found it interesting enough to keep going...but I won't lie...I sometimes wondered if I should keep making the effort. Events moved somewhat slowly, and a GREAT deal of time was spent examining the main characters. In particular, the book revolved a great deal around Captain Francis Crozier, who led The Terror. But all the careful bits of knowledge about his past seemed to have no bearing on the story then occurring, except to give us a better feel for this man. I like good character development, but I feared it was causing the book to loose all its momentum. So it was tough going almost for the first half. Interesting yes...but also a bit slow.

But then, almost without my noticing, the book began to pick up its pace. Events happened much more closely together, even as the stakes began to be raised higher and higher. It was like a train engine that was very slow to get going...but when the wheels starting churning, this book positively flew by. I literally could hardly tear myself away, and I tore through the final half in one weekend. It became almost a breathless read. All the little, seemingly unimportant little bits of character information began to play out in major ways. I realized how much I had come to actually care about many of these men, and how much I emphasized with their unfathomable suffering. And when the true villains of the piece emerged...well, the book became about as exciting and satisfying as any "adventure" novel I've read.

I've never read anything by Dan Simmons before. His writing style is crisp and clean and fairly evocative. I never read any individual passages that made me start at his LITERARY skills. They were solid but unexceptional. But his IMAGINATION cannot be overpraised with this book. The man has clearly envisioned virtually every crew member and detail a backstory for most. I would say that the book could lose about 40 pages of some of this detail without losing its power. Simmons didn't quite know when to stop with all the rich details. On the other hand, his careful descriptions of life encased by ice succeeded in creating an atmosphere of oppression unique in my reading experience.

When it concluded and I had to set it aside, I immediately hopped online to gobble up all the known information about this famous tragic expedition. I saw how extremely closely Simmons had stuck to the story that was known. Each little clue that researchers have uncovered over the years was incorporated in the book. I found the true life mystery fascinating as well, and have already ordered a couple of books and a documentary on the expedition. So the book stirred me as a reader, but also stirred me to "read more about it."

I hope you'll take my warning that the book is slow going at first, along with my assurance that it is worth the wait. I've never read a book quite like this, and I look forward to heartily recommending it to anyone who will listen!

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Beyond Wonderful!

Dan Simmons is now one of my favorite writers. Tommorow I'm going out to buy more of his books. The Terror is hard to categorize. It reads like historical fiction and horror so well blended it's hard to clearly discern either. Get this book! You won't regret it.

Chilling and epic

At 800+ pages this book can certainly be a fearful prospect, but within the first few chapters I was so wrapped in the terrifying prospect facing our protagonists that I didn't even notice the size of the book. Lost and trapped for two years in the blinding cold of the arctic ice, the crews of the ships Terror and Erebus face not only eminent starvation and the madness creeping up on them in their isolation and petty day-to-day grievances, but now also the unknown monstrous thing that stalks them, a monster of unimaginable strength and cunning. With the monster stalking them from without, and a growing faction of human monsters within their own crews, the tale of the heroes of the Terror will keep you up at night and give you a new appreciation for a warm summer's day and a convenient snack.

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Wonderfully captivating

In the mid-1840s, a British exploration team sailed into the artic ocean in hopes of finding the fabled northwest passage. A passage way that would connect the atlantic and pacific oceans. Two ships, the Erebus and Terror, were sent and led by Captain Sir John Franklin. Both ships and all crew members were lost and never heard from again. It became a mystery that was never been completely explained.

Dan Simmons takes this event in history and weaves a great story of the struggle for survival in an artic desert. The story of the expedition is enhanced when the legends and folk stories on the native culture (eskimos) are interwoven.

The book focuses on a few characters including Francis Crozier, John Irving, Dr Goodsir, and the mysterious Lady Silence. We dive into the thrill of exploring the remaining unknown areas of the world (at that time). How the leadership and poor planning start the team down the wrong path, which leads to their doom. The struggle to survive while the ships are locked into the crushing grip of a frozen ocean. We are taken into starvation, the ravages of scurvy, and the bleakness of this world of endless night.

The crew also has to deal with a creature that stalks them. Much larger, and far smarter than the grat polar bears, this creature slowly reduces the number of crew mates during their time in this frozen prison.

I found myself having a hard time putting the book down during the course of reading it. Enjoy!

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The Terror by Dan Simmons

A fantastic read. A terific job of adding supernatural elements to a horrific tale of survival. The author used a real life tragedy as the basis for his fiction.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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