I enjoyed this so thoroughly. Just don't read it during Winter.

I wasn't sure I would like this book. I don't read much historical fiction. I have never read a Patrick O'Brian novel or anything remotely nautical. A book about a bunch of men stuck on a boat together doesn't sound all that appealing. But I like horror and I really like horror that pushes boundaries and doesn't just do the same old thing. So I was willing to give it a shot. (On AUDIO even. 28 hours!)

I didn't regret it. Not that this is a nonstop thrill fest. But the pacing is one of my favorite things about it. It moves quickly then slowly then quickly again, when it gets slow you can really start to feel the monotony and the frustration and the bitter cold the men have suffered for so long. I also enjoyed our two main characters much more than I expected. Captain Crozier is a hardened, lifetime sailor who's slowly and tediously worked his way up to his rank and he's a measured protagonist who makes a good guide for much of the journey. Dr. Goodsir begins the voyage hilariously naive but the way he grows and changes rounds out the story nicely.

There is indeed a monster. It has just enough of the supernatural to it to be unpredictable and horrifying. I preferred it that way and was a little irked when the ending tried to ground it in mythology. (I'm also not entirely in love with the way the book uses Inuit characters and myths. It's often problematic even though it treats them as superior humans in many ways.)(While we're talking problematic, the single female character is the single biggest weakness. Eye roll.)

But I enjoyed the weeks I spent wrapped up in this story. I enjoyed all the detail. I enjoyed wondering how on earth there could still be 20 hours left. I enjoyed that the monster is really only about 5% of the book (max) and most of the horrors are brought on the men by the hubris of their expedition and the horrors inside of themselves.

n  

Claws sliced the air not five inches from his back. Even in his terror, Blanky marveled – he knew that the arc of his kick had put almost ten feet of air between him and the mainmast as he swung past. The thing must have sunk the claws of its right paw – or hand, or talon, or Devil's nails – into the mast itself while hanging almost free and swinging six feet or more of massive arm at him. But it had missed. It would not miss again when Blanky swung back to the centre.

n
Before I left on holidays, someone asked me what I would be reading and I was excited to reply that I was finally getting around to The Terror by Dan Simmons – a book, as I understood it, that was about the doomed Franklin Expedition of 1845, filled with all of the historical bits about the British Navy's quest for the Northwest Passage, rumoured cannibalism, and spoiled tinned goods. As someone who has read quite a few nonfiction books about the Franklin Expedition, a straight fictional treatment of the story on its own might not have drawn me in, but what's special about this book, as I explained, is that there's some kind of preternatural monster that begins preying on the expedition's crew when they find their ships icebound and helpless. And to add another layer of interest for me, this creature is apparently based on Inuit legend; according to the people who actually live there, this creature might actually exist. The Terror does include all of these layers, but as much as I was looking forward to reading it, as strong as the narrative began, in the end, it became too long, too repetitive, the creature didn't make nearly enough appearances, and when the tie-in to Inuit mythology came crashing in at the end, it felt abrupt and culturally insensitive. Just barely more like than dislike for this one.

The first chapter, set in 1847 as Captain Crozier of the icebound HMS Terror inspects his ship's lower holds, ends on the perfect note:

n  

Something, Francis Crozier suspects, has dug down through these tons of snow and tunneled through the iron-hard slabs of ice to get at the hull of the ship. Somehow the thing has sensed which parts of the interior along the hull, such as the water-storage tanks, are lined with iron, and found one of the few hollow outside storage areas – the Dead Room – that leads directly into the ship. And now it's banging and clawing to get in. Crozier knows that there's only one thing on earth with that much power, deadly persistence, and malevolent intelligence. The monster on the ice is trying to get at them from below.

n
The second chapter then rewinds to 1845, following Captain and expedition leader Sir John Franklin as he prepares for the voyage in the final days before sailing. Again, Simmons hit all the right notes – ominous warnings from other polar explorers about the unsuitability of the two ships under Franklin's command, an introduction to Franklin's history of incompetence and pride, the drawing out of suspense until we can learn more about the monster from the first chapter – and for the longest time, I was satisfied by the shifting timelines and multiple POVs. But this is a long book, and being satisfied for the longest time doesn't mean that I was satisfied for most of this (for example: around page four hundred, Crozier spends pages making a mental list of everyone the expedition had lost to that point and how they died and I truly resented the recap; if I didn't remember any specifics to that point it's because I didn't find them important; Simmons was making a long book needlessly longer and he lost my trust. A couple of hundred pages later, Crozier went through this mental muster again. Ugh. Also: I don't ever need to hear the terms “Preston Patent Illuminators” or “Frazer's Patent Stove” again [I doubt that the crew used these ungainly names, so why should Simmons? Repeatedly?], be told once more that a man with scurvy can be startled to death by a gun shot, nor be reminded that while muskets are more accurate, the seamen were more comfortable with shotguns. One time for each would have done it. Too long made too much longer. Double Ugh.)

n  

Blanky knew a secret that made even his sanguine personality wane: the Thing on the Ice, the Terror itself, was after him.

n
There were many scenes that I did like: Franklin's death took my breath away, I was thoroughly mesmerised by the Carnavale, Hickey's dance took me completely by surprise. Spending months in the dead of winter trapped aboard ship in the ice, and then spending weeks and months hauling sledges across unyielding fields of snow boulders, all while suffering scurvy, malnutrition, and mortal terror, was described in grueling and pitiable detail. I know that the grind and boredom and relentless labour was kind of the point here, but I just wish that more happened in this book; there's a monster following you on the ice, how was that not more exciting? Of course, we all understand that the most monstrous thing out there is man himself:

n  

“All this natural misery,” Dr. Goodsir said suddenly. “Why do you men have to add to it? Why does our species always have to take our full measure of God-given misery and terror and mortality and then make it worse?”

n
And then there's the Inuit presence that ultimately rubbed me the wrong way. “Lady Silence” – a young Inuit woman whose tongue had been chewed off by someone or something – is present from the first chapter, and even if it's historically accurate for the seamen of the day to have referred to her as the “Esquimeaux bitch” or “heathen witch”, her mysterious and mute presence makes her out to be, if not less than, then certainly other than human. In a scene reminiscent of the one I liked about the monster trying to claw its way into the Terror's hull, there's a later one in which a young lieutenant discovers Lady Silence's secret sleeping quarters, from which she had apparently forced her way out of the hull:

Could Lady Silence have done this to the ship? The thought terrified Irving more than any belief in magical ability to appear and disappear at will. Could a young woman not yet twenty years old rip iron hull plates off a ship, dislodge bow timbers that it had taken a shipyard to bend and nail into place, and know exactly where to do all this so sixty men aboard who knew the ship better than their mothers' faces would not notice?

It was with the symmetry of this scene that I really began to dislike Simmons' use of the Lady Silence character, and as other Inuit are introduced, my feelings didn't improve. And then when Simmons recounts the Inuit creation myth and other sacred stories – including the history of where the Terror from the Ice may have come from – that felt like cultural misappropriation; these weren't his stories to tell, and he just wedged them in at the end – and then decided to make a white man join the Inuit and become a leader on their spiritual journey. Lady Silence – if she needed to be a character in Simmons' story – could have been a strong and competent teacher trying to help the expedition to survive, but instead, she's an exotic beauty with literally no voice, certified virgin by the ship's doctor, who peers into men's souls and sleeps in the nude. No thanks.

Because I know the Inuit material really tainted my experience with The Terror, I'm going to end with a couple of officially published reviews. A positive one from Kirkus Review  from 2010:

Simmons convincingly renders both period details and the nuts and bolts of polar exploration as his narrative moves back and forth in time to show the expedition’s launch in 1845 and its early days in the Arctic. Tension builds as the men struggle to survive: The thing is a constant menace, and deaths continue to mount as a result of brutal Arctic conditions. The supernatural element helps resolve the plot in a surprising yet highly effective manner. One of Simmons’ best.

And this contrary opinion from Terrence Rafferty in n  The New York Timesn from 2007:

That persistence alone isn’t enough to transform a bad idea into a good one is probably the chief lesson of the Franklin expedition in particular and the quest for the Northwest Passage in general. The passage, in fact, resisted discovery until 1906; the construction of the Panama Canal soon rendered it unnecessary. The attempt to produce a massive historical novel — one that might achieve the commercial glory of, for example, “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” or “The Crimson Petal and the White” — isn’t, of course, a folly on that level. The quest for the Big Book is neither as heroic an endeavor nor, fortunately, as lethal. (“The Terror” won’t kill you unless it falls on your head.) But when a writer as canny as Dan Simmons can talk himself into something as foolhardy as “The Terror,” you know there’s a kind of insanity loose in the world of publishing, and all I really want to say in my one little page is, Stop the madness.

I tend to the latter opinion.

What a stunning, depressing, bleak read.

I'll be honest, I started this book hatingggg it. The first 30% draggedddd for me, I was confused by the timeline jumping around, and I found a lot of the dialogue and flashbacks to be a bit unnecessary. But after that, this book hooked me and I WAS IN IT. Once it had my attention, there was no going back.

Picture existence in the mid 1800s. Now picture the harsh conditions within the arctic circle. Imagine being in the middle of this stark and barren landscape in a boat made out of wood, with 130 other men, and now you are frozen in for the winter. Outside, the temperature gets to -50 degrees Fahrenheit and inside the ship, even in the heated areas, it is a brisk 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Fresh meat is hard to come by and the supplies onboard are not only dwindling, but spoiling also. Constant risk of scurvy, delirium, freezing, and possible poisoning. Not to mention, the damage done to the ship due to constant pressure from the surrounding ice. After awhile, you know there is no hope, but you must try to survive nonetheless. Oh, and did I forget to mention, there is a super smart supernatural being on the ice hunting you? Bigger than any bear you've ever seen and it seemingly acts with much calculation and intention. Right, you're fucked.

The Terror is a fictional recount of Franklin's lost expedition which set sail in 1845. A lot of research went into this book and the resulting story is absolutely fascinating. The inclusion of Inuit people and their culture & folktales was amazing as well, and something I really appreciated. This is a heavy read with a lot of thought provoking points and underlying themes and symbolism and I can definitely understand why it is so widely loved and highly praised.

This will definitely be a standout for me personally as it led to me having an appreciation for historical fiction - which is a genre I do not read a lot, and one I enjoy even less.

I would say, it is worth the hype. If you're like me and struggling at first - I know its a big ask, but just give it about 50% before you call it quits. Give the story time to draw you in.

Insanely immersive and utterly terrifying on a triumvirate of aspects - the supernatural, the natural and the human not least of all. Simmons crafts an airtight narrative that sweeps you up in all its bleak detail and abject misery, deftly weaving in Inuit legend and myth with some eerie parallels to modern Catholicism. I love the stark dichotomy he creates, depicting how some of the most extreme places and conditions can be sheer hell on Earth for some while for others it's just life as usual.

5 stars

short review for busy readers: The Book of Leviathan: life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Or is it? Paranormal arctic adventure based on a real 19th century expedition.

in detail:
Unlike many other reviewers, I felt the supernatural elements were entirely necessary to the historical plot and fit well with the story, as the Arctic is given to strange phenomenons just on its own. Without those bizarre and unsettling elements, what would you have? A lot of non-action, repetitive downtime on ship and slow, painful death.

A "man vs nature" siege story. The stuff of history tomes, not the stuff of high drama.

The supernatural "monster on the ice" who plagues the ships is in one sense a real thing, but also a metaphor for all the evil in the world. The evil of the gods and the evil of men that must exist in order counterbalance the good of the gods and of men. (Dualism)

"It's the terror of knowing what this world's all about," sang David Bowie. The monster is the embodiment of that terror we all must counterbalance with humanity.

The ending, while being satisfying in that "what happened to them?" kind of way, also felt like an entirely different novel. One I'd be interested in reading more of...but not one that was woven terribly well into the real plight of the crew of the Terror and Erberus. (Hint: massive info dump)

As for flaws, there are some slight errors of editing ...one place were 'pork' becomes 'beef' only to become 'pork' two pages later... a few of the shipboard incidences and a lot of the repetition concerning the symptoms of scurvy and other diseases (not only gross, but felt like page padding after a while) could have been cut, pruning the novel down about 100 pages. Which would have improved the experience.

Still, it's a relatively fast read for 700+ pages and it held my attention over long stretches.

One thing I really liked was the representational tense shifting -- Crozier in present tense, everybody else in past-- and how Simmons was able to keep control of his story over such a long distance, keeping everybody in character and on track.

Not for the faint-hearted!

Where to begin...
Well, I can't seem to get the word Epic out of my head, for one. The details in Dan Simmons' novel are so rich I could almost feel the arctic cold. I imagined I could smell the musty odors of the lower decks and hear the creaking and screaming of stressed wood and metal from the doomed ships trapped in the ice. For me, this was worth the price of admission. Having said that, I would have liked a little better character development for how long the book is. Captain Crozier was really well-drawn. Goodsir and Irving were also. The other primary characters seemed a little thin. Overall a really good book.

Nakon svega, jedino mogu da napišem - kakvo iskustvo.

Bez obzira na to što je priča napisana oslanjajući se na istinit događaj i na to što je potpomognuta detaljnim istraživanjem koje je Simons sproveo, detalji i način na koji je napisana je odlična. Toliko je dobra da sam se smrzavala zajedno sa protagonistima.

Na početku nisam bila uverena da će mi knjiga odgovarati jer generalno ne volim kada radnja prati puno likova koji pripovedaju priču iz svog ugla i kada se ta pripovedanja odigravaju u različitim vremenskim segmentima - jednostavno me ne drži koncentracija toliko dugo i često se vraćam na prethodna poglavlja. Međutim, ono što jeste ishod ovakvih naoko razbacanih svedočenja jeste trenutak kada se svi vremenski tokovi poklope i saznanje o tome šta se dešava jednostavno udara direktno u glavu.

Svako ko je pročitao detalje o knjizi saznao je da se sa ekspedicije niko nije vratio živ, te otuda postavlja pitanje o čemu onda Simons piše na 650+ strana. Piše o ljudima, njihovoj unutrašnjoj borbi, kao i o borbi sa vremenskim uslovima i drugim ljudima. Piše o nizu odluka koje su u trenutku donošenja izgledale racionalno, ali su odredile sudbinu oba broda i 135 ljudi na njima. Takođe, Simons piše o svom viđenju toga šta se zapravo desilo. Ovde dolazimo do upliva natprirodne sile koju ljudi na brodovima jednostavno nazivaju Stvorom. Svakako da veliko interesovanje bude i pitanja šta je taj Stvor zapravo, odakle on na Severnom polu i zašto kolje pred sobom sve što mu se nađe.

Na moje veliko iznenađenje, zapravo dobijamo ovaj odgovor. Ako se većina knjige oslanjala na to kako ljudi funkcionišu u nadi da će ipak preživeti nesreću koja ih je zadesila i prati njihove sudbine, poslednjih sedamdesetak stranica je potpuno nov nivo pripovedanja i upliva motiva. Simonsovo istraživanje obuhvatilo je i spiritualizam te njegove veze za samom lokacijom, kao i Eskime i njihovu kulturu.

Jako je teško pisati o likovima jer je bilo puno sjajnih, bili oni označeni kao antagonisti ili protagonisti, a ujedno je teško napisati osvrt a ne pomenuti kapetana Terora, Krozijera. Put koji on prolazi je potpuno fantastičan. Zanimljivo mi je da o njemu razmišljam kao o osobi koja je tek na kraju puta naišla na smisao svog ovozemaljskog postojanja, a onda se ponovo rodio.

Wow, what an epic tale!
The Terror is a horror re-telling of the lost Franklin Expedition in the 1840s. The audiobook was 28 hours long but I wasn't bored for one second of it. Part was due to the amazing writing and storytelling by Dan Simmons; while the other part was due to the excellent narration by Tom Sellwood. I can't recommend enough!

"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."

Simmons' ambitious historical novel imagines the fate of the missing and (at the time of publication) undiscovered 19th century expedition of HMS Terror and HMS Erebus to find the fabled Northwest Passage, a story injected with supernatural horror, Hobbesian philosophical undercurrents, and dry, dark biting humor. The plot can be mildly confusing and slow in the early going, with jumps back and forth in time to fill in background details together with lengthy descriptive passages about everything from the ship's construction and refitting and layout to background on almost every man in the crew, but the patient reader is rewarded with a richly nuanced story with vividly rendered characters that crescendos with a scene referencing Poe's The Masque of the Red Death. It all begs the question of what is the real "Terror" referenced in the title? The ship? The creature on the ice stalking the crew? The harsh and unforgiving climate? Or man himself?

"We are all eaters of souls."

Be sure to visit my Favorites Shelf for the books I found most entertaining.

Wow! This book is quite an adventure—for the characters and the reader.

I'm writing my review having not completed the book; I'm 77% finished. I've held onto every single word; have had a hard time putting the book down. I don't want it to end, but it has to. We've lost many beloved characters along the way, and there's one evildoer who remains alive and I can't wait to see what his fate is. I know what he deserves, but we won't go into that ... spoilers and all. Also, what about this creature on the ice? Will the remaining men of the two crews be able to 'conquer the beast' or were the fates of the men on HMS Terror and Erebus written the minute they stepped onto the ice? I can't wait to see how it all ends.

The Terror is grand in scale, an epic adventure that will keep you captivated from start to finish. Before I made the halfway point, I knew I'd go on to rate it five stars and I knew I'd be going out and buying a paper copy for my personal library even though it's on my kindle.

Czułam ten chłód i mrok również w swoich kościach!

A lo largo de la lectura a veces se tiene la sensación de que es pesado, sin embargo, me ha gustado bastante la historia, ya que a pesar de que habían muchas cosas que se veian venir (tanto así que te provoca meterte en la historia y darle unas cachetadas a algunos personajes para vean lo obvio), de igual manera tuve algunas sorpresas que hicieron grato el desarrollo final.
Me agrada esa sensación en la que no sabes de va que la historia, si es algo fantástico, sobrenatural o psicológico.
El ambiente fue descrito con gran detalle y en mi caso, me sentí como un espectador mirando todo de cerca, por lo que creo que la narración fue bien lograda.
Sin duda alguna seguiré leyendo obras de Dan Simmons.