The Terror - Dan Simmons

Could hardly think of a book that is more my brand. Historical arctic adventuring goes horribly awry in the bleak landscape when they get stuck in the ice. They then experience starvation, scurvy, extreme temperatures, mutiny, cannibalism, and slow death. While dealing with all this, there is also a terrifying supernatural creature that stalks and kills them horribly. This is my perfect winter read.

The Terror is a 2007 novel by American author Dan Simmons that tells a fictionalized version of Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition, on HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, to the Arctic. The real expedition, to attempt to locate the Northwest Passage began in 1845.

There comes a point in the expedition when the water freezes around them and they have to wait to go on. Once they realize their ships aren’t going to get free from the ice in the summer of 1847, things turn extremely dark. "There would be no release from this belly of the Leviathan winter this summer. No escape from the cold belly of this ice this year."

That is when the real evil shows itself--a stalking, snow monster they call “the thing on the ice” that picks them off one by one. "To go out on the frozen sea in the dark now with that … thing … waiting in the jumble of pressure ridges and tall sastrugi was certain death.”

Historically, none of the 100-plus men survived. Not much is known about how they died. Probably a combination of starvation, hypothermia, sickness, and cannibalism. Also, research suggests that their food was improperly canned by a dishonest contractor that made it toxic from both lead poisoning and bacteria. However it went down, the Franklin expedition was one of slow death in the bleakest of landscapes.

Most of the characters were actually members of Franklin's crew. Over the years, the group’s unexplained disappearance has been the subject of a great deal of speculation. Main characters include Captain Sir John Franklin, commander of the expedition and captain of Erebus; Captain Francis Crozier, captain of Terror; Dr. Harry D. S. Goodsir; and Commander James Fitzjames.

Some of my favorite works of horror fiction either take place on an immobilized ship or in the inhospitable arctic. Works like Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”, and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, which all just off the top of my mind. I also read a lot of exploration/adventure books, most recently To the Edges of the Earth by Edward J. Larson about the race to the so-called three poles in 1909.

Like all of those works I mentioned The Terror is not an easy read. The copy I read was nearly 800 pages. But, like the best adventure novels, it is horrible/rewarding. As an arctic-adventure-obsessive, I love reading about this shit, though it is always difficult and traumatizing. Highly recommend if you are into that sort of thing.