The Terror by Dan simmons

Few novels make you truly appreciate history. In 1845,  Captain John Franklin of the UK led a doomed expedition to the NorthWest Passage. It was a spectacular failure. For over a year, Franklin’s crew was trapped in the ice.

Numerous expeditions from the UK were sent to find and hopefully rescue Franklin’s crew. They never found them until it was too late.

The entire crew died, and there have been many theories into the whys and how.

The Terror is of course a fictionalized account of what happened, with a good doze of supernatural fantasy also added to the tail.

In this book, the crew is not only trapped in the ice, they are also being slowly hunted by a supernatual monster of legendary proportions.

The book itself numbers around 955 pages. Simmons isn’t so much a writer as he is a world builder. This is one of the rare books in where the reader is transported to another world. I could feel the numbing colder of the arctic. I could feel the dread of being slowly hunted by a supernatural monster.

In real world history, the crew of the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus were trapped in the ice for 3 years. They died a long slow death, through their steady diet of rationed canned goods and salt pork.

Which way would you rather go? Quick or slow? The crew is hundreds of miles away from civilization, and only has the company of a supernatural monster who can’t, and won’t let them leave.

In the end, I encourage the reader to give this magnum opus a try. It’s a jaw dropping read, and it truly takes your reading experience to another level.

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