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A review by natreviews
The Terror by Dan Simmons
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I had wanted to read this book after finishing my ABC challenge for this year. I am glad I did.
You can tell Dan Simmons did a lot, and I mean A LOT, of research for this story (as I'm told he does for all of his historical fiction books). He researched the very real lost expedition of Sir John Franklin and of the Indigenous people of Greenland and Canada (as some mythologies in the last third of the book comes from the Greenland Inuit people). He blends the historical and the supernatural very well.
He also got a lot of the details found from the expedition right. For those of you who don't know, after the ship went missing there were rescue expeditions which found items from the ship and evidence of the remaining crew escaping. I recommend reading this article for more information: https://allthatsinteresting.com/hms-terror
The only things he got wrong were things he couldn't have known. Parts of the last chapterwhen Crozier goes back and lights HMS Terror on fire, sinking the ship couldn't have happened, as the HMS Terror was discovered fully intact and having no outside reason to sink. This book was published in 2007, HMS Terror was found in 2014, and HMS Erebus was found in 2016.
I will say it's a very long read, but the last two chapters make up for how slow it goes in the second half. The second half makes up how slow it goes in the first half, and well the first half sets up the story that takes place later on in the book.
You can tell Dan Simmons did a lot, and I mean A LOT, of research for this story (as I'm told he does for all of his historical fiction books). He researched the very real lost expedition of Sir John Franklin and of the Indigenous people of Greenland and Canada (as some mythologies in the last third of the book comes from the Greenland Inuit people). He blends the historical and the supernatural very well.
He also got a lot of the details found from the expedition right. For those of you who don't know, after the ship went missing there were rescue expeditions which found items from the ship and evidence of the remaining crew escaping. I recommend reading this article for more information: https://allthatsinteresting.com/hms-terror
The only things he got wrong were things he couldn't have known. Parts of the last chapter
I will say it's a very long read, but the last two chapters make up for how slow it goes in the second half. The second half makes up how slow it goes in the first half, and well the first half sets up the story that takes place later on in the book.