Print List Price: | $21.99 |
Kindle Price: | $10.99 Save $11.00 (50%) |
Sold by: | Hachette Book Group Price set by seller. |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
![Kindle app logo image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/kindle/app/kindle-app-logo._CB668847749_.png)
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/common/grey-pixel.gif)
Image Unavailable
Color:
-
-
-
- To view this video download Flash Player
-
-
VIDEO
-
The Terror: A Novel Kindle Edition
The men on board the HMS Terror — part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage — are entering a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, they struggle to survive with poisonous rations, a dwindling coal supply, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is even more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror clawing to get in.
“The best and most unusual historical novel I have read in years.” —Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherLittle, Brown and Company
- Publication dateMarch 8, 2007
- File size2907 KB
Customers who bought this item also bought
- Why does our species always have to take our full measure of God-given misery and terror and mortality and then make it worse?Highlighted by 363 Kindle readers
- Maybe reading is a sort of curse is all I mean, concluded Fowler. Maybe it’s better for a man to stay inside his own mind.Highlighted by 308 Kindle readers
- He was a smart man whose mind was stupid with the chemical by-products of constant fatigue.Highlighted by 246 Kindle readers
- The monster on the ice was just another manifestation of a Devil that wanted them dead. And that wanted them to suffer.Highlighted by 228 Kindle readers
- Hobbes’s Leviathan. Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.Highlighted by 160 Kindle readers
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
First-rate historical fiction.
-- "Oregon"The Terror is both dazzling history and a sparkling chiller.
-- "People"The best and most unusual historical novel I have read in years.
-- "Boston Globe"Brutal, relentless, yet oddly uplifting, The Terror is a masterfully chilling work.
-- "Entertainment Weekly"A brilliant, massive combination of history and supernatural horror.
-- "Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author"The Terror makes some keen observations about man and nature, civilization and savagery.
-- "San Francisco Chronicle"Simmons, an accomplished writer of horror and sci fi, is predictably adroit in his deployment of terror, but the greatest pleasure of the novel lies in the sharp and sympathetic portrayals of Captain Francis Crozier, who assumes command of the expedition after Franklin's death, and Dr. Harry Goodsir, the mild yet determined ship's physician.
-- "New Yorker"From the Inside Flap
About the Author
From The Washington Post
The fate of Sir John Franklin's last expedition remains one of the great mysteries of Arctic exploration. What we know, more or less, is this: In the balmy days of May 1845, 129 officers and men aboard two ships -- Erebus and Terror -- departed from England for the Canadian Arctic in search of a Northwest Passage to the Pacific. They were never heard from again. Between 1847 and 1859, Franklin's wife pushed for and funded various relief missions, even as the expectation of finding survivors was replaced by the slim hope for answers.
It's a story perfectly suited for fiction, if only because we have so little else to go on. Dan Simmons's new novel, The Terror, dives headlong into the frozen waters of the Franklin mystery, mixing historical adventure with gothic horror -- a sort of Patrick O'Brian meets Edgar Allan Poe against the backdrop of a J.M.W. Turner icescape. Meticulously researched and brilliantly imagined, The Terror won't satisfy historians or even Franklin buffs, but as a literary hybrid, the novel presents a dramatic and mythic argument for how and why Franklin and his men met their demise.
The book opens well into the middle of things, at the onset of the ships' third winter beset in sea ice. Months after Franklin's own death, his second-in-command is now in charge. Gothic imagery pervades, as "Captain Crozier comes up on deck to find his ship under attack by celestial ghosts." This "attack" turns out to be an artful description of the aurora borealis, though Simmons never tells us that directly. Indeed, the power of his metaphoric language comes from the archetypal superstitions of the crew, who, despite their anchor of Protestant Christianity, are a pagan lot deep down.
But the crew's belief in witches and magic may or may not explain their main fear: a "Thing on the ice" that stalks, beheads, eviscerates and otherwise kills off crewmen one by one. For 200 pages or so, we aren't sure if this beast is a figment of their overactive imaginations, maybe a giant polar bear or a yeti of Northern lore, a monster suggesting the "beastie" of Golding's Lord of the Flies -- the terror within -- or Beowulf's Grendel, not to say Grendel's mother -- a preternatural, evil intelligence bent on destruction.
Faced with mutinous threats, general starvation, intense cold and something wrong with their tinned food supply (scurvy and lead poisoning appear rampant), Crozier provides leadership without arrogance. As the novel's protagonist, he is a man of the people, a realist, unlucky in love. As an Irishman in the British Royal Navy, he has been largely ignored by the Admiralty despite his stoic competence.
By contrast, Franklin represents most of what was wrong in early British Arctic exploration. His prior expeditions had met with minimal success, making him best known in England as "the man who ate his shoes," though given all the other things men ate to stay alive on Arctic expeditions, it's unclear why shoe leather would be singled out for ignominy. Goaded by his very public failings, Franklin retained his penchant for arrogant idealism and wasteful ritual. He brought along fine china and monogrammed silverware, among other "necessities." In the end, his primary mistake is cultural: Out of xenophobia he refuses to adopt local methods of travel, shelter and hunting. Yet to say that Sir John gets his just deserts is unfair if only because 128 others suffer the same fate.
Crozier recognizes the captain's weaknesses, and therein lies the novel's poignant sense of loss. He dispenses shipboard justice out of practical necessity rather than lofty idealism. In their desperate hours, he preaches not from the Bible favored by Franklin but from the "Book of Leviathan" -- his own recitations from Thomas Hobbes, which, among other things, explains the birth of superstition and religion: "There was nothing which a Poet could introduce as a person in his Poem, which [man] did not make into either a God or a Divel." As the novel descends toward its hellish climax, the "Divel" chasing our crew -- that "Thing on the ice" -- transcends its monstrous nature and becomes the manifestation of earthly retribution, wild payback for the hubris of Western civilization.
The vehicle of that transcendence is Lady Silence, a mute Inuit girl who lives on the ship and goes at her own whim, providing a portal to Eskimo mythology and shamanism. Northern spiritual philosophy gives the world -- and this novel -- its ultimate balance, predicting the coming of kabloona ("pale people"), whose arrival brings "drunkenness and despair," melts the sea ice, kills off the white bear and calls forth the "End of Times." While Franklin's men are unable to escape the realities of starvation, brutal cold and the violent urge, Crozier's instinct for survival pushes the novel to its ethereal end.
This mix of historical realism, gothic horror and ancient mythology is a difficult walk on fractured ice, and anyone without Simmons's mastery of narrative craft would have undoubtedly fallen through. Despite its Leviathan length, The Terror proves a compelling read, while making the average meal consumed by the average American seem a precious gift from warm-weather gods.
Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Terror
A NovelBy Dan SimmonsLITTLE, BROWN
Copyright © 2007 Dan SimmonsAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-316-01744-2
Chapter One
CROZIERLat. 70;-05'N., Long. 98;-23' W. October, 1847
Captain Crozier comes up on deck to find his ship under attack by celestial ghosts. Above him - above Terror - shimmering folds of light lunge but then quickly withdraw like the colourful arms of aggressive but ultimately uncertain spectres. Ectoplasmic skeletal fingers extend toward the ship, open, prepare to grasp, and pull back.
The temperature is -50 degrees Fahrenheit and dropping fast. Because of the fog that came through earlier, during the single hour of weak twilight now passing for their day, the foreshortened masts - the three topmasts, topgallants, upper rigging, and highest spars have been removed and stored to cut down on the danger of falling ice and to reduce the chances of the ship capsizing because of the weight of ice on them - stand now like rudely pruned and topless trees reflecting the aurora that dances from one dimly seen horizon to the other. As Crozier watches, the jagged ice fields around the ship turn blue, then bleed violet, then glow as green as the hills of his childhood in northern Ireland. Almost a mile off the starboard bow, the gigantic floating ice mountain that hides Terror's sister ship, Erebus, from view seems for a brief, false moment to radiate colour from within, glowing from its own cold, internal fires.
Pulling up his collar and tilting his head back, out of forty years' habit of checking the status of masts and rigging, Crozier notices that the stars overhead burn cold and steady but those near the horizon not only flicker but shift when stared at, moving in short spurts to the left, then to the right, then jiggling up and down. Crozier has seen this before - in the far south with Ross as well as in these waters on earlier expeditions. A scientist on that south polar trip, a man who spent the first winter in the ice there grinding and polishing lenses for his own telescope, had told Crozier that the perturbation of the stars was probably due to rapidly shifting refraction in the cold air lying heavy but uneasy over the ice-covered seas and unseen frozen landmasses. In other words, over new continents never before seen by the eyes of man. Or at least, Crozier thinks, in this northern arctic, by the eyes of white men.
Crozier and his friend and then-commander James Ross had found just such a previously undiscovered continent - Antarctica - less than five years earlier. They named the sea, inlets, and landmass after Ross. They named mountains after their sponsors and friends. They named the two volcanoes they could see on the horizon after their two ships - these same two ships - calling the smoking mountains Erebus and Terror. Crozier was surprised they hadn't named some major piece of geography after the ship's cat.
They named nothing after him. There is, on this October winter's dark-day evening in 1847, no arctic or antarctic continent, island, bay, inlet, range of mountains, ice shelf, volcano, or fucking floeberg which bears the name of Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier.
Crozier doesn't give the slightest God-damn. Even as he thinks this, he realizes that he's a little bit drunk. Well, he thinks, automatically adjusting his balance to the icy deck now canted twelve degrees to starboard and down eight degrees by the bow, I've been drunk more often than not now for three years, haven't I? Drunk ever since Sophia. But I'm still a better sailor and captain drunk than that poor, unlucky bastard Franklin ever was sober. Or his rosy-cheeked lisping pet poodle Fitzjames, for that matter.
Crozier shakes his head and walks down the icy deck forward to the bow and toward the only man on watch he can make out in the flickering light from the aurora.
It is short, rat-faced Cornelius Hickey, caulker's mate. The men look all the same out here on watch in the dark, since they're all issued the same cold-weather slops: layers of flannel and wool covered with a heavy waterproof greatcoat, bulbous mittens protruding from voluminous sleeves, their Welsh wigs - heavy watch caps with floppy ears - pulled tight, often with long comforters - scarves - wrapped around their heads until only the tips of their frostbitten noses are visible. But each man layers or wears his cold-weather slops slightly differently - adding a comforter from home, perhaps, or an extra Welsh wig tugged down over the first, or perhaps colorful gloves lovingly knit by a mother or wife or sweetheart peeking out from under the Royal Navy outer mittens - and Crozier has learned to tell all fifty-nine of his surviving officers and men apart, even at a distance outside and in the dark.
Hickey is staring fixedly out beyond the icicle-sheathed bowsprit, the foremost ten feet of which are now embedded in a ridge of sea ice, as HMS Terror's stern has been forced up by the ice pressure and the bow is pushed lower. Hickey is so lost in thought or cold that the caulker's mate doesn't notice his captain's approach until Crozier joins him at a railing that has become an altar of ice and snow. The lookout's shotgun is propped against that altar. No man wants to touch metal out here in the cold, not even through mittens.
Hickey starts slightly as Crozier leans close to him at the railing. Terror's captain can't see the twenty-six-year-old's face, but a puff of his breath - instantly turning into a cloud of ice crystals reflecting the aurora - appears beyond the thick circle of the smaller man's multiple comforters and Welsh wig.
Men traditionally don't salute during the winter in the ice, not even the casual knuckling of the forehead an officer receives at sea, but the thick-clad Hickey does that odd little shuffle and shrug and head dip by which the men acknowledge their captain's presence while outside. Because of the cold, the watches have been cut down from four hours to two - God knows, thinks Crozier, we have enough men for that on this overcrowded ship, even with the lookouts doubled - and he can tell just by Hickey's slow movements that he's half-frozen. As many times as he's told the lookouts that they have to keep moving on deck - walk, run in place, jump up and down if they have to, all the while keeping their attention on the ice - they still tend to stand immobile for the majority of their watch, just as if they were in the South Seas wearing their tropical cotton and watching for mermaids.
"Captain."
"Mr. Hickey. Anything?"
"Nothing since them shots ... that one shot ... almost two hours ago, sir. Just a while ago I heard, I think I heard ... maybe a scream, something, Captain ... from out beyond the ice mountain. I reported it to Lieutenant Irving, but he said it was probably just the ice acting up."
Crozier had been told about the sound of the shot from the direction of Erebus and had quickly come up on deck two hours ago, but there'd been no repetition of the sound and he'd sent no messenger to the other ship nor anyone out on the ice to investigate. 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. Messages were passed between the ships now only during those dwindling minutes of half-light around noon. In a few days, there would be no real day at all, only arctic night. Round-the-clock night. One hundred days of night.
"Perhaps it was the ice," says Crozier, wondering why Irving hadn't reported the possible scream. "The shot as well. Only the ice."
"Yes, Captain. The ice it is, sir."
Neither man believes it - a musket shot or shotgun blast has a distinctive sound, even from a mile away, and sound travels almost supernaturally far and clearly this far north - but it's true that the ice pack squeezing ever more tightly against Terror is always rumbling, moaning, cracking, snapping, roaring, or screaming.
The screams bother Crozier the most, waking him from his hour or so of sound sleep each night. They sound too much like his mother's crying in her last days ... of that and his old aunt's tales of banshees wailing in the night, predicting the death of someone in the house. Both had kept him awake as a boy.
Crozier turns slowly. His eyelashes are already rimmed with ice, and his upper lip is crusted with frozen breath and snot. The men have learned to keep their beards tucked far under their comforters and sweaters, but frequently they must resort to hacking away hair that has frozen to their clothing. Crozier, like most of the officers, continues to shave every morning, although, in the effort to conserve coal, the "hot water" his steward brings him tends to be just barely melted ice, and shaving can be a painful business.
"Is Lady Silence still on deck?" asks Crozier.
"Oh, yes, Captain, she's almost always up here," says Hickey, whispering now as if it made a difference. Even if Silence could hear them, she couldn't understand their English. But the men believe - more and more every day the thing on the ice stalks them - that the young Esquimaux woman is a witch with secret powers.
"She's at the port station with Lieutenant Irving," adds Hickey.
"Lieutenant Irving? His watch should have been over an hour ago."
"Aye, sir. But wherever Lady Silence is these days, there's the lieutenant, sir, if you don't mind me mentioning it. She don't go below, he don't go below. Until he has to, I mean.... None of us can stay out here as long as that wi- ... that woman."
"Keep your eyes on the ice, and your mind on your job, Mr. Hickey."
Crozier's gruff voice makes the caulker's mate start again, but he shuffles his shrug salute and turns his white nose back toward the darkness beyond the bow.
Crozier strides up the deck toward the port lookout post. The previous month, he prepared the ship for winter after three weeks of false hope of escape in August. Crozier had once again ordered the lower spars to be swung around along the parallel axis of the ship, using them as a ridgepole. Then they had reconstructed the tent pyramid to cover most of the main deck, rebuilding the wooden rafters that had been stowed below during their few weeks of optimism. But even though the men work hours every day shoveling avenues through the foot or so of snow left for insulation on deck, hacking away ice with picks and chisels, clearing out the spindrift that has come under the canvas roof, and finally putting lines of sand down for traction, there always remains a glaze of ice. Crozier's movement up the tilted and canted deck is sometimes more a graceful half-skating motion than a stride.
The appointed port lookout for this watch, midshipman Tommy Evans - Crozier identifies the youngest man on board by the absurd green stocking cap, obviously made by the boy's mother, that Evans always pulls down over his bulky Welsh wig - has moved ten paces astern to allow Third Lieutenant Irving and Silence some privacy.
This makes Captain Crozier want to kick someone - everyone - in the arse.
The Esquimaux woman looks like a short round bear in her furry parka, hood, and pants. She has her back half turned to the tall lieutenant. But Irving is crowded close to her along the rail - not quite touching, but closer than an officer and gentleman would stand to a lady at a garden party or on a pleasure yacht.
"Lieutenant Irving." Crozier didn't mean to put quite so much bark into the greeting, but he's not unhappy when the young man levitates as if poked by the point of a sharp blade, almost loses his balance, grabs the iced railing with his left hand, and - as he insists on doing despite now knowing the proper protocol of a ship in the ice - salutes with his right hand.
It's a pathetic salute, thinks Crozier, and not just because the bulky mittens, Welsh wig, and layers of cold-weather slops make young Irving look something like a saluting walrus, but also because the lad has let his comforter fall away from his clean-shaven face - perhaps to show Silence how handsome he is - and now two long icicles dangle below his nostrils, making him look even more like a walrus.
"As you were," snaps Crozier. God-damn fool, he mentally adds.
Irving stands rigid, glances at Silence - or at least at the back of her hairy hood - and opens his mouth to speak. Evidently he can think of nothing to say. He closes his mouth. His lips are as white as his frozen skin.
"This isn't your watch, Lieutenant," says Crozier, hearing the whip-crack in his voice again.
"Aye, aye, sir. I mean, no, sir. I mean, the captain is correct, sir. I mean ..." Irving clamps his mouth shut again, but the effect is ruined somewhat by the chattering of his teeth. In this cold, teeth can shatter after two or three hours - actually explode - sending shrapnel of bone and enamel flying inside the cavern of one's clenched jaws. Sometimes, Crozier knows from experience, you can hear the enamel cracking just before the teeth explode.
"Why are you still out here, John?"
Irving tries to blink, but his eyelids are literally frozen open. "You ordered me to watch over our guest ... to look out for ... to take care of Silence, Captain."
Crozier's sigh emerges as ice crystals that hang in the air for a second and then fall to the deck like so many minuscule diamonds. "I didn't mean every minute, Lieutenant. I told you to watch her, report to me on what she does, to keep her out of mischief and harm's way on the ship, and to see that none of the men do anything to ... compromise her. Do you think she's in danger of being compromised out here on deck, Lieutenant?"
"No, Captain." Irving's sentence sounds more like a question than an answer.
"Do you know how long it takes for exposed flesh to freeze out here, Lieutenant?"
"No, Captain. I mean, yes, Captain. Rather quickly, sir, I think."
"You should know, Lieutenant Irving. You've had frostbite six times already, and it's not even officially winter yet."
Lieutenant Irving nods dolefully.
"It takes less than a minute for an exposed finger or thumb - or any fleshy appendage - to freeze solid," continues Crozier, who knows that this is a load of horse cobblers. It takes much longer than that at a mere fifty below, but he hopes that Irving doesn't know this. "After that, the exposed member will snap off like an icicle," adds Crozier.
"Yes, Captain."
"So do you really think there's any chance that our visitor might be ... compromised ... out here on deck, Mr. Irving?"
Irving seems to be thinking about this before replying. It's possible, Crozier realizes, that the third lieutenant has put far too much thought into this equation already.
"Go below, John," says Crozier. "And see Dr. McDonald about your face and fingers. I swear to God that if you've gotten seriously frostbitten again, I'll dock you a month's Discovery Service pay and write your mother to boot."
"Yes, Captain. Thank you, sir." Irving starts to salute again, thinks better of it, and ducks under the canvas toward the main ladderway with one hand still half raised. He does not look back at Silence.
Crozier sighs again. He likes John Irving. The lad had volunteered - along with two of his mates from the HMS Excellent, Second Lieutenant Hodgson and First Mate Hornby - but the Excellent was a damned three-decker that was old before Noah had fuzz around his dongle. The ship had been mastless and permanently moored in Portsmouth, Crozier knew, for more than fifteen years, serving as a training vessel for the Royal Navy's most promising gunners. Unfortunately, gentlemen, Crozier had told the boys during their first day aboard - the captain had been more than usually drunk that day - if you look around, you'll notice that while Terror and Erebus were both built as bombardment ships, gentlemen, neither has a single gun between them. We are, young volunteers from Excellent - unless one counts the Marines' muskets and the shotguns secured in the Spirit Room - as gunless as a newborn babe. As gunless as fucking Adam in his fucking birthday suit. In other words, gentlemen, you gunnery experts are about as useful to this expedition as teats would be on a boar.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Terrorby Dan Simmons Copyright © 2007 by Dan Simmons. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- ASIN : B000PAAH3A
- Publisher : Little, Brown and Company (March 8, 2007)
- Publication date : March 8, 2007
- Language : English
- File size : 2907 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 944 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 1407038990
- Best Sellers Rank: #9,235 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #23 in Historical Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Fiction
- #27 in U.S. Horror Fiction
- #45 in U.S. Historical Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
Videos
Videos for this product
0:41
Click to play video
The Terror: A Novel
Amazon Videos
About the author
![Dan Simmons](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/21rLSUBT0qL._SY600_.jpg)
Dan Simmons was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1948, and grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source of his fictional "Elm Haven" in 1991's SUMMER OF NIGHT and 2002's A WINTER HAUNTING. Dan received a B.A. in English from Wabash College in 1970, winning a national Phi Beta Kappa Award during his senior year for excellence in fiction, journalism and art.
Dan received his Masters in Education from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971. He then worked in elementary education for 18 years -- 2 years in Missouri, 2 years in Buffalo, New York -- one year as a specially trained BOCES "resource teacher" and another as a sixth-grade teacher -- and 14 years in Colorado.
His last four years in teaching were spent creating, coordinating, and teaching in APEX, an extensive gifted/talented program serving 19 elementary schools and some 15,000 potential students. During his years of teaching, he won awards from the Colorado Education Association and was a finalist for the Colorado Teacher of the Year. He also worked as a national language-arts consultant, sharing his own "Writing Well" curriculum which he had created for his own classroom. Eleven and twelve-year-old students in Simmons' regular 6th-grade class averaged junior-year in high school writing ability according to annual standardized and holistic writing assessments. Whenever someone says "writing can't be taught," Dan begs to differ and has the track record to prove it. Since becoming a full-time writer, Dan likes to visit college writing classes, has taught in New Hampshire's Odyssey writing program for adults, and is considering hosting his own Windwalker Writers' Workshop.
Dan's first published story appeared on Feb. 15, 1982, the day his daughter, Jane Kathryn, was born. He's always attributed that coincidence to "helping in keeping things in perspective when it comes to the relative importance of writing and life."
Dan has been a full-time writer since 1987 and lives along the Front Range of Colorado -- in the same town where he taught for 14 years -- with his wife, Karen. He sometimes writes at Windwalker -- their mountain property and cabin at 8,400 feet of altitude at the base of the Continental Divide, just south of Rocky Mountain National Park. An 8-ft.-tall sculpture of the Shrike -- a thorned and frightening character from the four Hyperion/Endymion novels -- was sculpted by an ex-student and friend, Clee Richeson, and the sculpture now stands guard near the isolated cabin.
Dan is one of the few novelists whose work spans the genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror, suspense, historical fiction, noir crime fiction, and mainstream literary fiction . His books are published in 27 foreign counties as well as the U.S. and Canada.
Many of Dan's books and stories have been optioned for film, including SONG OF KALI, DROOD, THE CROOK FACTORY, and others. Some, such as the four HYPERION novels and single Hyperion-universe novella "Orphans of the Helix", and CARRION COMFORT have been purchased (the Hyperion books by Warner Brothers and Graham King Films, CARRION COMFORT by European filmmaker Casta Gavras's company) and are in pre-production. Director Scott Derrickson ("The Day the Earth Stood Stood Still") has been announced as the director for the Hyperion movie and Casta Gavras's son has been put at the helm of the French production of Carrion Comfort. Current discussions for other possible options include THE TERROR. Dan's hardboiled Joe Kurtz novels are currently being looked as the basis for a possible cable TV series.
In 1995, Dan's alma mater, Wabash College, awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contributions in education and writing.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the storyline compelling, detailed, and creepy. They describe the reading experience as thrilling and wonderful. They also describe the plot as fascinating on all levels and fully realized. Readers praise the writing quality as vivid, interwoven with cumbersome detail, and setting an atmosphere. They find the characters believable. However, some find the writing style too jargony and drags. Opinions are mixed on the length and pacing, with some finding it very long and easy to keep reading, while others say it drags a little in places.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the storyline compelling, suspenseful, and absorbing. They also say it brings historical events alive and is imaginative, thrilling, and engaging. Readers also mention that the author writes with historical accuracy.
"...novel of 2007 and is highly recommended to those who love vividly written stories with a strong dose of horror thrown in for good measure." Read more
"...of the imagination, a cross-genre masterpiece which expertly blends historical fiction, horror, a dash of fantasy, mystery, suspense, action and..." Read more
"...On another level, it is compelling history that will have you scanning the Internet for more information about the barren Artic tundra and the facts..." Read more
"...Simmons takes this further by offering a compelling and detailed fictional account of how things may have gone, adding the spiritual, mystical and..." Read more
Customers find the book quite the read, masterfully told, and edge-of-your seat thrilling. They also say the TV show was great.
"...that Mr. Simmons had to do in order to write this novel, the book is so damn good and detailed oriented that it's like he was actually there himself...." Read more
"...I thought this was a really good book. I did think it was a bit long as a few parts dragged for me...." Read more
"...creates an immersive and intense human drama which blends pace with true literary quality...." Read more
"...and painfully poignant novel more fact than fiction - a spellbinding achievement that keeps all 766 pages turning to an unexpected and strangely..." Read more
Customers find the plot fascinating on all levels, incredibly well-researched, and well-written. They also appreciate the wonderful detail and imagination. Readers also mention that the profound implications of the underlying message are fully realized.
"...to do in order to write this novel, the book is so damn good and detailed oriented that it's like he was actually there himself...." Read more
"...of Francis Crozier is also pure genius, making him one of the most engaging and flawed literary characters I've stumbled across in a while: right up..." Read more
"...and meticulous character development, it is a story that can be enjoyed on many levels...." Read more
"...It seems to be well researched, (the author clearly did his homework before putting this together), and the author tries to create an “epic” sort of..." Read more
Customers find the writing vivid, extraordinary, and faultless. They also say the descriptions are clear and literate. Customers also say it's a well-crafted masterpiece that captures the atmosphere and sense of desolation perfectly.
"...Mr. Simmons captures the atmosphere and sense of desolation perfectly. He brings all of the characters to life...." Read more
"...The doomed New Year's fete is the most vivid part of the book, full of color and action, with all characters present, interacting and taking action..." Read more
"...I thought this was kind of weak, as the book sets up questions, conflicts, and plot lines that are answered or explained in a murky, unsubstantial,..." Read more
"...It's also extremely well written and very atmospheric...." Read more
Customers find the characters in the book believable.
"...He brings all of the characters to life. There's going to be those you care for and those you hate with a grim passion...." Read more
"...is also pure genius, making him one of the most engaging and flawed literary characters I've stumbled across in a while: right up there with Sydney..." Read more
"...Thanks to painstaking research and meticulous character development, it is a story that can be enjoyed on many levels...." Read more
"...The characters are well-drawn and true...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the length of the book. Some find it very long as just an abridged version, while others say it's based on real events.
"...I thought this was a really good book. I did think it was a bit long as a few parts dragged for me...." Read more
"...This is a long book, sure, but it's certainly not the interminable slog many have lamented...." Read more
"...Now, it's long. Simmons isn't what you'd call terse, ever, and there's a lot of story here for what seems like such a straight-forward premise...." Read more
"...Right now it's too long and too muddled, but it has enough going for it that I opted for four stars instead of three...." Read more
Customers are mixed about the pacing. Some find the book fast paced and a quick read, while others say it plods along much too slow and some parts do drag.
"...The last 200 pages moved more quickly and interestingly. The first 3/4 was too slow and not much action could happen with two ships stuck in the..." Read more
"...This also takes some getting used to, but sorts itself out rather quickly, and also adds to the depth of the story...." Read more
"...I found this book very difficult to get through purely due to its slow pace...." Read more
"...Also, despite it's length, this is a quick read if you don't let yourself get bogged down by details about sailing and the ranks of every character..." Read more
Customers find the writing style too jargony, over-the-top, and repetitive. They also say the pacing is slow and the story drags quite often for the first half of the book. Customers also mention that the misery of the sailors is palpable and constant, with no real glimmer of hope or warmth.
"...This descent into darkness becomes extremely heavy and at times repetitive reading...." Read more
"...Some of the “death” scenes were over-the-top and also the characterization was mediocre, as the character interactions were lacking and the..." Read more
"...She is quite simply "perfection made woman"!The book has a few light flaws, such as the time it takes at the beginning for the action to..." Read more
"...The misery of the sailors is palpable and constant. There is no getting warm, there is just getting less cold...." Read more
Reviews with images
![Arrived scuffed up](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/common/transparent-pixel._V192234675_.gif)
Arrived scuffed up
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
The Terror deals with the two ships and 126-man expedition into the Arctic Circle region in 1845 by Sir John Franklin, who hoped to find the infamous Northwest Passage. In September of 1845, the two ships (H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror) found themselves trapped in a pack of crushing ice with no visible escape in sight. There was no worry at that time since both ships were heavily loaded with coal for heat, canned goods and salt pork for food, and the belief that the ice would eventually thaw and allow them to search for the waterway that would carry them to Alaska and then Russia. That wasn't to be. The ice never thawed, and the ships and men were trapped for three incredibly long years with dwindling supplies, poisonous canned food, the illness of scurvy takings its toll, and the freezing temperatures that averaged -50 Below Zero and colder. But, that wasn't the worse of it by far. Something roamed the ice that was both vicious and cunningly intelligent, and it had a distinct taste for human flesh. This uncanny creature began to slowly kill the members of the expedition one and two at a time, including the Commander of the crew, Sir John Franklin. When the Commander is killed, the duty of saving the remaining men falls onto the shoulders of Captains James Fitzjames and Francis Crozier, but it's Crozier who takes the lead, having a strong instinct for survival and an intrinsic authority for leading men. The only way to escape their perilous predicament is to walk back out the way they'd come, across hundreds of miles of frozen ice while being stalked by something that doesn't want them to get away.
As the Nova television show explained, as well as previous non-fiction books and records, no one from the expedition was ever seen again. But, what happened to everyone? This is what Dan Simmons tries to convey with his stark imagination and monstrous size novel. He gives his version of what might have happened to the 126 men of the Franklin Expedition, and it isn't a pretty one. Though I'm aware of the tremendous amount of research that Mr. Simmons had to do in order to write this novel, the book is so damn good and detailed oriented that it's like he was actually there himself. I could feel the unbelievable cold to my bones, the hunger and weariness of the men, the pungent smells and the hundreds of strange sounds below deck on both vessels, and the utter terror that was out on the ice just waiting for its chance. This novel is so well written that it should win every award that's out there, not to mention hitting the New York Times Bestseller list. I'm not kidding, either. This should at least win the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award for 2007. During the course of reading The Terror, you will be there in the Arctic Circle experiencing the same trials and tribulations as the rest of the expedition. You'll know what it's like to be hunted, yet never knowing from what direction the attack will come or when. You'll slowly come away with a clearer understanding of what it truly means to be afraid. As an example, there's one scene where the mysterious and deadly creature gets below deck on the Erebus and hunts the members of its crew through the pitch-black darkness with screams of terror ringing out from every direction. Mr. Simmons captures the atmosphere and sense of desolation perfectly. He brings all of the characters to life. There's going to be those you care for and those you hate with a grim passion. Captain Francis Crozier, of course, is the hero of the expedition, but even he isn't prepared for the frightening challenges that face both him and his men. The Terror is certainly movie material. All through the novel, I kept seeing the British actor, Clive Owen, as Francis Crozier. If I were Dan Simmons, I'd have my agent send Mr. Owen's agent a copy of the book. Who knows what may happen. The Terror by Dan Simmons is by far the best novel of 2007 and is highly recommended to those who love vividly written stories with a strong dose of horror thrown in for good measure.
I probably shouldn't have went and read some facts about the history of this book because I might mess this review up. It's just so freaking interesting and I want to read about it. The author left a lot of resources for books at the end and there is one I'm going to try to get for sure.
The fact that Dan Simmons added an horror element to a historic novel is pretty awesome. And there are so many characters that I liked in the book and well. . . you know what happens if you read anything about the real story.
Some parts of the book had me confused because it would go back and forth at different times but I pretty much know what's going on. Captain Sir John Franklin and Captain Crozier take the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus out to try to go through the Northwest Passage, which was called the 1845 Franklin Expedition. And it's doomed!!!! Not only do they get stuck out there for a couple of years, they have some monster thing <---(I know what the monster thing is) killing them, along with scurvy, starvation, random stuff, etc.
I LOVE the cold weather and WINTER is my favorite, but not this kind of stuff. Not being stuck in the ice in the middle of no where land with minus a million degrees with food running out, disease running all around, oh and lets not forget the monster!
I liked Dr. Harry D. S. Goodsir, he is one of the surgeons on the ships and after awhile he has an epiphany:
•One reason that Dr. Harry D. S. Goodsir had insisted on coming along on this exploration party was to prove that he was as strong and able a man as most of his crewmates. He soon realized that he wasn't.•
He's a very good man and does all he can for the crew members. He also keeps a diary which I enjoyed reading because it gave his point of view on things.
There is an Esquimaux lady that is on the Terror. They call her Silence because something chewed off her tongue. Yeah! She was brought there with her father or husband, they are not sure and I will let you read about that little mystery. I was freaked out by Silence the whole book. But there was a lot more going on there than meets the eye.
One of my favorite crew members was Irving, he was such a nice guy and he was told by Captain Crozier to watch over Silence because he didn't trust her. Boy did he see some crazy stuff going on with her.
I also liked Captain Crozier, Fitzjams who took over for Sir John, Mr. Diggle and Blanky. I loathed a man named Hickey. He was more evil than the monster I do believe and I wish he would have had some great torture befall him! Trust me, you won't like him either!
The story isn't just about the monster, this is a big tome of a book at almost 1000 pages but the monster isn't in it a whole lot. The story is about other horrible things that happen. The worries of what the crew is going to do when they are running out of food and find out that food is tainted (true story about the tainted food), running low on coal, people catching scurvy and dying a slow horrendous death, the cold, don't forget the cold. Some really nasty stuff happens that had to do with the cold.
But that monster does some crazy stuff. It's almost like he has a sick sense of humor!
•"It?" snaps Crozier. "One body? Back on the ship?" This makes no sense at all to the Terror's captain. "I thought you said both Strong and Evans were back."
Third Lieutenant Irving's entire face is frostbite white now. "They are, Captain. Or at least half of them. When we went to look at the body propped up there at the stern, it fell over and . . . well . . . came apart. As best we can tell, it's Billy Strong from the waist up. Tommy Evans from the waist down."
Crozier and Fitzjames can only look at each other.•
You never know what you will find in the never ending night!
•On a Tuesday dogwatch in the third week of November, the thing from the ice came aboard the Erebus and took the well-liked bosun, Mr. Thomas Terry, snatching him from his post near the stern, leaving only the man's head on the railing.•
I thought this was a really good book. I did think it was a bit long as a few parts dragged for me. And that's not because it's a tome, I have a few favorite tomes that are bigger than this one. Either way, I still very much enjoyed it and the ending and finding things out was so cool. Of course at one part you start to get an idea of what it's going to be about. And it took a turn I didn't see coming!
Top reviews from other countries
![](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars-global/default._CR0,0,1024,1024_SX48_.png)
![](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars-global/default._CR0,0,1024,1024_SX48_.png)
At first, it seemed long, slow, overly technical, and descriptive, and frankly, a bit weird and boring. Basically, life in the navy in 1845, stuck in the Arctic with a big, scary monster.
I am SO glad I persisted. By the end, when it all came together beautifully, I absolutely loved it. So much so that I read the last chapters between 1 and 3am - I couldn’t put it down and I went to sleep with a warm fuzzy feeling and a satisfied smile on my face.
I didn’t like:
The first half when I was reading it - but I have long since got over that as the second half was outstanding and I get it now!
The excessive detailed descriptions of the ships and all the naval procedures and rules and regulations - again all is forgiven now - somehow the seemingly long drawn-out first half actually contributed to the epic nature of the story and the slow build to the dramatic conclusion.
The vast number of characters - I'll be honest I lost track of who was who and who died when and how - maybe Crozier's rather anal, mental list-making of who had lived and who had died, rank by rank for both ships, as he hauled his sled across the ice for weeks on end, a gift from the author to help us with that?
The disgustingly vivid descriptions of violent deaths, gruesome injuries, frost-bite, scurvy, filth and squalor and cannibalism. By nature of the fact that I didn’t like them it is evident that they were well-written and provoked the desired response in the reader. I was looking for horror and I got it!
Honestly, now that I have finished, there wasn’t much I didn’t like about this book. I almost feel the need to read it all again.
I liked (loved):
The whole story and its wonderful conclusion.
The way it built up the sense of desperation and inevitable tragedy.
The way it all came together in the end and all the mysteries were explained.
That it was so much more than a horror. It was a historical novel, based on a true story. It was a horror story. It also had a touch of the mystical fantasy about it. It was a factual account of the features of an Arctic climate, the Eskimo culture and the navy in 1845. It was also a romance.
That it had a bit of everything! Madness, murder, sex (straight and gay), love, loyalty, courage, despair, death and disease, scurvy, botulism, suicide, traditional myths and stories, mystery, horror, cannibalism, nature and much, much more.
The *SPOILER ALERT* end. The happy, happy end!
I bloody loved this book. One of the best I have read during the Time of Covid!
I'm off to watch it on the BBC now - there is no way they can do it justice but we will see!
![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars-global/default._CR0,0,1024,1024_SX48_.png)
![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars-global/159a1be4-5948-4a90-8fbe-f552c463c022._CR0,0,375,375_SX48_.jpg)
Pros: La impresión de las hojas es sencilla pero de fácil lectura, el tamaño de letra es adecuado. La historia en si es muy buena. Con toques de suspenso y tensión geniales, todo basado en datos históricos. Ciertas descripciones náuticas a la Melville, pero sin llegar a ser tediosas. El inglés es simple y entendible, incluso cuando es descriptivo, perfecto para lectores con entendimiento basico-intermedio y con ganas de aprender.
El contenido del libro es excelente, lástima por la pobre presentación.
![Customer image](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/common/transparent-pixel._V192234675_.gif)
![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars-global/159a1be4-5948-4a90-8fbe-f552c463c022._CR0,0,375,375_SX48_.jpg)
Reviewed in Mexico on July 21, 2018
Pros: La impresión de las hojas es sencilla pero de fácil lectura, el tamaño de letra es adecuado. La historia en si es muy buena. Con toques de suspenso y tensión geniales, todo basado en datos históricos. Ciertas descripciones náuticas a la Melville, pero sin llegar a ser tediosas. El inglés es simple y entendible, incluso cuando es descriptivo, perfecto para lectores con entendimiento basico-intermedio y con ganas de aprender.
El contenido del libro es excelente, lástima por la pobre presentación.
![Customer image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71Og2NC5JyL._SY88.jpg)
![](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars-global/44cceb88-8879-47f9-90ae-6fd33981b135._CR83,0,333,333_SX48_.jpg)
Die wahre Geschichte ist, dass alle Teilnehmer entweder durch Krankheit, Unfall, Hunger ums Leben gekommen, oder einfach erfroren sind, während der Zeit zwischen 1845 und 1848, wo ihre Schiffe im Packeis festgehalten waren.
Diese Geschichte jedoch, erzählt von dieser Zeit, in der die Mannschaften der beiden Schiffe "Terror" und "Erebus" von einer umheimlichen Kreatur, die die Mannschaften terrorisiert und auf teilweise bestialischer Weise, die armen Menschen dahinrafft, bis nur noch einer übrig ist, der zum Schluss bei den einheimischen Inuiten unterkommt und dort auch bis zu seinem Lebensende verbleibt.
In teils düsteren Erzählungen wird das qualvolle Überleben der Männern geschildert, die in dieser unerbittlichen, kalten Umgebung versuchen, den nächsten Tag zu überstehen, und dann dieses Wesen, welches die Männer jagt.
Ein tolles Buch, eine tolle Geschichte, die zudem bei Amazon Prime als Serie zu sehen ist, und die ebenfalls sehr zu empfehlen ist.
Mein Tipp: Zuerst die Serie gucken, dann erst das Buch.
Als die Engländer pflegen zu sagen: Not for the faint hearted (nichts für schwache Nerven).
Wer sowas mag: sehr zu empfehlen, ich für mein Teil, habe beides richtig genossen, Serie und Buch.