Because when Simmons moves away from info-dumps, he gives us an enthralling horror story. Also, this isn't how people talk.Īnd yet, each time I was close to giving up, the plot would come back and pull me again.

Readers don't need two characters discussing the measurements of each ship in minute detail to understand the story. The opening chapters of The Terror are a perfect demonstration of why this is the case. When studying writing, the standard wisdom is that research is important for the author, but very little should go into the actual writing. Yes, I feel I need to begin with a criticism. My first thoughts? Well, they were along the lines of 'We get it, you've done your research! Get on with the plot!' With a haunting and constantly surprising story based on actual historical events, The Terror is a novel that will chill you to your core.I received The Terror as part of a book subscription and so didn't know anything about it or author Dan Simmons before starting it. The Terror swells with the heart-stopping suspense and heroic adventure that have won Dan Simmons praise as a writer who not only makes big promises but keeps them (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear that there is no escape. With them travels an Inuit woman who cannot speak and who may be the key to survival, or the harbinger of their deaths. When the expeditions leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness.

As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph.

The terror by dan simmons