Book Review: The Terror by Dan Simmons
Disclaimer: I listened to this book on CDs on my way to work. I count this, though purists may disagree. I’m certain this book is as good in written form.
The Terror by Hugo Award winner Dan Simmons is a historical/horror novel about the Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific. Just to get this out of the way: basically everyone dies. This is not a spoiler; it’s historical fact, and it’s good to know this going into the story, as it keeps things in perspective. The Erebus and The Terror left port in 1845, and never made it back.
It’s not like this book is about the plot anyway. The plot is pretty simple: these dudes are gonna die; let’s watch. They’re trapped in pack ice for two years. Their coal is dwindling. Their food is running out because they didn’t question why their supplier’s low bid was half of everyone else’s (duh, guys, duh).
Oh, and they’re being stalked by a horrific monster that lives on the ice and drags them to their deaths one at a time. That’s where the horror in this historical/horror novel comes in.
The point is the dark tone, and Simmons has got that down pat. He’s got some really good descriptive skills, frequently tinged with the macabre. This helps because the setting barely changes, and even when it does, it’s only more of the same. There is no escaping the bleak Arctic ice. The book is chilling, because of the ever present cold the characters are exposed to, as well as the menacing Thing on the Ice, which Simmons does a good job keeping hidden until the end.
The pacing, at the beginning, is a bit erratic. The story jumps around in time and the narrator alternates between several perspectives, but it’s not as bad as all that. Every chapter starts with a location and date. The location gets kind of absurd after a while because they simply don’t move for two years, but in general, the markers are useful. I personally think the narrative is more interesting if the author presents you with a situation and then flashes back to show you how the characters got there, or shows you what a different character is thinking. Plus, it helps build the ominous tone I mentioned earlier. If you like your stories strictly chronological, you may not like it.
Another piece of advice I have is not to get too attached to the characters. I’ve already told you what happens, but even more than that, the author has a habit of snatching interesting characters from the jaws of death, only to shove them back in a few hundred pages later. Realistically, I expected everyone to die, but seriously. That’s just mean.
But then, the book would not be nearly as interesting without the attachments. It’s about 800 pages long, with a lot of historical detail. It verges on the tedious more than a few times, but for every moment of pure, “dear God, please get on with it,” there were at least two moments where I had to rewind the CD because I’d missed something while shouting my reactions to the car stereo. The characters really sucked me in, and I found myself hoping they would survive despite the fact that I knew better.
Speaking of getting attached to the characters, Dan Simmons seems to have a man-crush on the main character, Captain Francis Crozier (also frequently called by his full name, Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier, which is near the top of my sweet names list). This is totally fair, however; I myself had a bit of a crush on Crozier by the time the story was over. However, extremely Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu sensitive people might want to beware. Crozier is pretty much always right, has clairvoyant powers, and exudes pure awesome wherever he goes. Some people might get sick of this pretty quickly, since Crozier can also be an asshole. The mitigating factor in this is, no matter what he does, they’re still trapped in the Arctic, so his ability to affect the plot is limited.
Another justification for liking Crozier is that it’s really fun to stand up and shout “Francis! Rawdon! Moira! Crozier!” Give it a try; I’ll wait.
Okay? Good.
The book does have other problems, of course. First off, it suffers somewhat from Expositionitis (also known as Plot Blockage by Backstory Disease). There are some things about Arctic travel and previous expeditions that the characters would obviously know, being mostly old Arctic hands, but average readers (like me) might not. For example, I had no idea how Sir James Clark Ross got his crew to safety after one of his ships started breaking up in pack ice. But knowing that is important to understanding Crozier’s decision when his own ship starts to crack. So, some how, Simmons has to tell Ross’s story without bogging his own plot down.
He does not do this very well. He brings in a character to tell the story in giant block paragraphs for no apparent reason, and even has Crozier think, “My God, why won’t this man shut up? I already know all this stuff.” I mean, if you’re going to deploy the exposition block(s), fine. Lots of authors do. But don’t have your own characters comment on it. I mean, way to draw attention to your clumsy plot device.
Another negative is the sex scenes. Or rather, one sex scene in particular. There are several sex scenes, but one of them is truly memorable for featuring tortured innuendo involving platypuses. I’m not kidding. The platypus. You know: “Feet like a duck, but it’s furry” (y halo thar, dating myself). It’s a truly lolarious moment, if just because I suspect that the author wanted me to take this seriously. But come on, one minute our hero is angsting about the one love of his life, and the next? PLATYPUS SEX.
It was so bad I sat in my parked car, hunched over my steering wheel, laughing for about five minutes after this scene. In fact, as I write this, I have to keep stopping because the memory is making me laugh.
I don’t say these things to dissuade you from reading the book, because on the whole, I think it is very good. Adding a supernatural horror element to a historical novel is tough work, especially when the author tries to be thorough with his or her research, as Simmons is in The Terror. All that detail makes the supernatural a little harder to swallow. This was my problem with The Historian, which I read last year. All this research, building terror, historical documents, a hunt across continents, a truly amazing novel structure, and suddenly, BAM! Dracula vants to suck your bluuuud. It’s hard to make a terrifying creature appearing out of nowhere on the ice seem reasonable. But Simmons builds the right tone, plays the right human element along side the supernatural element, and makes it work.
Here, I think, is the essence of the book. The ending pissed off quite a few people (check out the Amazon reviews for this book sometime, but only if you want to know what the ending is), but I’m not sure how they got all the way through the book without realizing what was going to happen. Others claim the book was predictable, which is sort of true. Simmons balances the precarious line between predictable and inevitable. The difference is that predictable is boring, and inevitable is frightening. In my opinion, the author did a good job keeping things on the latter side.
The Terror by Hugo Award winner Dan Simmons is a historical/horror novel about the Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific. Just to get this out of the way: basically everyone dies. This is not a spoiler; it’s historical fact, and it’s good to know this going into the story, as it keeps things in perspective. The Erebus and The Terror left port in 1845, and never made it back.
It’s not like this book is about the plot anyway. The plot is pretty simple: these dudes are gonna die; let’s watch. They’re trapped in pack ice for two years. Their coal is dwindling. Their food is running out because they didn’t question why their supplier’s low bid was half of everyone else’s (duh, guys, duh).
Oh, and they’re being stalked by a horrific monster that lives on the ice and drags them to their deaths one at a time. That’s where the horror in this historical/horror novel comes in.
The point is the dark tone, and Simmons has got that down pat. He’s got some really good descriptive skills, frequently tinged with the macabre. This helps because the setting barely changes, and even when it does, it’s only more of the same. There is no escaping the bleak Arctic ice. The book is chilling, because of the ever present cold the characters are exposed to, as well as the menacing Thing on the Ice, which Simmons does a good job keeping hidden until the end.
The pacing, at the beginning, is a bit erratic. The story jumps around in time and the narrator alternates between several perspectives, but it’s not as bad as all that. Every chapter starts with a location and date. The location gets kind of absurd after a while because they simply don’t move for two years, but in general, the markers are useful. I personally think the narrative is more interesting if the author presents you with a situation and then flashes back to show you how the characters got there, or shows you what a different character is thinking. Plus, it helps build the ominous tone I mentioned earlier. If you like your stories strictly chronological, you may not like it.
Another piece of advice I have is not to get too attached to the characters. I’ve already told you what happens, but even more than that, the author has a habit of snatching interesting characters from the jaws of death, only to shove them back in a few hundred pages later. Realistically, I expected everyone to die, but seriously. That’s just mean.
But then, the book would not be nearly as interesting without the attachments. It’s about 800 pages long, with a lot of historical detail. It verges on the tedious more than a few times, but for every moment of pure, “dear God, please get on with it,” there were at least two moments where I had to rewind the CD because I’d missed something while shouting my reactions to the car stereo. The characters really sucked me in, and I found myself hoping they would survive despite the fact that I knew better.
Speaking of getting attached to the characters, Dan Simmons seems to have a man-crush on the main character, Captain Francis Crozier (also frequently called by his full name, Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier, which is near the top of my sweet names list). This is totally fair, however; I myself had a bit of a crush on Crozier by the time the story was over. However, extremely Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu sensitive people might want to beware. Crozier is pretty much always right, has clairvoyant powers, and exudes pure awesome wherever he goes. Some people might get sick of this pretty quickly, since Crozier can also be an asshole. The mitigating factor in this is, no matter what he does, they’re still trapped in the Arctic, so his ability to affect the plot is limited.
Another justification for liking Crozier is that it’s really fun to stand up and shout “Francis! Rawdon! Moira! Crozier!” Give it a try; I’ll wait.
Okay? Good.
The book does have other problems, of course. First off, it suffers somewhat from Expositionitis (also known as Plot Blockage by Backstory Disease). There are some things about Arctic travel and previous expeditions that the characters would obviously know, being mostly old Arctic hands, but average readers (like me) might not. For example, I had no idea how Sir James Clark Ross got his crew to safety after one of his ships started breaking up in pack ice. But knowing that is important to understanding Crozier’s decision when his own ship starts to crack. So, some how, Simmons has to tell Ross’s story without bogging his own plot down.
He does not do this very well. He brings in a character to tell the story in giant block paragraphs for no apparent reason, and even has Crozier think, “My God, why won’t this man shut up? I already know all this stuff.” I mean, if you’re going to deploy the exposition block(s), fine. Lots of authors do. But don’t have your own characters comment on it. I mean, way to draw attention to your clumsy plot device.
Another negative is the sex scenes. Or rather, one sex scene in particular. There are several sex scenes, but one of them is truly memorable for featuring tortured innuendo involving platypuses. I’m not kidding. The platypus. You know: “Feet like a duck, but it’s furry” (y halo thar, dating myself). It’s a truly lolarious moment, if just because I suspect that the author wanted me to take this seriously. But come on, one minute our hero is angsting about the one love of his life, and the next? PLATYPUS SEX.
It was so bad I sat in my parked car, hunched over my steering wheel, laughing for about five minutes after this scene. In fact, as I write this, I have to keep stopping because the memory is making me laugh.
I don’t say these things to dissuade you from reading the book, because on the whole, I think it is very good. Adding a supernatural horror element to a historical novel is tough work, especially when the author tries to be thorough with his or her research, as Simmons is in The Terror. All that detail makes the supernatural a little harder to swallow. This was my problem with The Historian, which I read last year. All this research, building terror, historical documents, a hunt across continents, a truly amazing novel structure, and suddenly, BAM! Dracula vants to suck your bluuuud. It’s hard to make a terrifying creature appearing out of nowhere on the ice seem reasonable. But Simmons builds the right tone, plays the right human element along side the supernatural element, and makes it work.
Here, I think, is the essence of the book. The ending pissed off quite a few people (check out the Amazon reviews for this book sometime, but only if you want to know what the ending is), but I’m not sure how they got all the way through the book without realizing what was going to happen. Others claim the book was predictable, which is sort of true. Simmons balances the precarious line between predictable and inevitable. The difference is that predictable is boring, and inevitable is frightening. In my opinion, the author did a good job keeping things on the latter side.