Synopsis
"Dan Simmons writes with the salty grace and precision of Patrick O'Brian. But in piling supernatural nightmare upon historical nightmare, layering mystery upon mystery, he has produced a turbocharged vision of popular doom." -Men's Journal
Greeted with excited critical praise, this extraordinary novel-inspired by the true story of two ice ships that disappeared in the Arctic Circle during an 1845 expedition-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). THE TERROR chills readers to the core.
"Brutal, relentless, yet oddly uplifting, THE TERROR is a masterfully chilling work." -Entertainment Weekly
"In the hands of a lesser writer than Dan Simmons, THE TERROR might well have dissolved into a series of frigid days and three-dog nights. But Simmons is too good a writer to ignore the real gold in his story-its beleaguered cast." -Bookpage
"Guaranteed to have readers pulling their covers up to their noses, THE TERROR will make for a blood-freezing, bedtime read this winter-and any season thereafter." -Pages
The New Yorker
Simmons’s historical suspense novel depicts the real-life plight of the Franklin expedition, commanded by John Franklin, that set out to discover the Northwest Passage, in 1845, and never returned. In addition to being plagued by cold, scurvy, and food poisoning from stores of canned goods, the expedition, in this account, is stalked by a demonic polar bear. 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.