Book Review: "The Terror" by Dan Simmons

'...as old as God and twice as powerful..."

I had heard about this book because of the TV Show that Ridley Scott made about it and before you ask, no I had not actually watched the show at all and I have not as of yet. I always thought that a horror novel this long could not possibly have that key simplistic storyline that gets developed by its atmosphere. And then I remembered how much I enjoy Stephen King novels. Another thought I had was: am I going to enjoy this? It doesn't seem like it's for me. And that is always my concern; is it a book for me? I have never thought too much of books about the sea unless they are written like Moby Dick or The Odyssey because those are absolute classics of the genre. Nevertheless, I would come to realise that The Terror is awesome in its level of brutality as it follows on from the classics before it upon the sea and in the depths of the mind.

There are a few main characters you need to know about: Sir John the admiral, the rough and alcoholic Francis Crozier, and then, the proper and upper class James Fitzjames. Sir John is first and foremost warned at a party against the expedition of the Terror and the Erebus to the Arctic Circle because of the unsuitability of the ships for sailing there and the stupidity of the non-marine engines that they had bought from the railway companies. In a scene that would remind you of the warning from ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ - it serves as the first and most foreboding part of the text which, alongside the draping of the flag, can only mean almost certain death for many to come.

As we see gunfights and revenge stories amongst the sailors, an Inuit woman named ‘Silence’ or ‘Lady Silence’ is a keen survivor. Crozier watches on in jealousy as Fiztjames takes his upper-class hand at things - both men being somewhat competent leaders but, neither of them getting along all too well. There is an anatomist who, out of the eagerness to get aboard, manages to secure himself a last minute space. But he soon regrets it. He cannot help out and, even though he is willing to prove himself, he is not physically apt. All the laudanum in the world could not have helped him and he could have used some to fall asleep in that cold.

As men begin to die of disease, it is clear that the mission is doomed. When the ships become trapped in the ice, the men took to the land in order to find King William Island by foot. On 7 foot of ice they start to walk. But they all know that there is something following them: a monster of some sort. A predator. And the men do not know how much trouble they are in. Commander Fitzjames is in some sort of denial and yet, he feels it on the horizon, coming to eat his men.

As the monster begins to get closer and stalk the ships in search of men, disease and injury encircles every person. There is something apart from the monster as this ‘Lord of the Flies’ begins to unfold. Sickness, suicide, murder and cannibalism are just some of the events that take place in this horrific Arctic Gothic.

My favourite scene in the whole book is the one where Sir John is sitting at the party and the other ‘Sir John’ grabs his shoulder so hard that he almost winces. You can tell that whatever Sir John is going to do with those ships is a power play, it is for his own gain of reputation and he is about to risk everyone’s lives doing it. The man asks his whether the engines are marine engines, and Sir John doesn’t know. The man asks how much coal there is aboard the ship and Sir John says he doesn’t know. He asks how deep the ships are and then Sir John says he doesn’t know.

There is a lot that Sir John has not got a clue about and the man therefore warns him that if Sir John has not been heard of by 1848, then he will come and get Sir John himself. It is a really frightening scene with lots of tension and you, as the reader, realise how much this man doesn’t know about his own expedition. From the 1819 expedition in which he did not succeed, he seeks his new glory. It is clearly doomed to fail. If we didn’t know before, we certainly do now.

Another scene I liked was the one where the monster thing attacks the ship and manages to completely entrap Sir John. We have the first part where he can no longer feel his legs and then, he doesn’t know whether he is swimming upwards or downwards. After this, we encounter him meet the monster right in front of him. It is one of the most tense scenes from the entire text. It is brilliantly written with some real atmosphere even though it is set beneath the water.

As the book continues, the monster comes back and for some of the characters it is going to be fatal but that is not the only fear out there. Starvation creeps in. Fear surges during the snowy nights when nothing can be seen further than a few feet feet in any direction. Men become paranoid and there is no end in sight to the nightmare. Sea burials, monstrous attacks and the ripping of human flesh - these and so much more populate the novel as some of the horrific imagery that takes the reader to an entirely different world.

I enjoyed the writing style. It was tense almost consistently and felt like something terrifying was happening even when things were still. The writer creates a platitude of atmospheres from snowstorms, ice sheets, the darkness of the ship and even from the wandering minds of other characters. The tale of the two ships having very different atmospheres and very different leadership only made the conflicts better. Alongside the monstrous weird creature of the Arctic, this makes for an intense survival novel like no other.

All in all, I think that this novel does well at developing intense amounts of paranoia amongst the sailors which leads the the main series of events in a sort of revenge tale. It is a brilliantly fictionalised version of what actually happened on the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus and I think it does justice to the horrors of what can really be waiting out there, whether it is a monster or one of your own men.