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Loading... Terror (original 2007; edition 2007)by Dan Simmons
Work InformationThe Terror by Dan Simmons (2007)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Amazing read. This is my second Dan Simmons novel and I am officially a fan. ( ) The Terror by Dan Simmons could have been literary terror at its finest, with the right editor. [...] At 700 pages, the narrative skids unevenly through excellent suspense sequences, blood-chilling horror, and overlong, entirely unnecessary historical descriptions of boats and ice. So very, very much ice. Check out my review at https://reviewsunderground.weebly.com A staple of historical horror, and for good reason. Simmons manages to create not just the specter of external dread, but also the paranoia of mistrust. It's fascinating and macabre to watch these characters descend into cannibalism while trying to maintain some semblance of hope. A little too long, in my opinion, but there's a ton to admire here, particularly the brutal setting and the vicious horror.
An immobilized ship can be a potent metaphor for certain states of existential unease, as it is in Conrad’s novella “The Shadow-Line” (114 pages in the Everyman’s Library edition) or Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (625 lines). And the polar regions, frigid as death itself, have always provided an exceptionally hospitable environment for horror: Mary Shelley (“Frankenstein”), Edgar Allan Poe (“The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”), H. P. Lovecraft (“At the Mountains of Madness”) and John W. Campbell (“Who Goes There?”) have all dreamed dire happenings at one pole or the other, at much more modest length. (“The Terror” is dedicated, with “many thanks for the indelible Arctic memories,” to 12 members of the cast and crew of the classic 1951 movie based on Campbell’s story: “The Thing From Another World.”) But of the many possible approaches to making artistic sense of the Franklin fiasco, just about the least promising, I’d say, would be to turn it into an epic-length ripping yarn. Skilfully, horribly, Simmons details the months of darkness – the temperatures of -50F and lower; the shrieking groans of the ice; the wind; the hunger – from the multiple perspectives of the men on board the ship, and with such detail that I defy readers not to grab another jumper. He adds in another, more deliberate evil: a stalking, polar bear-like monster which tracks over the icy wastelands around the ships, picking the men off one by one. "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," he writes. "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. Roundtheclock night. One hundred days of night." What a horrifying thought. Belongs to Publisher SeriesContainsHas the adaptationHas as a commentary on the textAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Their captain's insane vision of a Northwest Passage has kept the crewmen of HMS Terror trapped in Arctic ice for two years without a thaw. But the real threat to their survival isn't the ever-shifting landscape of white, the provisions that have turned to poison, or the ship slowly buckling in the grip of the frozen ocean. The real threat is whatever is out in the frigid darkness, stalking their ship, snatching and brutally killing their fellow seamen. Captain Crozier, who has taken over the expedition after the death of its original leader, Sir John Franklin, draws equally on his strengths as a mariner and on the mystical beliefs of the Eskimo woman he's rescued as he sets a course on foot out of the Arctic and away from the insatiable beast. But every day the dwindling crew becomes more deranged and mutinous, until even Crozier begins to fear there may be no escape from an ever-more-inconceivable nightmare. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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