This is a punishing read...just a brutal story. Good, but brutal. ( )

A fine thriller. It starts slow, but builds into a nightmare. Very exciting. I still prefer Monsarrat's "The Cruel Sea," for its characterizations and plotting—it is more than a historical thriller. ( )

Very well worded..although a bit technical stuff but shows the courage one ought to have in a war! ( )

I thought of Alastair MacLean as a writer of implausible potboilers, but this, his first novel, is not bad at all. MacLean had served on a Dido-class light cruiser on Murmansk runs – including the infamous Convoy PQ17 – so he knew what he was talking about in this account of the fictional HMS Ulysses escorting a convoy to Murmansk. The characters are somewhat stereotypical – kindly captain, dedicated surgeon, brave able seamen, but the accounts of the variety of ways people can die horribly on a warship in the Arctic ring true. The German attackers are portrayed as just as brave as the defenders; the Americans are given a polite nod. My copy was a cheap trade paperback; a larger format would have made the ship layout in the front papers easier to understand. (It would be useful to copy this and blow it up to a larger format so you could keep track of who’s dying where). Worth at least 3 stars, I think. ( )

Full of detail, the sort of book that almost splashes water, or in this case freezing ice over you as you read. ( )