bookoftheweek: The Terror

Alien meets Master and Commander. That's what I thought about when I first started reading The Terror, the new bookstop novel by Dan Simmons. Here's the premise, as I saw it:

* British Arctic Exploration ships from the 1900s are stuck in the ice
* Strange monster is picking off the men one-by-one
* Crew must survive both the freezing cold and the strange monster and get off the ice

I didn't expect to like the book; I fully expected to stop after two or three chapters, much like I did with the first book of the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian (upon which Master and Commander is based). However, I gave Dan Simmons a chance, seeing as I enjoyed Hyperion and Ilium so much.

I finished the 769-page monster in three days.

Yeah, a lot of things could've been cut; scratch that, a lot of things should've been cut. I kept thinking that an editor could've cut out some of the subplots and kept it readable; I wondered whether he has being paid by the word. I'll forgive him that, though, as he makes the attempts at survival so readable. You keep turning the pages to see whether they make it.

The "monster" itself isn't that scary or interesting (I had wild hopes that it was the Shrike for whatever reason); it's the characterization that strikes a chord. He makes the characters believable enough that you care what happens to them, and you want to see the bad people get their comeuppance.

After finishing the book, I looked it up on Google to see what other people had to say about it. Imagine my surprise when I found out it was based on actual events. There were two ships called Erebus and Terror that sailed to the Arctic in hopes of finding passage--and disappeared. Lord Franklin, Captain Crozier and Captain Fitzjames were real people. The Terror was Dan Simmons' imagining of what might have happened to the crew.

The Terror demands a lot from you in terms of time and concentration. It's a bit daunting to pick up the book, feel its weight (you can probably kill someone with it) and look at the number of pages. The investment, however, is worth it.