The Terror

I just finished reading Dan Simmon’s epic The Terror. I consider it a feat to complete any book north of 700 pages! Needless to say, any book that keeps my interest for the long is epic. I loved this book. It was just the right blend of dreary macabre and introspective torment I’ve loved in the horror genre. This may sound crazy but horror is a great literary vehicle to reach true depth.
This by the way was a fascinating blend of history and the supernatural. Simmons chose to recount the experiences of the HMS Erebus and Terror while on their fateful journey through arctic wastelands in search of the Northwest Passage. They were iced in and subsequently spent a grueling few years at the edge of the world with very little provisions and competent leadership. The author adds to their misery but injecting a horrible “bear – like” creature that methodically stalks and terrorizes them. Through the entire book we are really never sure if the thing is just some crazed polar bear or something else entirely but amazingly you end up not caring. The true terrors and evil in the book are wrapped up in the unimaginably hostile environment and the relationships among the crew. The final mutiny and fracture of the crew are where the true horrors surface. This all sounds dark and hopeless but in the end I considered the book weirdly inspirational.
So, this “thing on the ice” is basically indestructible and endlessly able to resist detection. It gets a little old as it mercilessly devours members of the crew so when one man manages to escape from it after MUCH effort, it is moving. These men are forced to endure bitter cold, starvation, scurvy, an evil bear demon, and endless work as they abandon ship and haul their boats all around the arctic circle. I think it is these extraordinary circumstances that Simmons uses to show how noble and inspiring the human spirit can be and simultaneously into what horrible depths it can plummet. And towards the end of the book you realize hell is not that starving wasteland and the devil is not that thing on the ice.