“The Terror” by Dan Simmons
I enjoyed The Terror, but at times I felt this was almost despite the writing rather than because of it. The best description I can think of is this novel is “very Stephen King”. Whether this is a blessing or a curse is up to you.
The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.
I received The Terror as part of a book subscription and so didn't know anything about it or author Dan Simmons before starting it. My first thoughts? Well, they were along the lines of "We get it, you've done your research! Get on with the plot!"
Yes, I feel I need to begin with a criticism. When studying writing, the standard wisdom is that research is important for the author, but very little should go into the actual writing. The opening chapters of The Terror are a perfect demonstration of why this is the case. Readers don't need two characters discussing the measurements of each ship in minute detail to understand the story. Also, this isn't how people talk.
And yet, each time I was close to giving up, the plot would come back and pull me again. Because when Simmons moves away from info-dumps, he gives us an enthralling horror story.
It was about halfway through when I realised what Simmons' writing style reminded me of. This is essentially a Stephen King book. What does that mean? It means that the book needed to have a good third of the content cut by a good editor to get rid of all the unnecessary padding.
The other problem is the use of two problematic elements.
The first is the fact that the Terror was a real ship, and all the characters were real people. I'm not certain where the cut-off point is for how long needs to have passed before it becomes acceptable to dramatise real people in a fictional way. Maybe if this had been a straight-up retelling of the story, but this is a highly fictionalised version. It just doesn't feel quite right to me to be telling a fictional story using real people.
The second is the use of problematic tropes. There is only one non-white female character in the story; an Inuit tribeswoman known as Lady Silence. To give Simmons credit, he does a good job handling the attitudes of the crew towards her. There would obviously be unfavourable, racist attitudes towards her, but I always felt these were the characters' attitudes, not the writer's. But the way the character is used does fall into various problematic tropes, such as the Noble Savage, the Nature Hero, and White Man Going Native.
Luckily, Simmons’ writing is good enough to prevent these from being deal-breakers. Still, their inclusion did leave me spending a fair chunk of my time reading the book thinking about ways he couldn't have altered the story to avoid them.
Overall, the Terror is a very good book. When it's at its best, it's very hard to put down. However, Simmons shares Stephen King's habit of going off on unnecessary tangents that just bring the plot to a grinding halt.
