The Terror

The Terror (2007) by Dan Simmons

This book is a fictional account of the disastrous 1845 Franklin Expedition's search for the Northwest Passage.

The title refers both to one of the ships, the HMS Terror, and to a supernatural creature that stalks the doomed expedition.

The ships are caught in the ice, and men die from cold, scurvy, attacks by the creature, and men killing each other. By the end of the book, there are no survivors, everyone is dead, with the exception of one who is transmogrified into something else, and is thus dead to those who sent him out on the mission.

This novel is a depressing tragic tale mitigated by heroism in the face of impossible odds.

At first, I thought the creature might be Mary Shelley's Piss Eyes, but it turned out to be something completely different. The creature is to a polar bear as a polar bear is to a dog. It routinely kills and eats polar bears. It is an effectively immortal character from Inuit religion known as the tapilek Tuunbaq.

The novel features numerous well-developed interesting characters, including:

The tapilek Tuunbaq

An Inuit witch known as Silence because she never speaks (her tongue had been torn out)

A human villain named Hickey (an interesting choice by the author to make the most despicable character in the book a homosexual)

Franklin, leader of the expedition, as inept a leader as you will ever find

Crozier, second in command, who survives as a different person

Goodsir, a doctor trained as an anatomist, who desperately tries everything he can think of to keep the men alive

Irving, a good man who befriends Silence, but Irving is murdered by a shipmate

This is a very interesting novel, not for weak stomachs, definitely worth reading for those who can stand seeing good men die in tragic circumstances.