Conquering the Tome - The Terror by Dan Simmons

It's story time, folks.

I have these two friends. Fabulous fellows. When we hang out, we like to go to Barnes and Noble to get iced coffees and browse books. Last winter, we were doing exactly that - killing two hours by looking at all the books. In my head, I'd play the "I've Read That!" game, I'd attempt to supply witty commentary about how popular books were. (I'm not sure they appreciated it though honestly.)

Then one of my friends made an innocent comment about a book he wanted to read, but how it would be cheaper on Amazon. And he was right. It was cheaper on Amazon. Except the book lover in me was OFFENDED that he'd browse a book store and then purchase a book from it's competitor just because it was cheaper. I was determined to buy a book from them, even though I didn't have a ton of money, because damnit, I wanted to support brick and mortar stores. Barnes and Noble has been a staple of my life.

The book I bought was The Terror by Dan Simmons.

Friends, this book is BIG. 784 pages big. (Sure, that's not THAT big, if you're into old Russian literature, but I'm used to books under 400 pages.)

It had been on my TBR pile for ages. All I knew was that it was a "ship gets stuck in the Arctic, then is stalked by some sort of monster" tale. Also that HBO was making it into a mini series starring the delicious Ciaran Hinds.

The Terror was so much more than just stuck dudes getting stalked by a monster.
It was, in fact, an incredibly historically accurate but fictionalized account of John Franklin's lost expedition with the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus to the Arctic find the Northwest Passage.
Turns out John Franklin was a real dude. These two ships were actual ships that were lost.

The scariest thing about this book was not the monster (although tbh, the monster was h*ck'n scary too) was the experiences they went through just struggling to stay alive. Nearly 800 pages, and the  monster only shows up on a handful of them, because their attempts to stay alive on these broken ships, on the ice, with the disease and the cold and the dwindling provisions, and fact that sometimes human beings are just awful....
It is a horror novel, there's no doubt about it. And if you are looking for some sweet, sweet monster gore, you'll definitely get that too.

I usually read books really fast. A couple of days. A day, if I am having some dedicated reading time. But this book took me nearly a year to read. Not because it was very dense (although it was) or hard to understand (not at all, in fact it was very engrossing) but because I kept picking it up, reading chunks, and then putting it down again. And honestly, I think part of it is it's hard to watch human beings suffer. These men suffered. Arctic exploration is a nasty, unforgiving business and Simmons drops the reader right in the middle of it and doesn't let up until the end.

Speaking of the end, I REALLY liked it. Not what I was expecting, but I really liked it.

Give it a read, folks. Just maybe not in winter.

Yours in chilly weather,
Peekaboo