April09_6
Here's the joy of second hand bookstores, well proven. I would never have bought Dan Simmon's 'The Terror' in a bookstore - it's a block of a thing, 935 pages, horror title, gory splat of blood on the cover, and I've never heard of him. But in the low-risk world of a second-hand bookstore, I was seduced by two things: it's about the Franklin expedition to find the North-West Passage in the mid 1800s, and Stephen King declares on the cover: "I am in awe of Dan Simmons", which, perhaps oddly, I find persuasive.
This is a teriffic book. I was thoroughly engrossed and felt bereft when it was finished.
The Franklin expedition was a well-equipped pair of boats, 130 British naval men and marines, the height of seafaring technology of its time. The expedition was lost. Rescue expeditions eventually found traces of the Franklin effort, and it is generally thought that the crew was icebound for 3 winters, savaged by starvation, scurvy, lead poisoning and botulism from the 9000 tins of food they carried with them. Cannibalism is quietly suspected.
Dan Simmons takes the historic evidence - and there's a lot: letters, supply and crew lists, personal histories - and adds a supernatural layer drawn from Eskimo culture. Sounds naff, but it's dense and beautifully drawn, each character is distinct and the simple business of survival is described in appalling detail. The book starts somewhere in the middle of the story, doubles back and skips forward. Each chapter is from the perspective of a single character; when they die, as they often do, it's startling. The shift from sailing to icebound, from winter to winter, the struggle to survive, the complex dynamics of naval authority and the decision to leave the crushed boats and attempt an impossible journey across the ice, and what happens next - there's a lot of story here, plus a murderous ice-monster.
This is a teriffic book. I was thoroughly engrossed and felt bereft when it was finished.
The Franklin expedition was a well-equipped pair of boats, 130 British naval men and marines, the height of seafaring technology of its time. The expedition was lost. Rescue expeditions eventually found traces of the Franklin effort, and it is generally thought that the crew was icebound for 3 winters, savaged by starvation, scurvy, lead poisoning and botulism from the 9000 tins of food they carried with them. Cannibalism is quietly suspected.
Dan Simmons takes the historic evidence - and there's a lot: letters, supply and crew lists, personal histories - and adds a supernatural layer drawn from Eskimo culture. Sounds naff, but it's dense and beautifully drawn, each character is distinct and the simple business of survival is described in appalling detail. The book starts somewhere in the middle of the story, doubles back and skips forward. Each chapter is from the perspective of a single character; when they die, as they often do, it's startling. The shift from sailing to icebound, from winter to winter, the struggle to survive, the complex dynamics of naval authority and the decision to leave the crushed boats and attempt an impossible journey across the ice, and what happens next - there's a lot of story here, plus a murderous ice-monster.
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