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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54 EAN: 9780316017459 ISBN: 0316017450 Label: Back Bay Books Manufacturer: Back Bay Books Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 784 Publication Date: 2007-12-10 Publisher: Back Bay Books Studio: Back Bay Books
"Dan Simmons writes with the salty grace and precision of Patrick O'Brian. But in piling supernatural nightmare upon historical nightmare, layering mystery upon mystery, he has produced a turbocharged vision of popular doom." -Men's Journal
Greeted with excited critical praise, this extraordinary novel-inspired by the true story of two ice ships that disappeared in the Arctic Circle during an 1845 expedition-swells with the heart-stopping suspense and heroic adventure that have won Dan Simmons praise as "a writer who not only makes big promises but keeps them" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). THE TERROR chills readers to the core.
"Brutal, relentless, yet oddly uplifting, THE TERROR is a masterfully chilling work." -Entertainment Weekly
"In the hands of a lesser writer than Dan Simmons, THE TERROR might well have dissolved into a series of frigid days and three-dog nights. But Simmons is too good a writer to ignore the real gold in his story-its beleaguered cast." -Bookpage
"Guaranteed to have readers pulling their covers up to their noses, THE TERROR will make for a blood-freezing, bedtime read this winter-and any season thereafter." -Pages
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: Way to Long --nice Historical Narrative Comment: I have to disagree with several of the reviews the historical detail is very well done and the sense of place well invoked. What killed this book for me was the "monster". Bigger than a bear --feet several feet long--able to eat the bottom of a ice breaker-- clever too--and stealthy --and you never guess what it was--stop here if you don't want to know--its a myth! A big white poof. Yikes be very afraid. If you filter out all the dribble about the monster it makes a fairly good yarn about the Franklin expedition. Way long yarn --yes but you can cut and skim after page 300 and it keeps moving. Read the last 100 as a stand alone booklet.
Customer Rating: Summary: Not bad. But more detail than I needed. Comment: I enjoyed the book, but there was too much detail and redundancy. Because there are soo many characters, I can see why the author felt it was necessary to recap all the people who had died, on several occasions, but I would have liked it more if the story kept moving along. Also, some readers may like getting to know the intimate details of many characters lives, but I just want the story to keep moving. I could have done without the surgeon's diary entries, among other things. Overall, it was good enough that I got through the whole book, but it was not scary....at all. Customer Rating: Summary: Everything was going great...until... Comment: The brutal combination of events that plagues the characters in "The Terror" creates an exhausting, almost agonizing, and yet still addicting, experience for the reader, with "the thing on the ice" that is killing them almost seeming like a minor problem in light of the other issues they have to deal with.
The Terror was turning out to be one of the best fictional novels (regardless of the pseudo-historical aspect) that I've ever read...
UNTIL the last 70 pages of so (my version is like 770 pages long).
I'll still give it a "thumbs up," because the first 90% was SO "intense" that I had trouble putting it down...but the end, for lack of a better word, was lame.
It made what is now a seemingly common mistake for monster movies (even though the monster aspect of this story is relatively small) - the story teller gives into the temptation to explain/show exactly what the monster is...which in the case of The Terror, comes from WAY out of left field...and in the end, just seems way too dull, and perhaps a bit "deus ex machina," when compared with the rest of the story.
Had Simmons literally just excluded the last 70 pages or so, this would have been a much better book - despite the fact that you would have been left hanging regarding the fates of several of the characters (which as it turns out, happens anyway).
Customer Rating: Summary: 680 Pages of Good 70 of Bad Comment: Amazing how a book that is so good and building a nice tale can spiral into an abyss of dull in the final chapters. Do yourself a favor and add a "The End" after the final paragraph of page 682 and pretend the rest of the story doesn't exist. Your Inua will thank you. The final 70 pages felt very rushed and detached from the remainder of the book. Customer Rating: Summary: Not as good as they say Comment: I enjoyed this book. But I bought it thinking it was scarey and it wasn't. Not even a little. I thought the author (who I know nothing about, I've never read anything else by him) would have made a much better book if he'd just cut out all the monster parts and gone with the situation at hand. Which was bad enough. And far scarier than the monster.
By adding a non scarey monster, the author turned a great book into a good book. And that's too bad.
