The Terror - Dan Simmons

[troisoiseaux]

Finished The Terror and while my overall takeaway from this book is that at least the AMC adaptation was very good, I will say that Dan Simmons was really cooking in the last third, when character after character hit their breaking point after the crew abandoned their ice-stranded ships to march towards the smallest possible chance of rescue and everyone was dying of scurvy: the ones that just walked away and let the arctic - or the supernatural monster that has been picking them off - take them; the scene where, after the few remaining men strong enough to keep going make the call to abandon those who can't, Jopson uses the last of his strength to literally drag himself across the ice after them because they're leaving him to die on his birthday; Hickey's descent into madness as his breakaway crew of mutineers goes full Lord of the Flies. I also liked how, in the last half-dozen chapters, the narrative shifted from the 19th century British cultural lens to that of its Inuit characters, and that Silna ("Lady Silence") became the central character for a minute (before landing back on Crozier, here the sole survivor of the Franklin Expedition after being rescued by OC ex machina, i.e., Silna) although I'm not sure this entirely outweighs Simmons' earlier nonsense. Or his concurrent nonsense, for that matter. (Among other things, he is of the she breasted boobily school of writing about women.) And actually, the ending was really weird. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯