The genre-bending Dan Simmons combines historical fiction and horror in The Terror. He retells the tragedy of Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition, which disappeared without explanation while traversing the Northwest Passage. While the tale has been fictionalized before (The Broken Lands by Robert Edric is one example), this time the perils of Arctic exploration are ratcheted up with the presence of a fearsome monster stalking the doomed sailors aboard the ships Erebus and Terror. Simmons stuffs his lengthy tale full of historical details, evocative descriptions of the cold and ice, Inuit mythology, and details gleaned from archaeologists' grisly discoveries along the frozen shores of the Canadian Arctic. -- János.
Request The Terror from the Saint Paul Public Library.
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