Thursday, February 12, 2009

The Terror

The Terror by Dan Simmons (Audiobook)

What was this book about?

Two ships Terror and Erebus are on their way to the Northwest Passage. It all seems to be going well when disaster strikes and the weather traps the ships in ice. When they are stuck there for many months bad things start to happen. The men are overcome by disease, they are running out of food. It looks like there may not be a way out.

What are the men to do? Will they resort to cannibalism? You see the story from several different points of view as the story is told.

There also seems to be some sort of polar bear like creature that is out to kill them. It seems smarter than a polar bear. The men that are caught in its trap never return.

What did you think about the book?


Ok I wasn’t sure what I would think about this book. On the pro side I really enjoy novels that have a historical twist to them. I don’t want them to be dry – but I want them to teach me something about living in that time. I want them to make me interested in what was going on during that time. On the con side I have tried other books with a nautical theme and they just didn’t interest me. (Maybe it has to do with me getting sea sick when I am on a boat …)

But I enjoyed this book. The historical fact is no one really knows what happened to these boats. The people in the book were realistic and you either loved or hated them. They did what they had to – to survive and you wanted to see what was going to happen.

I think the only thing that I didn’t like was the supernatural twist of the monster. I really didn’t like it until the “almost” end of the book when the story changed tone and we learned what the monster really was and how he was connected (or not) to Silence. I liked that story on its own as well.

The voice of the reader is important for any sort of audio book. I have loved books or hated them based on the voice. For instance it was huge to me that all the Harry Potter books had the same reader. Whereas my husband thinks that some of the George R.R. Martin’s Ice and Fire series was ruined when they changed the reader half way through. For me this reader was fine. He didn’t overact. His voice seemed to fit the subject matter and I enjoyed his reading.

What genre would you consider this?
Historical Fiction with a paranormal twist

Overall:

Question for You!

How close to reality do you think something based on a historical event, should be?

1 comment:

Marg said...

I really want to read this book!