The Terror

By: Dan Simmons

Narrated by: Tom Sellwood

Length: 28 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's Summary

The men onboard HMS Terror have every expectation of finding the Northwest Passage. When the expedition's leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the Terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear there is no escape. A haunting, gripping story based on actual historical events, The Terror is a novel that will chill you to your core.

©2007 Dan Simmons (P)2017 Hachette Audio

Critic Reviews

"The best and most unusual historical novel I have read in years." (Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe)

" The Terror is both dazzling history and a sparkling chiller." (Caroline Leavitt, People)

" The Terror is nothing less than a revelation. Dan Simmons is a giant among novelists, and I am in awe of his achievement." (Lincoln Child)

Very good then, NOT

I love a good historical fiction, and three quarters of this book was fantastic.

A tale of hardship followed up by bad luck and tragedy. Not to give anything away, but they find themselves stuck fast in the ice while trying to find a passage to sail north of Canada. they begin to be hunted by what appears to be an extremely large Polar Bear.
The crews of the 2 ships struggle to survive and many parish. The story is told in, through the eyes experiences from many different crew members .
BUT THEN at about chapter 62 the story tales a bad left turn and never recovers.
This is my first Dan Simmons book and I was impressed in his many detailed characters,and the telling of the story through their experiences.
I will definitely try another Dan Simmons novel soon

16 of 16 people found this review helpful

Adam

The book started off well enough. Stranded in the ice, a mysterious beast slowly consuming them, then it fall off the rails. The solid chapters of Eskimo language, boring. Throw in some telepathy and shared dreams and you end up with barely a three star review.

14 of 14 people found this review helpful

Not for me

I made it about halfway through this book before giving up from boredom. There were a couple of chapters that gripped me utterly, but aside from that I found it tedious to listen to. I ended up reading the rest of the plot online to decide whether or not to continue but ended up abandoning it. The narrator, however, is excellent and was able to give each character a unique voice. His storytelling was probably why I made it as far as I did.

14 of 14 people found this review helpful

Last 5 chapters didn't seem necessary

Kept me engaged up until the last chapters, which went too much into Inuit culture. While interesting, it didn't seem necessary for an ending. Narration was fabulous!

13 of 13 people found this review helpful

Not my cup of tea.

I guess I was expecting something a little more realistic. It just wasn't my kind of book.

13 of 13 people found this review helpful

This book DRAGS on forever!

This book dragged on for for so long I often got drowsy listening to it. It was about 19 hours longer than it had to be. If you like books that give you the descriptions of every single little detail, this is your book.

Of all the deaths of the crew, two of them were a surprise, I had thought they would live.

The narrator did a great job but I doubt I will buy another book from this author, I like my audio books when I am driving and this one is NOT something to listen to while driving!

12 of 12 people found this review helpful

Great until the End

I really was enjoying the book and just felt like the last chapters where from an entirely different book.

12 of 12 people found this review helpful

BORING and terrible narration

I love a good Dan Simmons horror story but God was this boring. It goes on forever and then just goes off the rails at the end. The narration is incredibly irritating because he whispers the whole time. Overall this was a damn waste of what felt like a million hours!

11 of 11 people found this review helpful

Oh the Whispering!

Oh dear, it is so over-written that I can't see anything, or any narrator, making it work. Do we really need to have one, not-so-interesting scene told from multiple viewpoints? No. Do we need to know every single name, first and last, of every crew member told us in the scenes they are involved in? No. Imagine Captain Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise:

"Mr. Spock, take a landing party, Marcus W. Welby, of Yorkshire, John B. Kildare, of Kildare, James Tillbury, of the Pillsbury Tillbury's, Xavier Holloway, Betrand Rainer, Lee Revere, and Scotty! to the surface to see what's going on."

It is ridiculous. And whilst I can usually excuse this sort of excess for a novel set in the 1800's because I think, well, Dickens, well, Thackeray, well. . . for all of his research, Dan Simmons is neither, and the book isn't compelling enough to justify it. It's just boring.

Narrator Tom Sellwood is talented, bar his astonishingly atrocious stab at the Irish granny's accent, which is classic stage-Oirish. (Apparently, only Irish Roman-Catholics are Oirish in Sellwood's mind. Bless!) The whispering, oh, the whispering! which seems truly random, is a deal-breaker. Isn't there a director, or producer who oversees these things? It is so irritating that even if the story wasn't so boringly drawn-out I would have given up on it. You turn the volume up, you turn the volume down. You turn the volume up, you turn the volume down. No thanks.

So, Mr. Sellwood, knock off your Oirish, and stop with the whispering, if you want this customer to listen to another book narrated by you. You can do better!

Mr. Simmons, get yourself a decent editor. If you have a decent editor and think you know better than they do, you don't.

11 of 11 people found this review helpful

Long Details

Way to many details that really didn’t help the story. Audio has areas that are so soft that I could not understand the words.

11 of 11 people found this review helpful