The Terror

A Novel

By: Dan Simmons

Narrated by: Tom Sellwood

Length: 28 hrs and 28 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)

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!

Drawn outtttttttttttt

I was not a fan of this book but listened til the end. It was a long drawn out story and very depressing. At times I felt that the author got carried away with the supernatural aspect which I found just out of place with the rest of the book. I found the monster following them to be unbelievable and the back story annoying. It was also an extremely depressing book, no high points. The parts that did hold my attention in the book was the information on scurvy and how starvation really effected the men on the boat. What I also found informative was the ship and what went into sailing the sea in the 1800's. I did enjoy the main character. I did enjoy the reader. I'm not really sure how this book received 4.5 stars

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

Too Much Of A Mediocre Thing

Basically I have two main criticisms.

The first is the narrator who was just a terrible choice for this book. His voice has now depth to it, no gravitas, and listening to characters who are meant to be hard-bitten sea-faring types is akin to hearing teenagers role-playing practising their all 'grown up and stuff' voices.

As a comparison, I'm now listening to the Patrick Melrose novels narrated by Alex Jennings who's capable of giving clear and distinct voices, across accents and gender, and can thus give his characters both variation and life. Sellwood just wasn't up to this task.

The second criticism is of the book itself. If Stephen King can be accused of 'verbal diarrhoea' in the length of density of his books, then Dan Simmons must do his writing from the toilet seat.

Good grief but the man can waffle, especially towards the end of the book and in particular the last chapter or two which should be full of melancholy and atmosphere but instead seemed to be little more than the other showing off his 'Inuit to English' dictionary.

Another occasion where I find myself distinctly in the minority. How this has 4.5 stars baffles me.

So, yeah, two main criticisms of an audiobook; the audio... and the book.

Too much timelines to follow.

Each chapter highlights a character/story but they jump around too much for me to follow. I need a picture to know where in the timeline the chapter is taking place.

Not my cup of tea.

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

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.

Most implausible story I have listened to by Dan

I am not sure my review will help anyone make up their mind about whether to purchase this audio book. But the creature(s) described in The Terror, and man's means of "communing" with it/them are uterly baseles. The story telling is decent but the action scenes are few in comparison to previous Dan Simmons listens. The characters are also rather shallow and under-developed. I feel I could have given this one a "pass" and not missed anything except than as a sleep aid. But a bit of warning, the author jumps around between character sketches and action sequences, that it is very hard to doze and figure out where to rewind to, upon waking up! :)

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.

Horrible story with horrible things happening

I learned after I was seven hours into this audio book that it is heavily abridged. That makes sense, whereas this shortened audio book definitely does not.

This book is about a crew that is ship wrecked in artic waters, and it details how the crew tries to save itself. I will say the book was good and fun in the beginning and at the end, but the middle drags so hard and it's so hard to care about.