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    The Terror: A Novel
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    The Terror: A Novel
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    The Terror: A Novel
    Audiobook (abridged)8 hours

    The Terror: A Novel

    Published by Hachette Audio

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The men on board 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 will chill you to your core.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateJan 8, 2007
    ISBN9781594836411
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for The Terror

    4/5

    1,407 ratings106 reviews

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    • 3/5
      The crews of the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror are trapped in the Arctic ice for three years without a thaw. Something is out there in the frigid darkness, stalking their ships, snatching one seaman at a time, leaving bodies horribly mutilated. A fictional take on John Franklin's 1845 expedition to find the Northwest Passage.
    • 5/5
      Having spent many nights at sea, in the cold weather, the ice and dark; However in more modern times (Praise the creator) I can relate to some of the feelings and emotions of the crew in regards to the weather, isolation, but yet wonder of an unknown world around you. I spent many nights out on deck just watching and listening to the ocean, the ice and the world surrounding us. Having read this and understanding the isolation only added to the feeling of just how small we are in this world and how much we all take it for granted. I highly suggest reading this and reading "The Worst Journey in the world" The real account and notes from Scott's ill fated and tragic expedition to the South Pole. The suffering those men endured kind of adds a layer of salt on the wounds of what we think may have happened to Franklin's men up North. When you are done........you will never complain about the cold again. Yet it may cause you to slip out on the darkest, coldest night of the year and try to come to grips with the bravery of arctic explorers.
    • 4/5
      I read the first four hundred pages of The Terror while staying at a log cabin Bed and Breakfast in Black Forest, Colorado. Being surrounded by the wooden walls and canted ceiling of the cabin really made it feel as if I was deep in the bowels of a wooden sailing ship, and definitely increased my pleasure of this book! It's easily two or three hundred pages too long, but enjoyable nonetheless, and the last hundred pages of Inuit culture are definitely worthwhile.
    • 5/5
      This is the first book I have read by Dan Simmons and I thoroughly enjoyed every chapter of it. His writing style is somewhat lengthy, both in sentences and in page count but the way that he focused on the little details had me immersed in the story until the end. The characters were very well developed, the plot was suspense driven and all in all, it was the best read I had in a few months.
    • 4/5
      I'm not a huge fan of historical fiction. While I would love to say that Simmons pulled this off masterly and had me engrossed from the start, I can't. He did do a great job. And when I finished and researched it a little, I found out that the basis for the story was true fact. In an attempt to find a north-west passage, Sir John Franklin went on an expedition from England to the Canadian Arctic but was never seen again after his departure. Considering that information, Simmons did a great job. And considering the amount of research that he put into the writing and the detail that comes through, I was very impressed.From a point of view though of getting wrapped up in the story and pulled into the events occurring, I wasn't quite there. It might have been the historical factor. It might have been the large number of characters. I wasn't too crazy about some of the time jumping back and forth at the beginning. Whatever it was, I know that I wasn't pulled into this book as much as other books by Simmons. I definitely appreciated the last third of the book more than the first two-thirds. It seemed much better written and more interesting. That could have simply been because I knew all the remaining characters that were alive and was interested in what happened to them.
    • 3/5
      I thought it was entirely appropriate that while I was reading this book about two shiploads of sailors trapped in the arctic, the area in which I live was experiencing a cold snap with temperatures below freezing for much of the time. In addition to that I ran into images of polar bears multiple times while reading this book (nature shows, advertisements, online photos, my grocery store - it was uncanny).

      The Terror in this book is both the name of the ship and the name of a mysterious large polar-bear like animal that hunts the men of the Franklin Expedition. When I first saw that one of the ships was named The Terror I wondered who in the world would give a ship such an awful name, but it is the real name of one of the ships that was on the expedition (the other was named Erebus). To me naming a ship "The Terror" is just about as bad as calling it "Scurvy," "Death Ship," or "Drowning." Ah, aren't you happy, you're sailing on "The Terror!" It makes me glad that airplanes aren't named in the same manner.

      The polar bear that they nickname The Terror is obviously a fictitious element to the story, but it does liven it up and move the plot along, and it worked for me for the most part. This super-sized polar bear seems to always be aware of what the men are doing, and stalks them - often brutally murdering them. I could see how a 992 page story about multiple winters in the Arctic would make for dry reading without a villain to liven things up. The Terror is not the only villain in this story though, as the climate itself with the snow, ice and lightning storms that seem equally villainous in their destruction of the men.

      Not a lot is known about the fate of the Franklin Expedition (see this article for more information), so the author is able to speculate on certain aspects of their story, like the addition of an Eskimo woman to the plot. She is completely silent, and there is something haunting and mysterious about her and the man she was with who was killed by the sailors. The author hints that there might be some mystical or supernatural connection between her, the man who was with her, and The Terror.

      This book reminded me of several books and movies at once:

      * Moby Dick - because of the unusually strong animal villain, and the crew's obsession with killing it.
      * Jurassic Park - because of the intelligence and violence of the villainous bear.
      * Jaws - because the bear seems focused on pursuing and killing the men.

      I read this book without any prior knowledge of the Franklin Expedition, so I was somewhat surprised at the fate of the sailors on these two ships. I wasn't totally surprised, but I was hoping that at least something would go right for them.

      As for the length of this book (992 pages) I felt like it could have been half as long and still been a good read. What I didn't like about the novel was the last hundred pages. The story takes a strange turn, and is suddenly filled with Eskimo folklore and rituals. The chapter format changes, the tone changes, and it is pretty much like reading a separate story tacked on the ending. My guess is that the author wanted to include something relating to Eskimo culture, and a possible alternative for what might have happened to a crew member. It just got too weird for me when he threw in supernatural and mythical elements, when the book had been (with the exception of the big polar bear) mostly historical fiction up until that point. Altogether, the supernatural and folklore aspects of the story were less appealing to me because I was looking for more of a dramatization, not a mythic fantasy.

      I was fascinated by the tale of the Franklin Expedition though, and read more about it online after finishing the book. I only do that when a book really engages my interest about a topic, so the book succeeded on that level.

      It is a long book, but I think it says something about the compelling nature of the story that I read the book over the course of a week and the only time I lost interest was in the last hundred pages. I thought that the plot was inventive and it definitely gave a unique twist to the story. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys stories of survival in harsh situations, and doesn't mind a little bit of mythic fantasy thrown into the mix.
    • 5/5
      Dan Simmons, in my opinion, is one of the best writers currently out there. Some authors write good books, and some others can write good horror. Simmons can do both at the same time. The level of detail in this novel was amazing, and I really loved it.
    • 4/5
      *Review update below the old one*

      0 Stars. 2 Stars only for vividly depicting the adversities encountered frequently on such expeditions by the explorers in that era.

      One thing I couldn't understand is, why would you add a horror element in a book which describes the fate of real historical characters? I feel that Dan Simmons would have converted this into a very good novel of 'something like this might have happened to them' (Fictionalized account, to be exact)if he would have stuck only to the 'real' perils that lurked in abundance in the Arctics.

      The last few pages were horrible. I almost slept while reading them at 8:00 pm in the evening. And Mr. Simmons, please hire a decent editor.

      P.S. - At least the book is aptly named - The horrible writing and needless mythological mumbo-jumbo is guaranteed to Strike 'TERROR OF BEING BORED TO DEATH' in your heart and would dare you to read next Dan Simmons right away (Even his award winning previous books).

      P.P.S. - I didn't read anything for the next 2 days. Recuperated.

      *********************************************************
      *Update after a year*

      Hell! This book has stayed with me for a year now! As sea stories are one of my favorites, whenever I thought about reading a book related to sea adventures, I invariably thought about this one.

      So I guess although I disliked the horror bit in "The Terror", I can't help but admit that I liked the rest very much.

      So, from 2 stars this book goes to 4 stars.

      1 star still cinched for that needless horror element.
    • 3/5
      This is what I wrote on November 12th:
      I just finished this book. I'll write a real review later. But for now all I have is: Damn you, Dan Simmons. Damn. You.

      It's almost a month later, and I still feel scarred by this book. Still. But I hate leaving books without reviews, so here's my sad, PTSDed attempt:

      This book has an interesting premise: What really happened to the doomed Franklin expedition. What did the men of the Terror and Erebus really go through during all of those months (years!) of their expedition. How did they really meet their end?

      This book was amaze-balls in so many way. It is long, it is plodding, it is filled with historical facts that we probably don't need. But (big but there), I (usually) liked how the plodding tediousness of some of Simmons's storytelling really sets the tone for the plodding tediousness of the lives of these men.

      My first attempt to read this book was aborted because it was in the middle of summer, and I just couldn't feel the icy-bleakness of the story. My next attempt, during the first cold-snap of the season, huddled under blankets with hot tea, was the way to go. The freezing temps of the book soaked me to my core when reading Simmons's prose.

      His descriptions of the ice-monster were fantastic. The descriptions of the baiting, the taunting, the sentient being playing with the men like a cat does a mouse were absolutely horrifying. The scene with the Carnivale (effing brilliant) nearly scared the pee-water out of me.

      Unfortunately, there would be these wonderfully horrific scenes with the ice monster and then 200 pages of nothing. I appreciated the slow pace of the book to an extent, but there's a fine line between keeping you waiting for more and then wondering when the hell he would get on with it already.

      Oh, and the scurvy. I've read medical reports from my Civil-War ancestors about scurvy and not only how bad it sucked, but how it ruined their live and Simmons's descriptions are horrifying in their accuracy.

      Seriously, the guy did a great job. Until the end.

      The sudden whiplash ending that left you saying "WTF, REALLY?" knocked an entire star off of this book for me. This was a four star book. This was a really, really good book, until the sudden change in narration/writing happened, and suddenly we were reading an entirely different book, with an entirely different tone and just sucked the enjoyment out of it for me. I feel like he could have put the information he gave you during the last couple of chapters into the story without ruining it, but he didn't, c'est la vie.

      This book could have been amazing; it was so close, and yet, so far.
    • 5/5
      Outstanding book. The types of leadership styles reflected in the various characters were fascinating. The level of detail was amazing. Highly recommend this book.
    • 3/5
      Well written, beautifully descriptive. Makes you feel the cold and desolation. Enjoyed the read, would have liked it better if it was a bit shorter.
    • 4/5
      Interesting telling of the lost expedition to find the northwest passage. Takes a long time developing the plot, but to such detail that it is worth struggling through the first 100 pages or so. Unable to put it down by the last 100 pages. Well done.
    • 5/5
      This is a great book about the ill fated Franklin expedition to the arctic. I am afraid of large books but had no trouble reading this one (my lightweight and easy to hold Kindle had a part in that). The supernatural aspect and detailed account of the story and characters will not let the reader bored.
    • 5/5
      This is an outstanding historical novel that bridges the gap between "Literature" with a capital "L" and horror. It is brilliant, gripping, provocative and satisfying at the end. I've recommended this novel several times.
    • 5/5
      Based on John Franklin's ill-fated 1840s expedition to the Arctic seeking to find the fabled Northwest Passage, Dan Simmons imagines a supernatural element that helped determine the outcome of the mysterious disappearance of the ships and crew.Until recently, little has been found of the expedition, a few grave sites, no shipwrecks, no abandoned camps. The two ships and their hundreds of men seemed to have vanished from the white face of the ice-entombed earth. Simmons imagines an encounter with a supernatural being, based on actual Inuit legends, which attacks the men and forces them to flee the ice-locked ships.Combining historical fiction with elements of horror, Simmons creates one of his masterpieces. The camaraderie amongst the men and it disintegration in the face of the brutal Arctic elements is superbly detailed, along with the sheer exhaustion and mortality brought to bear by living and working in such an environment for so many years. The reader feels the pain and psychological effects of the winter enforced solitude.I'm not sure what's more terrifying, the elements and the savagery they unleash amongst the men, or the monster they encounter on the ice.Readers will be captivated by this tale which feels nowhere near as long as it is. Simmons proves to be a master in yet another genre.
    • 5/5
      It's actually called "THE Terror" and it refers to one of the ships lost in the ill-fated Franklin expedition, a Victorian-age expedition to find the Northwest Passage. No one knows what actually happened to the men on both ships (the other was called The Erebus--moral of that story is get happier names for your ships if you want your expedition to go well)--there were no survivors in the year-and-a-half it took rescuers to get to them. Simmons has done his research well. This is one of my favourite books. Though Simmons is a perfectly competent horror writer in the manner of Stephen King and has a number of fantasy novels (which I haven't read) to his credit, his triumph is his versatility and the acute vividness of his descriptions of scene, no matter how fantastic. Since there is little evidence to go one, Simmons weaves a story of men, yes, lost in the Arctic ice, but threatened by a supernatural being who is in contact with the local Innuit, especially a young woman the expedition has made prisoner. Simmons captured me so completely in the very long book, I was afraid he'd let me down with a half-baked ending. But no. The ending too was perfect. There are echoes of all sorts of classic literature here, especially Poe and Conrad. I've given it to several senior students to read, seen them daunted by the length and then heard them gush over it after they got into it. Book clubs everywhere, take note!
    • 5/5
      Based on a true story of Arctic expedition by England in the 1840s, The Terror is a suspenseful thriller and adventure story. This revisionist take on John Franklin's exploration now has elements of the supernatural, as a mysterious creature stalks the crew, a rival as dangerous as the inhumanly cold elements with which the men must contend. Written with an engaging shift in time and perspective, The Terror has some of the most thrilling action and suspense sequences as it chronicles this epic saga of survival. However, the final chapters and ending were a big disappointment with some severely unexpected plotting, an otherwise perfect book until the final pages.
    • 5/5
      I suppose Dan Simmon's "The Terror" would fit best into the "historical horror" category, if such can be said to be a bonafide category. The story is a fictional account of the Franklin Expedition in search of the Northwest Passage (1845) which became trapped in the ice and eventually perished to a man. The author blends a vast amount of historical detail with elements of horror as a supernatural polar bear stalks the expedition and picks off its members one by one.As I've seen many LT members complain, the book is long. It's over 700 pages (at least, in my hard back version it is), so it takes considerable work to get through the whole thing. But in my estimation it is worth it. Simmons is a great writer. His characters are flawed but believable, his imagery is vivid, and his story telling is impeccable. At times his narrative seems to stall, there are intermittent flashbacks, and the point of view changes almost flippantly. But all of this, I believe, plays into the Simmons' purpose with the book.The historical search for the Northwest Passage was an arduous undertaking, a long 3 year journey across some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet. Like most dangerous undertakings, it is composed of long stretches of toilsome boredom punctuated by lightning-fast moments of action and sheer terror. And I believe that Simmons was trying to synthesize a measure of this experience in his book. Similar to the Franklin Expedition's doomed journey, reading this book is a long project. That's not to say that the book is not entertaining or that the pages don't go by pretty quickly, but that it's not a book that can be read in an afternoon of reading. Because the reader has to work a little to get through the novel, the plight of the characters is made more accessible and identifiable to said reader.The supernatural polar bear also becomes a symbol for the Arctic landscape, as if the land itself is trying to wipe away all trace of the European invaders. Though, I did feel like the ending was just kind of thrown in there. It wasn't that the author wrote himself into a corner or used a Deus Ex Machina to end the conflict, but I did feel that there wasn't enough explanation of Crozier's "second sight" in previous sections the book to set up the ending and have it make sense in the context of the rest of the narrative. And even though the ending came out of left field to a certain extent and the author got a little bit preachy about the "white man intruding upon native lands" and all that muck, it didn't ruin the book for me.If you're the type of reader that doesn't like to work a bit when reading, this book may not be for you. But if you're a fan of history and don't mind a story that isn't "wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am" in it's style and progression, then "The Terror" could be right up your alley.
    • 3/5
      Very long book - with way too much supernatural stuff. At some point I wanted all that junk to go away and just focus on the "real" story (as real as anyone can know). I just can't give it more than 3 stars based on the 100-200 pages that were completely unnecessary.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic interpretation of history and historical fiction--I gasped aloud several times as I tore through several hundred pages in a London pub last night.
    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed the first three-quarters of this historical-cum-supernatural thriller. Dan Simmons immerses the reader in a white waste of a world, i.e. the far reaches of the Canadian Arctic, as he traces out the doomed journey of Sir John Franklin and his two ships, Erebus and Terror, in their search for the Northwest Passage in the 1840s. As if the brutal setting -- with its relentless cold, barren islands and endless waves of sea ice -- weren't bad enough, Simmons conjures up a foul beastie to hunt the hapless sailors. It's a nice touch, actually -- it allows Simmons to punctuate the tedium of the sailors' day-to-day slog dealing with the elements with intense shots of concentrated horror; this makes for immersive and exciting reading.I have two gripes with this novel, however. On the petty side, I have some doubts about the meteorological accuracy of Simmons's descriptions of the climate the expedition must endure. Yes, it's no doubt very, very cold in the region they sailed, but he suggests they regularly encountered temperatures of -80 to even -100 F, which seems impossible, as do the blizzards in which snowfall is measured in feet. As Simmons himself notes toward the end of the book, the Arctic is essentially a desert. Simmons also makes a sloppy error when he's describing one character's recollections of the tortures prisoners in Tasmania suffered: they are described as having been forced to labor in the 'tropical' heat of Van Diemen's land; Tasmania is in fact cool and very temperate. 19th century prisoners may well have suffered greatly there, but it wasn't likely due to heat. These inaccuracies cast some nagging doubt on the veracity of Simmons's other historical detail, although I don't know enough about the real Franklin expedition to comment on that.More seriously, Simmons ends the book with an extended Rousseauvian fantasy that rankled me quite deeply. Instead of celebrating at least the intrepid curiosity and ambitious drive that sent this expedition to its doom, Simmons mocks their sacrifice with page after page of rather naive and politically-correct admiration of the 'Esquimaux' and their mythos -- and their obvious superiority to the blundering Englishmen. Nevertheless, I'd recommend reading Terror. It's (mostly) time well-spent in a strange but compelling world most of us will never otherwise see.
    • 4/5
      Long after the Franklin Expedition left England in the mid-1840s to find the fabled Northwest Passage, the search for its members finally led to evidence of their cruel fates. In this novel, Dan Simmons builds on what was known about the expedition to create a cold, brutish environment -- and that's the one off the ice.Filled with fascinating detail of life aboard ships trapped in the ice, what it takes to outfit and crew a polar expedition, and how much better "primitive" people are at developing a symbiotic relationship with nature, this hefty 760-page novel hits a berg once Terror Capt. Francis Crozier begins tapping into his Second Sight to fill out the historical plot. It sinks quickly with its fanciful final chapters. Still, the pace of the book rarely lags as it heads toward the inexorable end to the expedition. Simmons masterfully shows that no matter the trials and hardships imposed by a harsh climate and dangerous animals, the true enemy is within the cruelest beast of all.
    • 3/5
      It is very long. And there were points where I thought if Simmons gave one more list of names (the men who had died, the men who were still alive, the name of every officer) or described the symptoms of scurvy one more time I was going to scream. But I think he did a good job of keeping the reader interested because you never really knew what was going to happen. The men fighting the cold, hunger, each other, personal demons and the ice was just as suspenseful as their fight against the unknown enemy that stalked them. I'm glad that he explained that enemy and how it all came about but I was a little disappointed that it didn't meld into the rest of the book better. It was more like the story you had been reading stopped and another, rather long, story was stuck in the middle to explain. I think it was a pretty good horror story, with death and mayhem, terror and suspense, but I would have enjoyed it more if certain pieces were left out and the size cut down a little bit.
    • 4/5
      This book was both very detailed and very slow. I enjoyed the high brow approach took to portraying the dangers of canned foods (lead poisoning, botulism) by not clubbing the reader over the head with what was happening - just reminding them that the sicknesses were linked with the food for a reason nobody knew.I thought the creature was an interesting addition. The book would not have suffered too much with it removed, just because the real horror wasn't the beast, but the environment they had to live in (and, of course, the weak and spiteful men that later turned to cannibalism). Having it and the (happy?) ending with the Captain made everything fit together, however, so I guess that I'm glad the thing was in it.
    • 4/5
      The Terror is a horror novel by Dan Simmons. I used to read a lot of horror novels, many of which have faded in my memory but I do remember reading Carrion Comfort by him a long time ago. Anyway, I think this is the first time I've read one where the plot is set in the polar regions. Basically two British exploration ships are marooned while searching for the Northwest Passage (I've since learned it's based on the actual Franklin Expedition), frozen into place for nearly 1 1/2 years, far from civilization, due to a bad choice by the expedition's commander. There's a lot of exposition and back story for the characters but I think it's needed to understand the physical hardship men went through when they were sent or volunteered for polar expeditions by ship in the 1800s. Their biggest obstacle is a foe who means to kill them all. This only compounds their other immediate concerns. And the monster these men face is unlike anything I've encountered. You alternately think hmmmm, Yeti, Abominable, Human Mutant? Yet when described, fleetingly at first, then in somewhat more sketchy detail, you begin to feel the fear of this unknown predator, and a harsh landscape that might as well be like trying to survive on Mars; food going bad, limited coal to keep the ships livable, no animals to hunt, men dying from illness and a monster that can't be fought. And more importantly, a monster that has an intellect, including crude practical jokes. Author Simmons really did his research. You learn a great deal about ice formations, water currents, snow, way below zero-degree weather, and survival. Certainly enough to know these people had to be somewhat insane to go on these expeditions in the first place (or arrogant). Also certainly enough to know I would never want to experience that kind of weather, at least, not under those conditions.Claustrophic, alien, and utterly involving.
    • 3/5
      Decent...but suffers from meandering plot and word-bloat. Simmons in his pretentious mode. Earlier Simmons is recommended over this. Try "Song of Kali".
    • 4/5
      In 1845, the HMS Terror and its sister ship, the Erebus, sailed off from England to explore the Arctic Ocean and never came back. The story, based on the few remaining bits of evidence of what happened to them, is pretty horrific, but still very interesting. The men have to battle for survival against subzero temperatures, crappy 1840s technology (especially the new and not-quite-perfected technology of canned food), starvation, and each other. Above all, there's the monster they refer to as "the thing on the ice", which may be a freakishly large polar bear, or something much, much worse. The book is very long (956 pages) but worth it. Reading it in the middle of January probably helped a lot. One warning/mini-spoiler - the book takes a very odd turn near the end, so much so that the last hundred pages or so feels like an entirely different book in some ways.
    • 5/5
      Dan Simmons' monstrosity of a book took me months to read (granted, I don't have unlimited free time on my hands), but was well worth the time and effort. Simmons re-imagines the story of the Franklin expeditions to the arctic north, combining factual history (the ships Terror and Erebus did, in fact, get stuck in the ice and the men all slowly died of starvation and scurvy) and supernatural horror. In Simmons' telling, the men on the ships are stalked by a terrifying "Thing" on the ice--a monster similar to a polar bear, only twice as large and much more intelligent and deadly. This combination of real terror and supernatural terror make for a gripping story that both frightens and fascinates the reader.
    • 4/5
      A brilliant and complex novel, historical fantasy based on the final exhibition of Sir John Franklin to the Artic. Told through the eyes of a number of the crew, it describes their doomed journey.The title hints at the horror they face; the name of one of their trappedd ships; the behaviour that human's can show; and of a supernatural or mythic monster that stalks and kills them. There are hints of The Thing and possibly of Frankstein. It is a long read, but really worth it! The historical research is excellent - and the novel bears arelationship with the same author's Drood,
    • 3/5
      After the sun-lit world of Olympos, Simmons plunges his readers into his darkest material since perhaps Carrion Comfort. That in itself is not necessarily a problem, but there is an issue with the way the novel is being billed.It is NOT a historical novel with a metaphorical element of horror. It is a HORROR novel that happens to have a historical setting.Again, not in itself a problem. But Simmons himself seems to have difficulty deciding which kind of a novel he's writing, so the historical elements place constraints on the story that keep it from having a fully satisfying plot, while the horror elements introduce events that are historically ridiculous.After Olympos, Terror's Hobbesian theme is stunningly bleak. But then, life WOULD be nasty, brutish, short, etc. if one were on an early 19th-century Arctic expedition whose captain made astonishingly bad decisions based on an irrational faith that God would see them through--or if one were an Inuit of that time. So the final Rousseau-like chapters romanticizing the "noble Inuit" are particularly strange. Simmons is inordinately impressed with the only two things the Inuit could do: build igloos, which really isn't that hard (I did it as a boy scout at age thirteen or so, though mine no doubt lacked the mathematical symmetry of those Simmons describes, though it's not as if the Inuit, lacking a system of writing, could actually have grasped the higher mathematics of what they were supposedly doing); and hunting seal, which, well, they'd pretty much HAVE to be good at. (None of this is meant to belittle or morally criticize the Inuit of the time, as given their circumstances, it would have been near impossible for them to advance much beyond that.)Also, Simmons has already done the "what if their primitive mythology were true?" bit in Fires of Eden, with the much more entertaining Hawaiian mythology, and unhampered by pretensions to historicity.Still, Simmons' style here is beautiful, and many of the characters are among the best he's created, so it's certainly worth a read, like everything else he's written.