The Terror

I haven't decided if waiting to read this book until I experienced a real life cold snap in the dead of winter was a brilliant move or a bad idea, but I'll be damned that extra bit of immersion didn't heighten my anxiety!

There's always going to be an appeal to doomed narratives where you already know the outcome, but the more bleak and sad that ending is, the more the morbid part of your mind wants to know how things got to that point. The Terror certainly doesn't disappoint here, going into superb (at times maybe too much?) detail outlining the ultimately futile attempts of this expedition's crew to survive in one of the harshest environments on earth. I'm talking descriptions of sailors unable to blink because their eyelids literally froze open, absent-mindedly touching cold metal with an ungloved hand and losing your skin as you pull away, the stench of wearing four layers of clothes you haven't washed in literal months, and one of the most graphic scenes of pre-industrial surgery I've read probably ever.

This is a cold book that was wonderfully atmospheric and was one of those, "the setting itself is a character" stories. To say nothing of the huge cast of sailors who are trying to place faith in their leaders to get them out of this mess until rule of law begins to break down and whispers of mutiny grow too loud. There are a ton of names to remember, but with a book this long and with as much time as you spend with them, it isn't too bad keeping track of them.

Also there's a monster. The monster was very good. Just an unstoppable, evil, and smart antagonist that caused multiple moments that had me saying, "oh Jesus Christ..." out loud. Never have I seen such a sinister force meting out punishment for the cardinal sin of checks notes "being British."

However the part that will always give me pause when recommending this to people in the future will be the ending, which kind of has a bit of a tone shift from being absolutely soul-crushingly bleak to somewhat kinda optimistic? I almost wish things had committed to being the worst possible outcome right to the very end because I was expecting it. There's also kind of a strange mysticism/variant of the "Magical Minority helps the white man" trope that I could've done without.

If nothing else, I feel like for pretty much the rest of my life whenever I experience something really cold I'm gonna be muttering to myself, "omg, this just like The Terror..."