#50 - The Terror

When I planned to read books on things I didn't know about, I assumed that this would mean non-fiction books. One of my patients was reading "The Terror" by Dan Simmons and encouraged me to do the same. One one hand it is a novel about a group of 19th-century British explorers who are trying to find the fabled Northwest Passage over Canada who face an overwhelming combination of weather, poisonous rations, mechanical failures, incompetent leadership, and, oh yeah, a 10-foot Yeti-like creature stalks them through the frozen landscape. On the other hand it is a well-researched compendium of the state of Arctic exploration in the 1800's, from the politics of launching a mission to the day-to-day details of running an icebreaker. While the narrative was intensely engaging, I left the book with a level of knowledge about that world that I never expected. The HMS Terror was a real ship from that era that was lost during an attempt to find the Northwest Passage, so Dan Simmons took what was known about the ship and its crew and spun this detailed narrative that I was very satisfied to explore.