by Dan Simmons
First published 2007
Captain Francis Crozier takes command after Sir John Franklin dies during their doomed 1845 expedition to find the Northwest Passage. HMS Terror and HMS Erebus have been locked in Arctic ice for two years. Coal runs low. Food supplies dwindle. Scurvy weakens the crew. But these familiar dangers pale beside the creature that stalks them through the frozen darkness. It picks off sailors one by one, leaving mutilated remains. When the ice shows no sign of breaking, Crozier makes a desperate choice. He abandons the ships and leads his surviving men south across the wasteland. They drag lifeboats over pressure ridges and through blizzards. An Inuit woman travels with them, though she cannot or will not speak. She might hold the secret to their survival. The beast follows them onto the ice, growing bolder as the men grow weaker. Starvation and madness spread through the ranks. Crozier fights to hold his expedition together as everything he knows about leadership and survival crumbles around him.
Genres: historical-fiction, adventure, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, man-vs-nature
Setting: Arctic, HMS Erebus, HMS Terror
Period: 1845
784 pages · Hardcover · Little, Brown and Company
Content warnings: death, gore, graphic-violence