The Terror by Dan Simmons

 

The Terror by Dan Simmons-766 pages

This is an older book, but I read a review and thought it sounded interesting.  That is an understatement!

This is a book about survival.  It's 1845 and two ships set out to find the Northwest Passage.  They get stranded in the Arctic circle going on three summers without any thawing.  The ice is actually crushing the two ships.  They are running out of food and coal.  Scurvy and starvation is setting in.  If that is not enough there is something huge and terrifying trying to claw its way onto the ships.  On the HMS Terror they have also taken on an Inuit woman whose tongue has been cut out.  She may actually be the link to the terror that stalks them and yet she may be their only hope of surviving if she can teach them how to hunt seals.  Captain Crozier takes command after the predator takes out the expeditions leader, Sir John Franklin.  There are many brutal deaths at not only each others hands but also by the predator.  The story comes to a surprising twist which I will not reveal...

I liked it.  Not what I was expecting at all.  I recommend reading it.

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

The Fifth Heart: A Novel by Dan Simmons --- 617 pages

The most unlikely pairing you could imagine, as Sherlock Holmes ditches Dr. Watson to partner with the American novelist Henry James to solve a very complicated set of interwoven mysteries. Unbelievable? Yes, but Simmons makes it work in this fin de siècle story set in the United States. Far more than a simple Holmes pastiche, Simmons adroitly combines a Conan Doyle style sensational plot with the refined sensibilities of a James novel.

Virtually every major and many minor characters, places and events in the book are real people, places and events, with a few well known fictional characters mixed in, plus a running undercurrent about the relationship of authors to their creations. In the midst of all this Simmons unfolds his take on the suicide of Clover Adams, wife of the distingished American historian Henry Adams and the inspiration for James' The Portrait of a Lady, and how it relates to an anarchist plot to assasinate the leaders of the western world, beginning with President Grover Cleveland at the Grand Opening of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a schme masterminded by Holmes' nemesis, Professor Moriarty.

Be forewarned, this doorstopper of a book starts slowly. It requires persistence and patience, but once the gears begins to spin, the pay off comes. The wonderful cameo appearances of Sam Clemens, Teddy Roosevelt, and Clarence King (just to name a few), the vivd descriptions of Washington D.C., Boston, and Chicago's "White City" (site of the Columbian Exposition), are the icing on this improbable but engrossing literary conundrum.

Click HERE to read a review in The Guardian.

Click HERE to read a review in the Washington Post.

Click HERE to read a review in the Denver Post.