This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II. The supernatural element helps resolve the plot in a surprising yet highly effective manner. Tension builds as the men struggle to survive: The thing is a constant menace, and deaths continue to mount as a result of brutal Arctic conditions. Simmons convincingly renders both period details and the nuts and bolts of polar exploration as his narrative moves back and forth in time to show the expedition’s launch in 1845 and its early days in the Arctic. Crozier, for his part, is a chronic drunk, although it doesn’t seem to affect his command of his ship and men. Overconfident Franklin has disobeyed orders to leave behind messages detailing his movements, so rescue expeditions have no idea where to search for him. Food is short, thanks in part to improperly prepared canned goods the ships have been frozen in thick sea ice for two consecutive winters many of the crew show signs of scurvy and temperatures have been consistently 50 or more degrees below zero. The expedition is in enough trouble without this hostile being’s attention. The initial scene immediately introduces the novel’s main supernatural element: a giant bear-like entity (the crew call it the thing) that preys on the explorers and appears invulnerable to their weapons. The author jumbles the chronological sequence, beginning in October 1847 with Terror (one of the expedition’s two ships the other was Erebus) trapped in the ice north of Canada, where they have come in search of the Northwest Passage.
Simmons ( Olympos, 2005, etc.) tells the story through the eyes of several characters, including the expedition’s leader, Sir John Franklin, co-commander Captain Francis Crozier and the ship’s surgeon Harry Goodsir.
Horror novel based on an ill-fated 19th-century polar expedition.
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