I’m definitely in the minority here, but I hated The Terror. The idea of a fantasy/horror historical fiction about the Franklin expedition is so cool, but it just didn’t work for me. I felt like the characters are all flat and barely seem afraid of the thing that’s stalking them, which diminishes the psychological horror that should be the book’s centerpiece, and there’s no suspense because the narrative constantly skips ahead, states the outcome of an event, and then tells about it through the character’s memory instead of letting the reader experience the action. I also thought the dialogue seemed kind of stilted and like the author just wanted to show off the research he’d done.

And I really hated the constant sexual descriptions of naked teenage girls, most of whom have no narrative reason to be nude (yet every time a girl appears, she at least takes off her shirt, even if it’s –100 degrees and they’re outside) and there are no narrative reasons for so many children to be having sex with 50 year old men.