Tag Archives: denizens of hell

The Terror by Dan Simmons, Read by John Lee

The TerrorThe Terror by Dan Simmons
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

It is not beyond the realm of possibility that this book would have waited from being finished in February to being reviewed in July even had my year not been inhumanely busy. Despite the disgustingly hot weather, I have goose bumps thinking about it.

The Terror is taken from the name one half of a pair of ships sent on an Arctic expedition at some point when reinforcement technology for ice breaking ships still involved the types of wood used in conjunction with some iron. Near the beginning a character thinks to himself that the number of awards given to the returning commanders of these expeditions seems to be higher the more lives are lost. I’m inclined to agree.

This book was dark, dirty, and above all cold. To steal from the inimitable karen’s review, “oh my god, let me never get scurvy.” There are many things I could add to that list. I have no idea how realistic it may be, but the descriptions of the conditions experienced by the people on those ships make me wish I could forget hearing them.

Sadly, I feel the same way about much of the element of this book that throws it into the fantasy heap. It somehow went from a scary thing that could have been made frightening to a rather campy and eventually lame rehashing of a mythology that I suspect is nowhere near as simplistic as it seems. The last 10 or so chapters could have been left off the book. More HMS Terror and less of the Terror would have made this a far better book.

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Review: The Name of the Wind

The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I spent some time debating whether to give The Name of the Wind 3 stars or 4. I finally settled on 4, in large part because of Patrick Rothfuss‘s incredible language and the phenomenal job Nick Podehl did as narrator. That being said, the book had several pacing issues, a female love interest I find impressively boring and off-putting, and a protagonist I hated for the first third of the book. Despite this rocky going, however, when I finished the book my impression was largely positive. I think this is an excellent book to illustrate the concept that sometimes the whole is greater than the parts. I am definitely looking forward to listening to The Wise Man’s Fear, but will most likely give my ears a week or so sans headphones before doing so.

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