Dan Simmons has written a book about a horrible true story. The Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage, has been in the news, lately. Climate change means the passage is now often navigable; and the wreck of Franklin's ship, Erebus, has been found, sitting on the bottom of the sea off King William Island, where she sank, over a hundred and fifty years ago.
The Franklin expedition was a tragedy. Two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, blundered into the Arctic ice, became trapped; the crews succumbed to scurvy and (possibly) lead poisoning. Despairing of breaking free of the pack, or of rescue, the surviving crew members set off on a Hellish trek across the sea ice and the frozen North Canadian archipelago in a doomed effort to reach trading posts hundreds of barren miles away. They didn't make it, and in their desperation they ate each other. All 129 men died.
This we know, and it should be enough. There isn't any need to add to what really happened. A terrific novel could be written describing the disaster. Simmons, to his credit, tells some of that story, and that portion of the novel is most successful. He captures what must have been a horrific combination of drudgery and despair, and the horror of the attempt to cross the wilderness of frozen ice, dragging unwieldy sledges improvised from the ships' boats. That is the best part of the book, awakening sympathy and horror in the reader. But it is a horror of the pitilessness environment, and the hopelessness of the struggle. Not of the hostile supernatural presence Simmons decides to add to the mix. Simmons decides to garnish the already dreadful true events with a supernatural horror. And it simply does not work. The concept of a hulking, powerful, swift and remorseless THING hunting down the men of Erebus and Terror sounds chilling - but it isn't. The scenes where the mysterious beast attacks the men are not frightening, and the beast is never convincing.
The plotting and story-telling is also unconvincing. Early on, we learn the beast has breached Terror's hull - but nothing more is made of this calamity. Having gained entry, the beast never bothers to take advantage of it. There are possible explanations for this - but it is hard to escape the suspicion Simmon's just forgot about it. After all, late in the book, Terror is able to sail happily enough, in spite of this breach. Similarly, a crucial set piece relies on the officers ignoring what the crew are up to over the course of several days, in a situation where the least wavering of control and surveillance could lead to death. Not convincing.
Captain Francis Crozier, the main character, is awkwardly portrayed. Simmons wants him to to be the one who, if-only-they-had-listened, would have brought them home safely. His crucial advice is ignored. But Simmons can not reconcile this with the reality that Crozier loaded up the already-too-heavy boat-sleds with unnecessary junk - books, slippers, soap and silver spoons were all recovered from King William Island, pointing to an expedition planned not by level headed men but by a rabble, driven insane by scurvy and lead poisoning. Equally, Franklin is presented as bumbling twit. There is a lot the real Franklin can be criticised for - the failure to leave message cylinders detailing his plans in particular - but he was not a sap or a fool. He had trekked across Canada twice. The first time, disastrously, with members of his party succumbing to starvation and cannibalism; but he planned the second expedition, meticulously, drawing on his experiences and refusing to be browbeaten into compromise. It was successful, covering thousands of miles of the bleakest terrain on the planet. This man was not a buffoon, and Simmons's portrayal of him as a bit of an idiot is unjust.
Finally, there is a real problem towards the end of the novel. For reasons entirely incomprehensible, Simmons decides to lard the final pages of his novel with Inuit theology, at a point where the story can least endure it. Having slogged and shivered with Crozier and his shipmates over several hundred pages, it is hard to resist skipping the protracted mythic sections. It just doesn't work, and one feels that someone must have mentioned this to Simmons.
There are some good parts to the novel. It is a swift, page-turning read, for most of its considerable length. As mentioned before, the simple day-to-day effort of staying alive in the icebound ships is gruelling enough with out supernatural additions. There are a few shivery moments where suspense generates unease in the reader; and Simmons has certainly done his homework. He includes a bibliography of sources that serves as a good guide to further reading for those interested in finding out more about this valiant, utterly misguided, attempt to do what was pretty much impossible - make a North West Passage, to the sea.
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