Luckily, Simmons’ writing is good enough to prevent these from being deal-breakers. But the way the character is used does fall into various problematic tropes, such as the Noble Savage, the Nature Hero, and White Man Going Native.
There would obviously be unfavourable, racist attitudes towards her, but I always felt these were the characters' attitudes, not the writer's. To give Simmons credit, he does a good job handling the attitudes of the crew towards her. There is only one non-white female character in the story an Inuit tribeswoman known as Lady Silence. The second is the use of problematic tropes. It just doesn't feel quite right to me to be telling a fictional story using real people. Maybe if this had been a straight-up retelling of the story, but this is a highly fictionalised version. I'm not certain where the cut-off point is for how long needs to have passed before it becomes acceptable to dramatise real people in a fictional way. The first is the fact that the Terror was a real ship, and all the characters were real people. The other problem is the use of two problematic elements. What does that mean? It means that the book needed to have a good third of the content cut by a good editor to get rid of all the unnecessary padding. It was about halfway through when I realised what Simmons' writing style reminded me of. Because when Simmons moves away from info-dumps, he gives us an enthralling horror story. Also, this isn't how people talk.Īnd yet, each time I was close to giving up, the plot would come back and pull me again. Readers don't need two characters discussing the measurements of each ship in minute detail to understand the story.
The opening chapters of The Terror are a perfect demonstration of why this is the case. When studying writing, the standard wisdom is that research is important for the author, but very little should go into the actual writing. Yes, I feel I need to begin with a criticism.
My first thoughts? Well, they were along the lines of "We get it, you've done your research! Get on with the plot!" I received The Terror as part of a book subscription and so didn't know anything about it or author Dan Simmons before starting it.
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