Rated by buyers 
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The funny part about this, is that I hesitated buying the book. The only book I had read from Dan Simmons was Darwin's blade, and I didnt like it at all. But after reading a positive review in USA Today I thought I'd give him another shot. Am I ever glad I did! Quite simply, maybe the best book I've read in a decade. Meticulous in detail, a broad spectrum of fully developed complex characters in a spartan deadly landscape. I followed the voyage eagerly for nearly 800 pages- completely absorbed. Multi-faceted- an enormous achievement for Mr.Simmons.
Rated by buyers 
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I am a huge fan of polar adventure stories, but this one is too long, repetitious, and misogynistic. I haven't read any horror stories before, but if this is a prime example, it must be a boring genre. White snow monster eats sailor, eats another sailor, dismembers another sailor, ad (literally) nauseum. The novel is more disturbing for how it portrays women: unknowable, sexualized (there is one sex scene with Crozier and a society woman which is almost laughable in its unrealistic male fantasy depiction), and only worthy if their tongues are cut out.
Rated by buyers 
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I felt like I was there with the characters. It literally made me cold to think about what they were going through. So detailed, I needed little imagination! It convinced me not to go artic exploring. Dan Simmons makes the characters very real. I felt the book was a little too long but I couldn't put it down until I finished it. A good read, if a little long.....
Rated by buyers 
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I was pretty suspicious about this book when I started to read. A horror story combined with a historical fiction/arctic exploration novel, it combines a number of elements which I typically do not really like separately, let alone together. Also, I am *not* a fan of Simmons. I disliked Carrion Comfort very much-- found it tedious and emotionally manipulative. Given all that, I didn't have high hopes for the book, despite a glowing recommendation from a friend.
In the end, I found it quite a bit better than I expected/feared. It is quite readable, and once I got used to the shifting timeframes at the beginning, the pages moved very quickly. I also have to give Simmons credit for his diligence in research and his persistence in building such a huge book. I don't really like historical fiction. I really don't like arctic explorer novels (historical or modern). I think the fact that I still enjoyed the read given all that is pretty impressive.
Simmons does a particularly good job with the characters in general. That impressed me since that was the aspect that I liked the least in the other book that I have read by him.
I do have several quarrels with the book, and these kept it (in my mind) from being a great read rather than a good read:
* Kitchen-sinkism. We really didn't need to have so many sly little references thrown in. There isn't enough meta in the text for me to really have enjoyed artifices such as the Masque of the Red Death out on the ice. It annoyed me, even though I believe that it was meant to be a sly wink.
* The monster. I kind of liked it as an unexplained embodiment of the arctic-- mindless killer that seems to only become mindful to make sure that the wrong thing happens at the very long time. The explanation towards the end of the book felt unsupported. Although some of the mythology was put in through the character of Lady Silence, I did not feel as though the book built to its conclusion about the thing. It was also an explanation that I kind of felt had been done to death, so that was at least a little bit disappointing.
* Hickey. He's just too evil as a secondary monster. Too conveniently evil, anyhow. The way that he emerges at appropriate plot points to turn things to the worse got on my nerves. An online firend compared him to Pinky & the Brain and I myself was thinking about a twisted Of Mice and Men riff. That part was kind of fun, but he was just too obvious as a plot delivery vehicle. In contrast to most of the rest of the book, whose characters were painstakingly constructed, I just never bought him.
* Women. There were really only a few of them in the novel, and I guess that it could successfully be argued that the way that Simmons portrayed them reflected the views of the time. But not quite. There's a particularly disturbing trope that sometimes pops up in popular fiction that posits the evil/frigid/grasping/bullying/manipulative civilized woman against the free-spirited/young/mystical/virginal native women that is a nasty twist on how native populations have been typically portrayed. It isn't *so* bad in this book, but it is emphasized because of how central it is to Crozier's character arc. He's had two women in his life who both seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time flashing men with their private bits-- but one did it with an intent to manipulate while the other was unashamed and sincere. It left kind of a bad taste in my mouth. (And it didn't surprise me at all to come to find that Simmons is a serious fan of Jack Vance.)
All this sounds like pretty serious criticism, and I guess that it is. But I find it worth mentioning precisely because the book was so very good. It was disappointing to me that it didn't take that left turn south into great-- at least not for me. These points start to sum up the reason why even though I enjoyed it, I was happy enough to leave it in a hotel room in Sweden when I was done reading.
Honestly, I would have given this book three stars. But I've given it four because of the size of the accomplishment and the visible research and reverence that Simmons has for the history/material.
Rated by buyers -
The basic story of two ships that set sail from England during the age of exploration to find a northwest passage is true. That neither ship was heard from again is also a part of history. As to what happened to the two crews and their ship, this story purports a possible explanation that is both fantastical and horrible.
If you enjoy this, the Hyperion series is a must-read too. Dan Simmons is a master of his craft; to keep you spellbound and ultimately to make you say WOW repeatedly.