Dan Simmons has written a new book. The story hits on several elements I enjoy. Simmons tells a story of exploration. He chooses an exploration story from the 19th century: an 1840s steamboat expedition in search of a Northwest Passage that stalls in pack ice for two winters. The officers and crews of the two ships, the Erebus and the Terror suffer botulism and frostbite, mutiny and cannibalism before Simmons unleashes his own hellbeasts upon the hapless, ragged survivors. 800 pages of predation and madness.