Babies Ever After: Crozier, the sole survivor, and Lady Silence have two children in the book's epilogue. There are many reasons why you should want to read this though. In this book you will share and feel the experience the crew are feeling: the cold, the despair, the loneliness, the dread and terror of the unknown, unstoppable creature, and the tragic understanding of, what inevitably feels to be, a hopeless outcome. You might feel the need to put on layers and layers of clothing, and stand so close to a fire you may be tempted to put your hands and feet right into it. You will feel like you are living this book. Eldritch Abomination: The Thing on the Ice qualifies — its motives are incomprehensible; seemingly For the Evulz rather than a beast that kills for food. It shows unanimal-like intelligence and cruelty, has apparently supernatural abilities, and according to Inuit legend is an ancient living weapon created during a war between their gods.

like the descent, it is the supernatural elements of the story that end up being the least scary. nature is scary enough. cave-exploration, even for feisty extreme-sport doing, athletic-looking girls, becomes terrifying, even before any monsters show up. monsters are icing. for this book, scurvy, madness, murder, temperatures of 78 degrees below zero, starvation, frostbite, gangrene, botulism, did i mention scurvy??- i mean, isn't that enough without a giant monster stalking and eating your seamen? The Smart Guy: Doctor Harry Goodsir, who's constantly trying to figure out what's causing the illness of the crew. Super-Persistent Predator: Once the crew is in the Tuunbaq's sights, it does not give them up. Even after they abandon the ships and begin marching south, it continues to hunt them. It even kills any other animals in the area to deny them food.Innocent Fanservice Girl: Lady Silence goes around topless whenever possible and doesn't seem to notice or care about the effect it has on the expedition's crew. You Can't Go Home Again: Crozier decides to stay with Silence rather than return to England in disgrace as the Sole Survivor, or start a new life under another name in America. this book is a rare combination of to the lighthouse, and the thing, with hardy-esque occurrences of misunderstanding and some cannibalism thrown in for the kiddies. plus boats and ice and monster.

An in-universe example, one of the crew members suggest the Grand Venetian Carnivale tents be designed in the same manner as the colored rooms in Poe's " The Masque of the Red Death". Some time later, Crozier and Lady Silence (her real name revealed to be Silna) have several children, and he has taken the name Taliriktug. Travelling with an Esquimaux group, the family encounter the still-standing Terror almost two hundred miles south of her original location. After exploring the decaying ship and encountering a shriveled corpse in his former bunk, Taliriktug sets the ship alight and watches the conflagration with his family, as Terror sinks below the ice. Bears Are Bad News: Especially when they are demonic supernatural beasts with a taste for human flesh and fear. Volkogonov 1998, p.139: "Between 1929 and 1953 the state created by Lenin and set in motion by Stalin deprived 21.5 million Soviet citizens of their lives."Trailers Always Spoil: The map of the area that the ships Terror and Erebus and their respective crews are traversing in the novel — placed before the story even begins — is marked with the burial locations of a number of characters, by name. When characters with these names begin showing up, it's not hard to realize who's not going to survive. Gellately 2007, p.584: "More recent estimations of the Soviet-on-Soviet killing have been more 'modest' and range between ten and twenty million." You hardly need the horror element that is soon introduced into the mix. In some ways, the tension actually dissipates with the advent of a monstrous bear-cum-angered-Inuit-spirit. Once the creature starts tearing exploratory parties to pieces, there is focus and legitimacy to the fears of the trapped men. But it is surely the sprawling and deepening nature of these fears that provides the true horror for us all. Or maybe that’s just 2021 speaking. Maybe vicious giant bears roaming the icy wastelands were more frightening, and will be again one happy day. Samuelson, Lennart (2009). "A Pathbreaker. Robert Conquest and Soviet Studies During the Cold War". Baltic Worlds. Flemingsberg, Sweden: Centre for Baltic and East European Studies. II (1): 47–51 . Retrieved 17 September 2021– via Balticworlds.com on 17 February 2010.