omg - at first I was thinking that this book was going to be boring - english expeditions looking for the north west passage. But it sucked me in and I couldn't put it down. All 784 pages of it kept me engaged. I kept peeking ahead but ended up staying up late two nights in a row to finish. Simmons spends a lot of time crafting the characters and you feel like you know them well as the book progresses. This is a very sad book yet has a sort of happy ending, at least for one character.