After reading this book, [b:Moby-Dick|153747|Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|Herman Melville|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327940656s/153747.jpg|2409320], [b:In the Heart of the Sea|17780|In the Heart of the Sea The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex|Nathaniel Philbrick|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1335902168s/17780.jpg|1640941], and [b:The Terror|3974|The Terror|Dan Simmons|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1442713631s/3974.jpg|3025639] (which isn't a whaling story, but it's still about people trapped on a boat), it's clear that a sailing vessel is its own special sort of dystopia. The Volunteer, the main ship in [b:The North Water|25666046|The North Water|Ian McGuire|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1456351800s/25666046.jpg|45489184], is an isolated world of violence, rape, betrayal, where the "air is dense with the velvet reek of liquid feces." Imagine what the characters experience in Cormac McCarthy's [b:The Road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1439197219s/6288.jpg|3355573], then take all that and lock it on a ship in the ice floes of the arctic north, and you'll get an idea of what this book is like.