Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* What drives explorers? Why do they risk reputation, relationships, and lives? O'Loughlin traces the history of exploration, and the personalities of the men who were swallowed by the Arctic and never returned, beginning with Sir John Franklin's 1845 search for the Northwest Passage and ending with Roald Amundsen's fateful flight to find Airship Italia in 1928. In a parallel story set in the present, a young drifter and a woman who is officially dead pursue missing relatives, while a chronometer supposedly aboard Franklin's ship continues to mystify all who discover its reappearance. In addition, the story encompasses Inuit tradition and myth; misanthropes, and others slowly going crazy in close northern quarters; abandoned ships forever icebound or sunken; and the implacable leaders who found fame, but not what they sought, before vanishing into the unknown. Altogether, the novel is a tapestry of time and place, a study of human nature, and a celebration of exploration and adventure. It's a sure bet for readers who devoured Alfred Lansing's Endurance (1994) and for those who will never forget Andrea Barrett's Voyage of the Narwhal (1998). The atmosphere of frozen horror is reminiscent of Dan Simmons' The Terror (2007), and, of course, Robert Service's poetry naturally comes to mind (The Cremation of Sam McGee).--Baker, Jen Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The third novel by O'Loughlin (Not Untrue and Not Unkind) is a complex tale of historical intrigue about 19th-century polar explorers, the strange disappearance of Sir John Franklin's Arctic expedition in 1845, and the unexpected discovery of key evidence relating to the disappearance in 2009. When a chronometer issued to Franklin shows up in London 150 years after the expedition crudely disguised as a carriage clock, speculation about the fate of Franklin and his 129 men is reignited. In Canada's Northwest Territory, drifter Nelson Nilsson searches for his missing brother, Bert, but meets a British woman, Fay Morgan, who is researching her grandfather's past. Unwilling allies, Nelson and Fay look through Bert's papers, discovering unlikely connections between their own searches and Franklin's fate, but neither trusts the other and secrets remain hidden. O'Loughlin uses frequent historical flashbacks to trace the chronometer's passage among polar explorers, from Franklin, Joseph Bellot, and Elisha Kane to Cecil Meares and Roald Amundsen, without clearly defining the chronometer's provenance. Nelson and Fay's investigation is further clouded by Bert's apparent obsession with the real identity of Canada's infamous cop killer Albert Johnson, "the Mad Trapper of Rat River," and the World War II spy activities of Fay's grandfather. The historical depictions of polar explorers-the men, conditions, and horrible fates-are accurate and stunning. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Like ice floes in the Arctic, the pieces of O'Loughlin's (Toploader) latest novel bump and grind against one another until they merge at the finale. The main story takes place in present-day northernmost Canada, interspersed with characters, periods, and settings from the 1840s to the Cold War, and from Australia to Russia. The -MacGuffin is a marine chronometer, which accompanied real-life Sir John Franklin in 1845 on his fatal search for the Northwest Passage. Neither he, the clock, nor much of the crew and ships were ever found, but somehow the timepiece ends up in a London auction house in 1999. Woven into this mystery is the present-time search of Nelson Nilsson for his missing brother, and Fay Morgan for information about her mysterious grandfather, who may have been involved in espionage. Was Hugh Morgan a disciple of Cecil Meares, an English adventurer who pops up here and there in history and this tale? The reader will move from chapter to chapter, wondering where the book is taking them and how things are connected, until, at the end, it may all be a chilly, snow-blown mirage-except for the bodies, and that clock. VERDICT Readers who delight in history and mystery mixed together will appreciate O'Loughlin's shifting drifts of reality and imagination.-W. Keith McCoy, Somerset Cty. Lib. Syst., Bridgewater, NJ © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A massive, complex novel about a long-lost chronometer.In O'Loughlin's (Top Loader, 2011, etc.) acknowledgements, where he lists the prodigious amount of research that went into his novel, he describes the book as "a self-indulgent mess of cobbled-together myth and mystery." He began with a 2009 British newspaper article about the Arnold 294, a high-precision navigational chronometer that was taken on the unsuccessful 19th-century Franklin expedition to discover a Northwest passage and was believed lost but which had turned up in Britain 160 years later, converted into a carriage clock. How could this be? Like the "meshes of a net," this is the first of many narrative threads woven through O'Loughlin's labyrinthine tale. The main story involves Nelson Nilsson and his present-day search in the fierce cold and snow of the Arctic Circle for his missing geographer brother, Bert. He's soon joined by an Englishwoman, Fay Morgan, who needs help in her search for her missing grandfather, Hugh Morgan, a former apprentice to Cecil Meares, the dog handler for Scott's 1910 expedition to Antarctica. Then we're in 1841 at a festive ball being held on the decks of the expedition's two ships, the Erebus and the Terror. Set on three continents, the novel moves back and forth in time, mixing in fictional and historical figures. On this voyage, you'll encounter the explorer Roald Amundsen; the Mad Trapper of Rat River; and Jack London. Also making appearances are northern Canada's Distant Early Warning system and World War II Nazi meteorological stations in Greenland. At one point Nelson and Fay realize their separate searches are actually converging. Make a list of characters and keep it handymaps are providedto navigate this atmospheric, far-reaching novel. It may all be too much for some readers. A tour de force juggling act of narrative legerdemain. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
