As advanced an enterprise as had ever set forth, Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition in search of the fabled North-West Passage had every expectation of triumph. But for almost two years his ships *Terror* and *Erebus* have been trapped in the Arctic ice. Coal and provisions are running low. Yet the real threat isn't from the constantly shifting landscape, the flesh-numbing temperatures or the vessels being slowly crush by the unyielding, frozen ocean. No, the real threat is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness, stalking the ships, snatching men — mutilating, devouring. A nameless thing, at once nowhere and everywhere, *this* terror has become the expedition's nemesis. When Franklin meets a terrible death, it falls to Captain Francis Crozier of HMS *Terror* to take command and lead the surviving crew on a last, desperate attempt to escape south. As scurvy, starvation and madness take their toll, so the terror on the ice become ever more bold . . .