[Complete][140k][Historical Fiction, Survival Horror] Arctic Odyssey
I know, I know, it's so long. One of my purposes of beta readers is to turn that down a lot.
Feedback: I'm looking for honest, unfiltered critique of the writing and characters themselves. Also as a secondary goal I would like you guys to tell me if I can cut down on anything lol. Ideally trying to get to 110k.
Blurb:
In 1848, a British expedition sets out to rescue the Franklin Expedition, a real-life expedition which had vanished in the Arctic three years earlier, with the secondary goal of accomplishing the circumnavigation of the globe via the Northwest Passage. Comprising of a single ship that is terrible for the Arctic, manned by 64 men, they and their well-meaning but inept commander, Henry Anderson, are unprepared for the perils that await them - not just from the environment, but from their own ranks.
Trigger Warnings: Cannibalism, Survival Horror
Excerpt:
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May 20th, 1859
There were two skeletons in the open boat, and both lacked heads. Francis Leopold McClintock ordered his men to come up and join him from where they were wrestling the dogs back into their teams, as the discovery had set them to incessant barking.
The captain spared only a fleeting glance at Lieutenant Hobson as he came trudging up in the snow, always in the habit of pulling his muffler up. They both moved to the bow of the boat. It was still perched on its sledge, as if the dead men at either end were preparing to haul again. “Come and look at this,” he said.
Hobson squinted. He knelt down to better look at the wood. “Franklin or Anderson?”
“Franklin. The skeleton is old.” He wasn’t sure, though. Twelve years since Anderson and fifteen since Franklin set out. That is not too much of a difference. As he pondered that, he paced around the boat, watching his men rummage through items. A shotgun here, a pipe there, looking for identifying items. All the officers of Erebus and Terror had cutlery with their initials on them.
He found himself shuddering, and only partly from the cold. It was just the sort of place that you knew you would be able to remember perfectly when you were old and dying. Odd things were strewn around the boat that he stepped over. A pair of boots, or sometimes just a boot, a rope, several books. One of them was a copy of the New Testament, but in French. McClintock heard the sound of a man loading a shotgun, tensed up, and turned around, but it was only one of his men checking the barrel of one of the abandoned guns. “Fully loaded,” he said. That troubled him even more.
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