Badly battered by an apocalyptic storm, the crew of the Arctic Promise find themselves in increasingly dire circumstances as they sail blindly into unfamiliar waters and an ominously thickening fog. Without functioning navigation or communication equipment, they are lost and completely alone. One by one, the men fall prey to a mysterious illness. Deckhand Noah Cabot is the only person unaffected by the strange force plaguing the ship and her crew, which does little to ease their growing distrust of him.
Dismissing Noah's warnings of worsening conditions, the captain of the ship presses on until the sea freezes into ice and they can go no farther. When the men are ordered overboard in an attempt to break the ship free by hand, the fog clears, revealing a faint shape in the distance that may or may not be their destination. Noah leads the last of the able-bodied crew on a journey across the ice and into an uncertain future where they must fight for their lives against the elements, the ghosts of the past and, ultimately, themselves
I read this book immediately following The Terror, so maybe I would have enjoyed it a bit more had there been a book in between The Terror and this one, because they are both survival stories that take place in the Arctic on ships frozen in the ice. Regardless of that, this is a well-written book. It was in the horror section of the bookstore, but I wouldn't really classify it as horror so much as I would classify it along the lines of "adventure thriller mystery with a dash of horror". There are definitely horror elements to be found within the book, and there are tense scenes, but it is more a metaphysical mystery that questions reality, that just so happens to have horror elements within it.
This book is fine. The concept is great; I'm very intrigued by the testing of characters that are stranded in an isolated area with no access to communication. I enjoyed the set-up and the setting, but I found the big plot twist to be a bit out of left field and didn't really get tied up at the end. It had a kind of slapped-on, "Oh, OK!" sort of ending. The characters were OK, everything was just OK. It really got to be good in the middle section when tensions were high and fingers were being pointed. It had a very WTF twist somewhere in the middle as I mentioned, that didn't really get explained in a concrete way. I found the tension and contempt between the crew members and the main character Noah to be a bit forced. Even the tension and dislike between the captain (commander? I'm not too sure what Brewster's title is), who just so happens to be Noah's father-in-law and Noah himself was almost cliched, especially in the basis of the rivalry. While there was cliche to this aspect of the novel, it is also where most of the overall suspense stems from, and it does get better as the novel progresses.
What I do like about this novel is how it addresses guilt and facing ghosts of the past, both of which have a large part to play here, especially after the surprise twist halfway through the novel. While the ghosts of the characters pasts are a bit more literal than figurative in this novel, it works for what MacLeod is aiming for with the overall theme of man-vs-self and man-vs-man. While it's not as effective as what Dan Simmons did in The Terror, it's still effective in this book, and it works for what the author is going for. Overall, this book is good. It had a great concept, and I really enjoyed the final, tense moments that we see on the ship when everything is coming to a (really violent) head, and I enjoyed the more philisophical and almost meta-physical approach that it takes. I enjoyed reading it, and it didn't take long to finish it. I'm giving Stranded a 3.5/5
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