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1800s: A ship sets sail for the Arctic with a killer on board….
The North Water
What you need to know before your trail
The Volunteer is a Yorkshire Whaling ship bound for the Arctic. On board is the harpooner Henry Drax, a cold bloodthirsty man known for his love of drinking and his brutal ways. Also on board is an ex-army surgeon, Patrick Sumner, who for reasons such a broken career and no hope sees his only hope left bound up in this hunting ship
This ill-fated voyage will take them to a place they never imagined. The two men, with very different temperaments are trapped together and will soon be in the cold freezing waters of the Arctic.
And just why is the ship headed there anyway?
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The Volunteer – even the name sounds hopeful, spirited, a journey into a new land. However the bowels of the ship are dark and dank, the smells and sense of being closed in, trapped, like a moving prison with the worse of humanity right beside you is more of the reality.
Sumner has even experienced the Siege of Delhi in India so is used to man’s brutality and the extent to which a man can stoop, but what he finds on the Volunteer is worse that even he imagines.
Pure evil is on the ship – the stinking,stale and sordid floating mess that is reaching the icy -cold depths of the Arctic. The men on board survive as best they can but where can you go if evil is right beside you and there is no where to escape?
Whaling involves violence and capturing animals but the real violence and horror is on the ship. Men are the worst animals of all and when it becomes clear why the ship is there, and all other boats have left the area, a sinking hellhole is the middle of nowhere becomes the scene for unimaginable horror.
Booktrailer Review
Harry Illingworth @harryillers
I sure did feel the cold when reading Ian McGuire’s new novel The North Water. There’s parts of that novel you just can’t think about without shivering.
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Web: thenorthwater.net
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