Tuunbaq

He's posted several more, including the Tuunbaq, which I'm familiar with thanks to Dan Simmons excellent novel, The Terror.

Demon Polar Bear 2008

Although I can see what Simmons was attempting to do with the Tuunbaq, he never really justifies its presence as a plot element.

The Broken Lands and The Terror: Two Novels about the Franklin Expedition 2007

In a sense, the officer's embrace of the Tuunbaq atones for his childhood anxiety about taking communion in a Catholic church.

The Broken Lands and The Terror: Two Novels about the Franklin Expedition 2007

Several set-pieces--Crozier's hallucinations during DTs, an elaborate carnival sequence, one man's escape from the Tuunbaq--begin tautly, then slowly run out of steam as they continue for far too long.

The Little Professor: 2007

Those few are also gifted with second sight, which is not confined to the Inuit; the one officer who survives the novel does so by relinquishing his European identity ultimately symbolized by his destruction of the remaining ship, marrying an Inuit, and giving up his tongue to the Tuunbaq, in a moment explicitly associated with that most conventionally Gothic religion, Roman Catholicism.

The Broken Lands and The Terror: Two Novels about the Franklin Expedition 2007

Poisoned by the kabloonas' pale souls, the Tuunbaq would sicken and die.

The Broken Lands and The Terror: Two Novels about the Franklin Expedition 2007

Several set-pieces--Crozier's hallucinations during DTs, an elaborate carnival sequence, one man's escape from the Tuunbaq--begin tautly, then slowly run out of steam as they continue for far too long.

The Broken Lands and The Terror: Two Novels about the Franklin Expedition 2007

The Tuunbaq is thus a double-edged sword, but one which can be controlled by a chosen few who relinquish their tongues literally in order to worship it.

The Broken Lands and The Terror: Two Novels about the Franklin Expedition 2007

In this case, both the Arctic and the Tuunbaq destroy those who want to appropriate the ice for their own purposes.

The Broken Lands and The Terror: Two Novels about the Franklin Expedition 2007

Nor, for some reason, is the Tuunbaq especially frightening, perhaps because it comes across as the love child of Harold, the yeti who hangs out in the Matterhorn Bobsleds, and Armus, the evil oil slick that did in Tasha Yar .

The Broken Lands and The Terror: Two Novels about the Franklin Expedition 2007