This novel sits maybe somewhere just on the "better" side of mediocre, it reads vaguely like an attempt to reframe Simmons' *The Terror* (a vastly superior novel, as I remember) as a story about the Donner Party--though I'm sure Ms. Katsu wasn't thinking so crassly as that admittedly reductionist description makes it sound. I think much of the problem, here, is that there really aren't a lot of characters one ends up wholeheartedly rooting for: There are a couple who inarguably deserve better outcomes than the book hands them, but that's neither rare nor unreasonable in Horror, but it kinda reads like the main monster wins, here, without any real consequences to speak of (the ancillary monsters win but are arguably their own consequence). The prose is mostly solid, bordering on kinda stolid, there's not really much life or sparkle to it--even though it's not written in like 1840s vernacular or anything (not that I'm complaining about anachronism, tell the story as you can and as your reader will understand it). There's some subtext that's only barely not text about the white "settlers" being (or bringing) a disease, a plague; I don't disagree, but the novel is barely strong enough to carry even that weight.
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