Fans of tales of exploration will enjoy this one for the research. It is at times a bit scattered and sprawling but I fond it interesting. Thanks for the ARC.

Too much information that did not feel fleshed out for an enjoyable read. It was LONG but missing things to help me connect to the book.

Grab a pen and paper and be ready to document the chapter titles, and who the chapter is going to cover, this will certainly help you in following the story and the timelines. Then sit back and get ready to learn a whole lot about arctic explorers, life in the wild and about the men and women that choose this type of lifestyle. Similar to the other reviews, this book is all over the place, very hard to follow. The ending did not tidy up any loose ends and left you feeling like, seriously, that was it???
That was the downside of the book, now for the upside to this book, IT WAS AWESOME when you got into those chapters where the explorers were telling about their stories, Eskimo Joe, Roald Amundsen, (Bess and Kiss), Albert Johnson, Sir John Franklin’s widow, Moses Isaac, Meares, Morgan, Commander Crozier, etc. I was entranced at what lengths these men and women would go, to be able to declare they were the first people to ever see a new land, or a new body of water, or a new mountain. Not in a sunny pleasant location, but in a harsh, cold, icy, brutal environment for months, even years on end living in a tent or a ship trapped in ice with little food, water or heat. Living conditions were deplorable, almost unbelievable. The author did a phenomenal job of describing these conditions.
I will only be giving 3 stars to this book, I’m glad I read it, I’m glad it finally ended, unfortunately the ending left so many unanswered questions, your imagination would have to fill in some of the blanks. The story was not told in a fluid manner, even with my pen and paper, I still cannot say I had a good grasp on the whole book, it had great moments but no true beginning, middle, and ending. Just a whole lot of information in the middle.
I do thank Net Galley for the opportunity to review this story for my review.

The drawn-out style of writing is not the style of writing I like to read. Therefore, I’m not the right reviewer for this book. There are others who appreciate this style of writing and they will reveal veracious reviews.

This book is so rich in history that it had me researching arctic exploration and its characters online -- an astonishing number of storylines are true. The plot drags in places, and the plot jumps forward by leaps and bounds from section to section, so often characters that were protagonists are entirely abandoned for the rest of the book. I guess I would expect a novel about arctic exploration, with all its monotony punctuated by moments of terror and long fights for survival, to drag in places, so that didn't bother me. The modern storyline, the one that was supposed to bind the whole novel together, was in many ways the weakest part, mostly because it was responsible for the incomprehensibly strange and unsatisfying ending. Arctic (and antarctic) history has a lot of dropped storylines in and of itself, with unsatisfying endings to so many of the real stories -- disappearances, unidentified appearances, ships lost, individuals breaking off from the group. I suppose the ending is in keeping with this tradition, but after so long a novel, I did wish for something a little more befitting a novel. But in any case, besides the ending, it was a marvelous story, a masterfully-written work and I enjoyed it immensely. It requires a little patience but its subject matter is magnificent.

I got a copy to review from Net Galley.

I received this ARC from netgalley.com in exchange for a review.

I just couldn't get a grasp on this story. Abandoned @20%.

DNF no rating

This book had so much potential and started off so interesting! In the Prologue, there is a mysterious chronometer that arrives in London from the ship that was lost. Then we begin story lines in the North West Territories in Canada and also the beginning of a ball on a ship in 1841 before an expedition to the Arctic. So much intrigue.

The NW Territories story line that is more current has two characters trying to figure out the connection to this lost expedition to both of their family members.

Then there is the second story line that traverses through time with the chronometer.

The writing is filled with historical facts and characters. This must have taken forever to research and write. I just wish that I could have enjoyed the chronometer story line more. It was almost too dense, and because many of the players were in these segmented timelines, I wasn't able to gain much of an emotional attachment to anyone of them. Let alone keep them all straight! I was always waiting to get back to the more current storyline as I could follow it much more.

It was interesting the part how O'Loughlin pulled Jack London in, but then I was frustrated with the story within the past storyline. How deep can we go?!

I felt there was a very unexpected ending that I was pleased to be shocked with. I think that if someone read this that is more familiar with North West Canada they might enjoy it more. There is much detail about particular islands.

Sometimes felt like trudging through a wintery mix, but I enjoyed the frame story of Nelson and Fay.

This book was not a good fit for me and I was unable to finish it. My apologies

I excitedly requested Ed O'Loughlin's "Minds of Winter" from NetGalley when I saw the Franklin Expedition's prominent place in the blurb:

"In a journey shrouded in mystery and intrigue, Sir John Franklin's 1895 campaign in search of the Northwest Passage ended in tragedy. All 129 men were lost to the ice, and nothing from the expedition was retrieved, including two rare and valuable Greenwich chronometers. When one of the chronometers appears a century and a half later in London, in pristine condition and crudely disguised as a Victorian carriage clock, new questions arise about what really happened on that expedition---and the fates of the men involved."

There are many new questions, but few answers. Most chapters are flashbacks to historical events, but two modern-day characters, Nelson and Fay, surface regularly to frame the historical anecdotes without quite tying them together. The best parts of "Minds of Winter" are the accounts of various expeditions sent to search for the Franklin Expedition and the fabled Northern Passage.

The strongest chapters are those most rooted in history, but some passages are more effective than others. The first occurs in 1841 as Sir John Franklin's niece, Sophia, opens a dance. While she spends time with Captains Ross and Crozier (the eventual captain of the H.M.S. Terror), there's more detail in her character than almost any other in the novel. Her passage closely follows her inner turmoil and excitement. Unlike other sections that stuff in years of biographical details and character development, Sophia's chapter describes a single night. It's a beautiful and immersive scene that allows the reader to see these men from an outsider's perspective.

Other characters and voices are captured well too, but the scene frequently changes just as their story reaches its climax or introduces an intriguing detail. "Minds of Winter" is ambitious; many chapters raise the curtain on a new set of characters and the reader must trust that these characters are relevant to the overall narrative. Often, the connections are tenuous and slow to appear amidst an onslaught of background information and context. It was tough seeing one story end just as I became acquainted with its style and peripheral characters, only to be introduced to another group from another decade. The overall story is slow to appear; seeds of a conspiracy are planted, but come to nothing. It's true that open endings can spur a fun debate, but this ending is too open for my taste.

Some people will really enjoy this book and there's an easy way to ensure you will too: Do research before reading or keep a search engine up. Familiarize yourself with the names of the Franklin Expedition and some of the key players in the later search parties up through Amundsen's flight over the North Pole. If you know the names of key characters, the blend of fact/fiction is impressive. More than anything, this dictated my enjoyment of a chapter: familiar names elicited curiosity and excitement while unfamiliar names added to the quagmire of places, dates, and names---so many names!---of people, cities, ships, waterways, etc. Being able to appreciate the blend of fact and fiction is key to appreciating this book.

Overall: 3.8 The mechanics and writing are sound, but the story meanders in ways I found difficult to follow. The Nelson/Fay chapters fall flat when surrounded by the adventures of more dynamic, adventuresome people.

Translation: Research a bit, then read the book. I plan to add this book to my list of books to reread in 5-10 years. Knowing what to expect, I imagine I'll enjoy it much more.

NB: This book was provided for review by the publisher, Quercus (via NetGalley)

Thank you to NetGalley for offering me an ARC of Minds of Winter for review.
I must admit, I'm fully dealing with a summer mind at the moment. Winter had passed, the sun is shining and my attention span has dwindled. This book is an epic; spanning decades & continents featuring dozens of characters. I found much of this book disjointed and reading it as an EBook, it was difficult for me to look back to other passages for clarification and memory jarring.
I'm sure had I read this in print form, I would have enjoyed it a lot more.
I commend the author for his vast amount of research and knowledge. I don't want to dissuade anyone from reading this book. I think in this instance it was more a reader's ineptitude than an author's.

This book was extremely well researched and I really enjoyed the beginning. However by the end of the book, I felt that there were too many story lines going on so everything just seemed underdeveloped and I was ready for it to end.

Minds of Winter by Ed O'Loughlin sets a fictional story around a lost polar expedition. Unfortunately, the story lacks an anchor, jumping through time periods, locations, and perspectives. At times, it seems more a collection of short stories loosely linked together. Having read the book and then researched the history, I did learn about the mystery of John Franklin's fatal expedition. Sadly, too many characters, too many plot lines, and a confusing timeline keep this from being the book for me.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2017/03/minds-of-winter.html

Reviewed for NetGalley

At 500 pages long, Minds of Winter dwarfs the kind of books I usually prefer to read. Had I known that, I might not have requested it. Still, I wanted to give it a go because of the focus on Arctic exploration. I hadn't read any fiction about the Franklin expedition. Knowledge of the disastrous undertaking stuck in my mind from a video I watched a few times throughout grade school and from the recent discoveries of Franklin's ships. Minds of Winter is far more the story of lost explorers than it is of Fay and Nelson. Their story serves as a framing device. Nelson and Fay piece together documents gathered by Nelson's missing brother, connecting mysteries and the lives of various historical figures.

Characters who actually existed include Francis Crozier, Roald Amundsen, Jack London, and "the Mad Trapper of Rat River", whose true identity remains unknown today. The years in which each chapter takes place range from 1841 to 1957 (plus 2009 for Nelson and Fay's storyline). Many of the characters I had a passing familiarity with. One character I didn't know turned out to be a strong thread throughout. The beginning of the book had me constantly looking things up on Wikipedia to discern fact from fiction (more so I was just confirming things that I suspected were 'real'). Apparently there are some notable deviations from known fact, but none that I could recognize. That doesn't really matter anyway. This is historical fiction; let's have some fun. Either way, the story is based in quite a lot of fact. O'Loughlin did his research, as his acknowledgements confirm.

Fun fact: Of all the fact-based storytelling in this novel, I assumed that the chronometer had to be a contrivance, as it just fit so neatly into the plot. I was shocked (and pretty amused) to learn that the chronometer is real and that the 2009 Guardian article about it that appears in the book is also real. You can read that article here. Kudos to O'Loughlin for tying so many elements of history together.

The story finally comes together in the epilogue. That's pushing it for me (I would have liked things to start making sense earlier). The stories didn't come together in the way I anticipated. However, the epilogue pleased me so much that I forgave the later half of the book, which I thought dragged on a bit. When I rated the book on Goodreads, I was sure I would calm down after a couple hours and go back to whining about how long the book was. That's why I gave it three stars instead of a euphoric four. Yet that good feeling remains a week later, and so thankfully I can give three and half stars on my own blog. Some readers won't like the ending, if not because it doesn't hand out easy answers, then perhaps because it's too blunt in its message.

The Bottom Line: Minds of Winter may not satisfy those who want to uncover secrets about Franklin's voyage, but it will likely satisfy those who love tales of Arctic exploration or hefty historical novels.

In the 1990s, England, a chronometer issued in 1848 by the Greenwich Observatory to the British Royal Navy, and this to a naval officer aboard a renowned Arctic expedition whose members vanished, was found in good condition without traces of ever having been exposed to the extreme forces at work at the top of the world. Did it suggest a sinister conspiracy or even murder?

In modern day Canada’s Northern Territory, a drifter named Nelson is puzzled by the apparent disappearance of his look-alike brother, who was investigating the fate of Polar explorers, the identity of an outlaw, and the role of secret spies, using government archives and local sources. Nelson teams up with Fay, a stranded tourist with burning questions about her late grandfather, to search for clues about his brother’s whereabouts and the subjects of his obsession.

Minds of Winter is an ambitious novel, sweeping in scope, about the golden age of Polar scientific exploration and the motivations behind the men who conquered the lands of everlasting winter. It also provides a historical backdrop to delve into the inner lives of some of the most renowned explorers, such as Roald Amundsen, Sir John Franklin, and Cecil Meares.

Minds of Winter is 500 pages long and it reads like a literary page-turner, but some passages could have been tighter edited as I think they contribute little to the central mystery. I felt that was particularly the case with the character Hugh Morgan, whose employer and purpose remained obscure until the end. The novel is comprised of nine parts (or long chapters), each one unraveling the mystery of the men whose names were forever immortalized when geographical features in polar latitudes were named after them. Each of those mysteries ties into a few central threads, such as the fate of the chronometer and how it may have reemerged undamaged.

The novel is very well developed and kept me guessing until the final page, though some mysteries I could work out on my own from the clues planted by the author throughout. My only criticism is regarding the ending, which left me with unanswered questions that I would like to discuss further.

DISCLAIMER: I received from the publisher a free galley of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book! It is an adventure story, a love story, a mystery and a sci-fi novel all wrapped up in a beautifully written package. It's long, but well worth the time. In fact, I appreciated its length because I did not want it to end. I also learned a lot about artic expeditions and the incredible people who risk their lived for knowledge (and sometimes power). Thrilling!

I tried to read this novel 3 times and it just never took hold.

Ed O’Loughlin’s Minds of Winter makes me think of Aristotle’s saying that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but this time in reverse. The parts are excellent, but woven into a whole that is considerably less satisfying than each part on its own.

Minds of Winter combines one contemporary narrative in the North West Territories where Fay, a young woman seeking answers about her grandfather, meets Nelson, who is looking for his missing brother Bert Nilsson, a former geologist turned high school teacher. Nelson looks so much like Bert that local police think he is Bert, which is convenient since he is driving Bert’s car and staying at Bert’s apartment while he waits for Bert to show up. There are many odd coincidences and connections between Nelson and Fay, or more accurately between Bert’s research and Fay. There is a bit of mystery and they seek some answers.

Fay and Nelson’s story is broken up by historical narratives, news clippings, reports, and histories that take us from a ball on the decks of the Terror and Erebus four years before they disappeared with Sir John Franklin in the futile search for the Northwest Passage in 1845 through polar adventures at the North and the South Poles and all sorts of mysteries surrounded a ubiquitous chronometer that goes from the Franklin expedition to the Scott expedition in Antarctica to Siberia and the Yukon and even English parlors.

There is a lot of mysterious goings on. Cecil Meares, the intrepid explorer and soldier, is all over the place. There’s a mysterious trapper whose identity is clearly falsified and whose death was falsified as well. It’s all exciting in the immediate chapters, but woven together, too much is unexplained and unresolved. It falls apart. What is Room 38? Who was that trapper? Who is buried in that pass? What’s with the island and the house in the valley? How are they visible, invisible?

I am an enthusiast for Antarctic and Arctic exploration stories. I have read Apsley Cherry-Girard’s The Worst Journey in the World and Ernest Shackleton’s South and dozens of other memoirs and histories of polar exploration, including several on the Franklin expedition. It made me eager to read Minds of Winter. I enjoyed every bit of the separate narratives independently and could happily read those snippets expanded into a novel, but for me, this book felt incomplete. There was no resolution, unless leaving everyone in the dark is a resolution.

I also thought O’Loughlin was a bit profligate with death. Of course, a novel that centers on the disappearance and death of explorers in the Antarctic and the Arctic and the tragic loss of the 133 men of the Erebus and Terror is going to have many deaths. But there are unnecessary deaths, too. In an almost supernatural way, throughout its history, anyone who looks too closely at this mystery seems to disappear, wander into the ice, or die. There’s a tin-foil hat kind of omnipotence at work and it seems so unlikely they would be concerned with hapless amateur investigators wandering around semi-aimlessly in the North West Territories.

Just this last fall, in September 2016, the Terror was found. The Erebus was found only two years ago. These mysteries of the past are still current, still relevant, and O’Loughlin brings considerable talent and imagination to the work. It’s well written, I felt in the moment while reading. During long treks on the ice, I found myself wrapping a blanket around my shoulder to counter the chill. That is how effectively he writes. It’s almost like O’laughlin is someone who can knit an intricately patterned sweater, but does not know how to cast off at the end, so it all unravels.

But then, people mourn the loss of mystery, too, like the bartender complaining to Fay and Nelson about the discovery of the Erebus taking away one more mystery. Perhaps O'laughlin wants his novel to be like Franklin, lost in the arctic expanse, mysterious and never to be found.

Minds of Winter will be published March 7th. I received an e-galley in advance from the publisher through NetGalley.

This book was probably one of the best things I've read in ages. I've read some good, and even great books in the last year, but this one was completely unexpected. I slowed my reading pace down for this, because I simply did not want it to end. I kept asking myself, would I have enjoyed it as much if I didn't know the background of all these explorer's? Truth is, I might have spent more time on the web, but even without knowing, I do believe I would have loved it anyways! I know I'm writing a review here, but if I were face to face, I would say "Dude, you need to read this book!" I'm a nut when it comes to arctic expeditions, and most particularly, a Crozier nut. This st ory mixes hard fact with fiction, and that's maybe why I loved this book. I read everything I can about arctic explorers. So much that you'd think I'd get tired of it. Nope! This was just a new take on an old song. Thank goodness! I would recommend this book. It was a wonderful story, and so damned intriguing that at times it drove me nuts! I've read a lot about all of these events, but this tale was so good, that I will be buying the book and reading it again.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. Unfortunately, it was too dry for my taste.