Just finished reading The Terror. Having mixed thoughts

This novel had been on my TBR list since I read the Hyperion series last year, also by Dan Simmons, who is now one of my favorite writers.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the majority of The Terror. As a history buff, I loved all the historical details about the Franklin expedition and general maritime exploration of the artic around the time the novel takes place. In spite of the slow pacing, the prose and suspense throughout was so engaging that I could hardly put it down. That is until I got to the final act of the novel, roughly around the 700-850 page mark.

After Crozier and Dr. Goodsir are captured by Hickey and Manson towards the end, Goodsir later being killed off, the novel goes into a drawn-out section which explains the origin of the story's monster, and which Crozier ends up with Lady Silence, Crozier eventually destroying HMS Terror by setting it on fire.

Towards the end, I felt like I was reading a completely different book, and found the final act so bizarre and confusing that I ended up doing a bit of skimming. I'm really glad I read this book. It had a lot of great things about it like the other Dan Simmons books I've read, but I wanted to know if anyone else was left scratching their head after finishing it. I just finished it a couple hours ago and I'm still wondering what I just read.