This book was an unexpected surprise – in a very good way. The subtitle “a true story of murder in the Arctic,” led me to believe that was the main event. Yes, it’s in the book but there is so much more going on. Millman takes you back to a horrific crime scene in the Belcher Islands in the 1940s, but that is just the beginning. Millman has much more on his mind, the clash of cultures, the role of religion, justice, the lost of habitat, and the impact of technology – and always the people. With his ability and insights he is able to connect all the parts into a whole that is tragic, ironic and somewhat humorous at the same time. Think of Millman as leading you through the Arctic and the Belcher Islands murders with Thoreau perched on his left shoulder and George Carlin perched on his right. You are in for quite a trek so dress warmly and be prepared to think about the book and the meaning of your own life!

Ironically, I read his book on my Ipad, apologies to the author.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for making this book possible to review. Highly recommended.

Definitely a misleading title. One would think about a Mystery/Thriller story or a non-fiction account of some bizarre murder in an expedition or something similar.
Instead it's a travel memoir. Not a bad thing necessarily, but depending on your expectations this might not be a book for you.

The author is an ecologist who traveled a lot to the Arctic and other regions. His accounts on the Inuit, the culture, the local mythology, the fauna and flora are all fascinating.
The thought of a crazy, religiously fanatic Eskimo killer who also thinks he's Jesus looks like something too bizarre and more akin for some crazy comical cartoon than real life... but it did happen.

Unfortunately, despite the book's already short length, the murders (that's no mystery, it was all in broad daylight) occupy a very small part of the book.

A very good part of it have the author ranting on technology and people who use it too much. Initially I rolled my eyes. Later I bought some of his arguments. By the end he really made me think about it and some witticisms were actually funny.
I think there were merits to some of his thoughts while others were too bitter and condescending. Most importantly, technology had nothing to do with the murders, as it may look like he's trying to draw non-existing parallels, even if perhaps unconsciously.

Anyway, good as some of his points are, most likely the tone in some of them won't help him get people to think on the issue, which is unfortunate.

Not what I was expecting but I still enjoyed reading about this Canadian remote corner and some insights were pretty good.

Loved this book
Didn't want it to end
Highly recommended

This book was all over the place, back and forth from present to past. Hard to follow. I couldn't finish it.

At the End of the World: A True Story of Murder in the Arctic by Lawrence Millman has a terrific tale to tell of murder, religion and the power and danger of faith in innocent hands. Its a great story, only for some reason the author decided not to tell it. Instead the book is peppered with the ramblings about the dependence upon technology and the loss of social interaction. It turns from a tale about a secluded peaceful people handed a force much more dangerous than guns; they are handed faith and western religion with little to no guidance, into a bitch and moan session by what appears to be a grumpy old man about the state of the younger generation.

Central to the the story is a series of murders that took place in the remote corner of the Artic in 1941. The Inuit, a very peaceful tribe suddenly turn on themselves in the name of religious fervor as one of their own decrees himself to be Jesus Christ and he and his followers go forth murdering any who oppose. These senseless acts are contradictory to how the Inuit have always been and it is only the introduction of western religion that has set them on this path. That and a meteor shower that heralds the end of the world. It can be argued that the tribe was uneducated and easily misled. Their misinterpretations of the Bible and its teachings, without anyone available to help guide them, caused this tragedy. But all too often we see violence and madness in the name of faith and religion, does not know any barriers of education or social standing.

Had the book stayed grounded to this central theme I truly believe it would have been a well told crime thriller with deep social ramifications. Instead it becomes a story told by your aging grandfather on his weathered stoop. A story that loses track far too often and wanders about aimlessly.

Too bad, because it really should be told.

Difficult to read and meandering, I found this book unimpressive. Not for me.

I was fascinated by the content of this book and was eager to read it, but unfortunately I will be adding it to my DNF pile. The writing style was very random and confusing. I think the intention was for the book to read like a diary, especially since it seemed that Millman directly pulled quotes or thoughts from the journals he kept while out in the field. The back and forth between actual information and random quotes or journal entries distracted from the story and affected my reading experience - the text didn't flow well to say the least. I would be willing to read something else by Millman, as long as the writing style wasn't similar to this one.

This was, sadly, a disappointing read.

At The End of the World covers the little-known Belcher Island Murders, where nine people were killed in the winter of 1941. The reason?

An Inuit named Charley Ouyerack believed himself to be Jesus Christ, and revealed another man - Peter Sala - to he God. More than a few believed, and those who didn't were killed because they were 'Satan'.

Sadly, the book doesn't do a good job of writing about the murders. There are a few problems, such as the choppy writing. The author mentioned that this was once all notes, and it certainly reads like a collection of notes. Many chapters didn't seem to have a point (why devote so much space to his dislike of the Internet and other technology?) and even within chapters, he tends to jump from one topic to the other.

I think it took about ten or so chapters before I realised this was about the Belcher Island Murders. Luckily, the chapters are short.

Another problem the book has is that the link between the present and the past is not clearly established. The author mentions that the present was necessary for him to write the book, but personally, I didn't get it. How do his reflections on technology, on 9/11 relate to what happened in 1941?

There were parts of the book that I liked - the chapters on the murders, and the trial, which I wish was explored in more detail. However, those parts were rather scarce, and a good portion of the book was confusing and disappointing.

Disclaimer: I got a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC, which I received in exchange for my honest review.

I had a really difficult time getting into this book - I tried multiple times and made it about halfway through before I decided not to finish it.

Millman's style is very conversational - many paragraphs end in ellipses as he trails off, jumps into side notes and tangents, many of which have a very tenuous relationship with the story itself. Millman is also incredibly judgmental of technology (even as he describes his use of it) which is intended to draw a parallel between modern life and the isolated community he's describing.

Overall, I wasn't hooked by Millman's style and couldn't make it past halfway. Some folks may enjoy his style, but I didn't, and couldn't make myself finish, which was unfortunate, as the premise was enticing.

This is like nothing I've ever read before. Lawrence Millman tells the story of a series of murders committed in the name of religion by a few of the Belcher Inuit of Hudson Bay back in March of 1941. But interspersed in the telling are his thoughts on nature and his funny and ironic comments on our world today. For instance, he coins the word 'Cyberia' and says it is one of the most highly populated realms on our planet. It has no landscape, only endless screens, and the inhabitants don't realize they are in prison. He wonders, Is digital technology the latest religion? His message? Turn off your devices, people, and get out and enjoy the natural world before it is too late!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the opportunity to read an arc of this book.

In the Belchers Islands of Quebec's high arctic, a 1941 meteor shower triggered a bizarre episode of religious mania among Inuit people who had been contacted just long enough to get violent ideas about Christianity (their leader claimed to be Jesus and his followers murdered anyone they thought was Satan--and the chief symptom was denying Jesus), eventually murdering 13 people before things burned out. Millman is a long time naturalist, essayist and visitor to the Arctic, and his reconstruction of the crimes overlap with the contemporary memories of this among surviving Belchers Island people and his experiences visiting them during 9/11. It is a good point that technology and contact with the globalized world is changing Inuit culture, but Millman's self-righteous, Luddite bleating really detracts from a fascinating story.

In the winter of 1941, when most of the world was concerned with the Second World War raging in Europe, a different drama was unfolding on the remote Belcher Islands of Canada's Hudson Bay. In a religious frenzy, three Inuit became convinced that two of them were the reincarnations of God and Jesus and then murdered nine other Inuit, including four children, for reasons such as not agreeing that they were the deities, claiming they were Satan, or for no reason at all. The Canadian government caught wind and there was a trial and sentencing the three responsible.

The book is billed as true crime, but I hesitate to call it that, because it's so much more, and the crime itself is only an event in a larger landscape. In a jumpy but pleasantly readable, almost vignette-like style, the narrative is interwoven between several topics: the brutal 1941 murders and their accompanying era, lead-up, and trial of the guilty; a shift to the present as the author visits and interacts with the Inuit currently living on the Belcher Islands, some of whom are descendants of those involved in the earlier incidents; a wealth of his ecological observations on the flora, fauna, and nature-related mythology of the islands and their culture; all interwoven with author Lawrence Millman's complaints about the dangers of modern technology and how technological developments coupled with obsessive use of devices, social media, apps, and gaming is bringing about severe disconnection and potential dangers.

Which I don't entirely disagree with, to an extent, but I found this part of the book frustrating. I felt it took something from the historical story, which is the strongest narrative and nevertheless makes the whole book worth reading. In fact, after finishing I skimmed back through a few of the passages telling this story, and I was enchanted with his writing, with the blend of folkloric tone and atmospheric description of this isolated, world-left-behind region. It's chilling in every sense, in a good way.

Although this focus on technology gone amok is distracting, it did present some opportunities for interesting Arctic anecdotes. He relates one of a girl obliviously texting, narrowly missing being attacked by a polar bear when she looks up from her phone screen and notices at the last second, screaming and scaring it away. "The incident carried with it this message: you can't write about the Belcher murders without also writing about the screen-driven lives around you. Each represents a particular world coming to an end..." This was how the story spoke to the author, he describes trying to write about Belcher Island in a different way and being unable until he made the connection with technology invading culture.

Millman is a respected writer, researcher and ecologist, and has written prolifically about the Arctic region. He's also clearly intelligent, well-read and well-rounded and must be personable enough to convince Native Inuit to spill much of their personal histories, beliefs, and folklore to him. Those portions of the book are fascinating. But the carping about technology, jokes about googling things and the obsession with 'screens' got old and despite their inclusion, I couldn't make the connection with the Arctic events that he could.

His reason for drawing parallels between these two stories, the infamous Belcher Islands murders and modern immersion in technology, is to show that ours is just a different kind of cultural invasion. Those who were possessed by a religious frenzy and driven to cold-bloodedly murder others in the name of a God they'd only recently been exposed to by Christian missionaries visiting the islands are likened to those who blindly worship screens of various kinds nowadays.

"'To kill a culture', wrote Konrad Lorenz in On Aggression, 'it is often sufficient to bring it into contact with another, particularly if the latter is higher or at least regarded as higher...'" Millman gives examples to support this including people believing that GPS is better than having a sense of direction, or spending too much time indoors online or staring at a screen than being present with one's surroundings. I agree, as I think many do, but if his main thesis is that over-reliance on the internet and computers will influence us the same way that exposure to foreign religion made some of the Inuit cold-bloodedly murder each other, I'm not quite on board.

But I thought that he especially beautifully wrote about the juxtaposition of Inuit and mainland Canadian culture, including the RCMP legal system. Millman writes hilariously that the Belcher natives wouldn't have understood the trial judge's wig, and instead probably would have applied their own beliefs about it being necessary to keep a polar bear's jaws from crunching if it bit his skull.

Or the concept that the inside of a person might not be the same as the person's outside - it might not even be the same animal, human on the outside and Arctic fox on the inside, for example. I think there's not a person alive who couldn't agree with that. Passages and observations like this make this an enlightening, beautifully constructed read.

I am sad to say I did not get along with this book.
The writing was very choppy and unfinished feelings to me, the story line was similarly choppy and disconnected and so, as sad as I am to say it, I have decided to rather not review this book since the only review I could give it would be a negative one and I prefer not to write completye negative reviews!

Thank you for the chance to read this book even if it did not work out as we all hoped.

I received an ARC of this book via Netgalley.

I requested this book as I teach the Dene for IB Social Anthropology and I thought this would make an interesting read and perhaps something I could adapt for my students. There is actually a lot of information and research in the book that would make for an excellent ethnography; in fact the increasing use of technology amongst Inuit people is a growing focus in anthropology.

Unfortunately, the book as it stands is not a good read. The book reads more as a man telling you things at a social event; going off on tangents, anecdotes about things he has experienced and his personal views on technology. This is mixed in with the actual focus of the book, which got lost in all the waffle. I found it very hard to follow the story of the murders and the people involved as Millman simply kept flitting between stories and times.

I would recommend that Millman sits down and writes an ethnography about the use of technology amongst this group of people. I feel it would be a much better read.

Totally unique and very interesting read focusing on a series of murders during 1941 on remote Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay. The bigger story here, however, is about the clash between the untouched culture of these native peoples as they come in contact with outsiders following these murders...and the profound affect these interactions have on the native culture. The writing is a bit hard to follow at times but this would not have been the same book without the use of native names/words and the dual perspective employed by the author. On one hand he recounts the historical facts of the story WHILE at the same time, including his own observations and notes regarding the environmental and cultural impacts. The end result was something much more important than a 75 year old murder story.

An interesting story about Arctic life and how religion can affect communities.

Having made a recent trip to Alaska I was looking forward to reading this book about murders that occurred in the Arctic. The book cover and book description are appealing. And while I appreciated the Hudson Bay map, I would've loved to see an additional closer map of the Belcher Islands.

Millman admits his tremendous struggle in writing this book and it shows. I would've loved to have seen more details about the murders, the people involved and the trial. The description of the terrain left me wanting to know more.
I appreciated Millman's point about technology. I tend to agree that we spend to much time looking at our little screens and failing to notice the world around us, but I fail to understand the nexus between these murders in the Artic in 1941, and technology. The interjection of opinion on technology takes away from a very interesting story.