For some time I’ve been a fan of George R.R. Martin’s A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE series. In the last few years, though, when my mind turns to that series, it’s usually either (a) to speculate about potential plot twists or (b) to wish the next book were out already. What I forget is how much I simply enjoy Martin’s writing, particularly his nuanced, flawed characters and the way he can turn a phrase. Fevre Dream, a tale of vampires on the Mississippi River in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, provided the perfect opportunity to savor Martin’s writing in a stand-alone novel with a comparatively straightforward plot.Abner Marsh is a steamboat captain facing financial ruin when he meets the wealthy, enigmatic Joshua York, who offers to become his partner and help him build a magnificent vessel, on one condition: Marsh must refrain from questioning York’s strange habits. Marsh’s curiosity is piqued as the boat’s maiden voyage progresses, though, and what Marsh discovers will haunt him all his life. The story is told mainly from the points of view of Marsh and of Sour Billy Tipton, a slimy overseer who works for the novel’s villain. Later, York takes point-of-view duty for a chapter as he tells his story to Marsh. Fevre Dream is the name of the steamboat, but it refers just as surely to the obsessions that drive each of the three central characters and that give their lives something of the feel of Greek tragedy. Each man has one driving goal that leads him back, again and again, into a situation from which he could have just walked away. Marsh wants to own the fastest and most beautiful steamboat on the Mississippi. Sour Billy wishes to become immortal and a fine gentleman, and have the last laugh at a society that has treated him like trash all his life. York’s “fever dream” is a secret best discovered by reading the book.The supernatural aspects of the plot are the stuff of nightmares, and the historical aspects are just as well-written. If it weren’t for the vampires, Fevre Dream would still be a fascinating historical novel about the steamboat trade and about the cities along the river as they were in those days. I learned a great deal about the time period without ever feeling like I was being “taught.” Some of what we see is horrifying. Most of the book takes place during the era of slavery, and Martin draws a parallel between the vampires’ predation upon humans and antebellum America’s parasitic dependence upon slaves. One of Marsh’s most satisfying developments as a character occurs when he begins to see these injustices as analogous.Just as in A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, Martin includes a great deal of gore in Fevre Dream. Some of the violent scenes are profoundly disturbing, but I can’t say they’re gratuitous. They seem fitting, helping to drive home the point that these are not nice vampires and this is not a gentle world.Martin ends the book with a beautiful epilogue, cutting from the final combat to an evocative description of the Mississippi. This skillfully shifts the gears in the reader’s mind from action to contemplation and gives a sense of the passage of time before moving back to the “where are they now.” It’s too long to quote in its entirety here, but here’s my favorite stretch of it:"On a clear night, the water flows dark and clean as black satin, and beneath its shimmering surface are stars, and a fairy moon that shifts and dances and is somehow larger and prettier than the one up in the sky. The river changes with the seasons, too. When the spring floods come, it is brown and muddy and creeps up to the high water marks on the trees and banks. In autumn, leaves of a thousand colors drift past lazily in its blue embrace. And in winter the river freezes hard, and the snow comes drifting down to cover it, and transforms it into a wild white road upon which no one may travel, so bright it hurts the eyes."I greatly enjoyed Fevre Dream, and you will enjoy it too if you like Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the early books of Anne Rice — the vampire ones and her “straight” historical novel The Feast of All Saints. I also recommend it to Martin fans looking for a fix during the wait for A Dance with Dragons.
This review was originally posted on my blog: http://jonathanjanz.com/2012/06/01/ge...Why, you might ask yourself, am I talking about a decades-old novel by a writer with more riches than Croeses when I, a writer whose last big purchase was a Wii for my children (including the MarioKart Fun Pack!®), have my own second novel set to be released in five days?Because I'm an idiot? Perhaps.Or maybe it's because George R.R. Martin deserves it.When Mark Sieber at the Horror Drive-In stated that Fevre Dream should've won the Best Vampire Novel of the Century Award at this year's Stokers, I simply frowned at my monitor. Not only did I not agree with him---how the heck can you place any book above Richard Matheson's I Am Legend?!---I hadn't even heard of the novel.Now I'm seriously considering turning in my "Well Read for My Age" badge. I mean, how the heck did I not hear of this amazing novel before?Here's why you should read this book if you haven't.1. Abner MarshI've never met a protagonist like Abner Marsh. I suspect that's because no one else has written one quite like him. He's gruff and profane and shockingly unattractive.And I loved him. I loved his warts, I loved his obesity, I love the fact that he became an abolitionist gradually and didn't leap into the cause the way most writers would have forced him to. But I suppose I just gave a little of the book away, and I promise I'll try not to do that anymore. Believe me, you'll want to savor this novel's little surprises completely unspoiled.Abner March is one of the novel's major surprises. I'll be honest. During the novel's early stages, I kept waiting for the real protagonist to show up. I thought I'd briefly found him when we were introduced to a character named Sour Billy (which is really the book's only other third person point-of-view), but a couple paragraphs of his wretched world view disabused me of that notion. No, it became apparent that Abner Marsh was the character on which the book would sink or swim (hardy-har), and man, does Abner swim beautifully! It's not hyperbole to state that he became one of my favorite characters in all of fiction. That's right. He's up there with Stephen King's Stu Redman and Ray Bradbury's Guy Montag.Abner Marsh is amazing. And largely because of him (hardy-har-har), the novel is amazing too.2. It's immersive.If you've ever gotten completely lost inside the world of a book, you'll know what I mean. That's the kind of yarn this is. The details are so well-chosen and the atmosphere so rich that you'll find yourself daydreaming about the Mississippi River, about steam boating and stopping by woodyards to barter for more fuel. During idle moments you'll smell the dank, dark waters. Late at night, after you've extinguished the lights, you'll wonder about Joshua York's vampire history and how plausible it feels. Could such things exist?And that leads me to the last reason you should delay all other reads to make room for this fine novel...3. It's scary.Did I mention that this is a horror novel? I might not have, because that's not all it is. Sure, it features vampires and shocking brutality (including a scene that made me put the book down, walk away from it, and gather myself to finish the episode; those of you who've read it will likely know the scene to which I'm referring...the only hint I'll give you is that the paternal urge in me was ten steps beyond horrified at something that takes place in the main ballroom, something so hideous that I had nightmares about it); yet it's also an incredible slice of history, a deeply moving tale of an unlikely friendship, and a testament to the power of loyalty between two individuals.\
What do You think about Fevre Dream (2004)?
Dear lord, will this book never end? I feel like I've been reading it my entire life.Its not a bad book. Its well written with an interesting, albeit pretty generic plot and thats saying a lot coming from someone who is fairly new to (view spoiler)[vampire (hide spoiler)]
—Felina
mala knjižnica i ne bogata fantasyem. a većinu starih pisaca ne podnosim.Pjesme se nekako ustručavam pročitat a Vjetrovito utočište sam baš prije koji dan tražio al se nisam moga sitit kako se zove. bezveze kažeš?kaki je Tuf Voyaging?
—Klodovik2
3.5 StarsThis was a definite departure from what I'm used to when it comes to GRRM. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I don't think that this was it. Not that it was bad... just not what I was expecting. I did enjoy it quite a bit though. So, this story is set in the mid-19th century, on the rivers that vein the South and in New Orleans, during the slave trade... with 'people of the night'. The take on these vampires (let's call a spade a spade here) was different, and interesting... but oddly less satisfying than what I'd have expected, but it's hard to lay my finger on just what it was that left me wanting. With the setting and the vampires, it was inevitable that it led to comparisons with Anne Rice's work... but for me, there is none. This may not be my favorite GRRM story, but it is head, shoulders, torso, bellybutton, butt, legs and feet above anything I've ever read of Anne Rice's work. I just cannot stand her writing. Her ideas are fantastic, but her diarrhea of the description is too much for me, and I just cannot read her. GRRM does a lot of description in this book, yes. I'm not saying he doesn't... but the difference is in the amount, effect, and purpose of the description. Anne Rice describes simply for the sake of description. One could argue that it's so that the reader is transported into the world she's trying to show, but if so, she's doing it wrong. I don't need to know just what kind of wood a door is made out of, how many curlicues were carved into it, or how long it took to carve, or its thickness, or height or that it's a burnt sienna color or how many millions of hands have knocked upon it, or any of that mind-numbing detail to imagine an old, beautifully engraved door. It's too much, it's too tiring, and it's a waste of my time. GRRM uses description to show the reader who his characters are, what is important to them, what makes them get out of bed in the morning. Captaining a steamboat is more than a job for Abner Marsh, it's his way of life, his livelihood, his dream, his passion. He lives and breathes it. So I'm OK with seeing the river and his steamboats through his eyes.Likewise, Rice's & GRRM's vampires bear comparison. Both wrote about vampires questioning their nature, which is interesting to me, but again, where Rice goes off into repetitive existential drudgery, GRRM manages to still tell his story. I was interested in the vampires' stories, particularly Joshua and Julian... I was interested in the two main human characters as well, Abner Marsh and Sour Billy, and felt a bit sorry for all of these characters. Each, in their own ways, lusted after the one thing that they can't have. But that made them interesting, and seemed to draw them all together again and again, even though they were working at cross purposes. I always enjoy seeing both sides of the coin represented, and GRRM does a great job at making it hard to choose sides, that's for sure.
—Becky
