Fevre Dream

[Winters_Sorrow]

Apologies if there's another thread discussing this one, but if there was, I didn't find it!

Anyway, I requested this for Christmas and it duly arrived and I read it in 3 days. I would have done it sooner but friends and family kept interrupting me, you know how it is.

So, has anyone else read this and if so, what did you think about it. I don't know much about the steamboat era in America but it certainly felt authentic the way GRRM described it. The slant put on the vampire origins and weaknesses were interesting as well, especially the sympathetic slant GRRM gave the character of Joshua York.

It didn't quite absorb me as much as the characters in ASoIF but it was still a good read and went along at a cracking pace. I found the ending a little abrupt and there's a time gap in the novel which, while understandable in the context of the story, I found a bit annoying as it disrupted the otherwise excellent flow of the book for me.
Anyone else have any thoughts on this one?

[nixie]

Fevre Dream is my favourite book of Martin's

[Winters_Sorrow]

Originally Posted by nixie

Fevre Dream is my favourite book of Martin's

Any particular reason, Nixie? I enjoyed it, but I find it doesn't hang together as well as I would like in places.
I'm looking forward to his re-issue of Armageddon Rag though.

[nixie]

I liked the setting, loved his take on vampires

[Brown Rat]

I read Fevre Dream earlier this year, and I agree that Martin captures (at least what I imagine to be) an authentic atmosphere of steamboat America. The book is dark and suitably creepy, and the vampires are definitely menacing.

I haven't read anything else by Martin except Dying of the Light and the novel he cowrote with Lisa Tuttle, Windhaven, both of which I enjoyed more than Fevre Dream. But I think Fevre Dream is well worth reading.

[Somebloke]

Originally Posted by Winters_Sorrow

Apologies if there's another thread discussing this one, but if there was, I didn't find it!

Anyway, I requested this for Christmas and it duly arrived and I read it in 3 days. I would have done it sooner but friends and family kept interrupting me, you know how it is.

So, has anyone else read this and if so, what did you think about it. I don't know much about the steamboat era in America but it certainly felt authentic the way GRRM described it. The slant put on the vampire origins and weaknesses were interesting as well, especially the sympathetic slant GRRM gave the character of Joshua York.

It didn't quite absorb me as much as the characters in ASoIF but it was still a good read and went along at a cracking pace. I found the ending a little abrupt and there's a time gap in the novel which, while understandable in the context of the story, I found a bit annoying as it disrupted the otherwise excellent flow of the book for me.
Anyone else have any thoughts on this one?

Sorry for the negativity, but well....I hated it. I wasn't sure just what it was that the other books had that this lacked, but I gave up halfway in.

[dsmith]

I just finished it and really liked it, but it was my first George RR Martin book. I'm looking forward to reading others soon.

[Werthead]

His best completed work. It would make a fantastic movie and I gather it's been optioned a few times by studios including Disney. GRRM himself wrote a script for it a few years ago, but it never led to anything. He's occasionally said he has a few ideas for a sequel but that would have to wait until after ASoIaF is completed.

I believe a graphic novel version of Fevre Dream is also coming out later in 2007.

[Boaz]

Read it today. 334 pages of 2004 Bantam paperback.

Vampires on Mississippi steamboats. Interesting choice of material.

As with the above posters I felt that GRRM worked hard to capture the speech patterns, the social norms, the workings of (in)justice, the race relations, and the fluid nature of the American West during the late to mid 19th century on the Mississippi. I felt he succeeded in much of this. The differing patois' of the white rivermen, the freedmen, the slaves, the Creoles, and the vampires was very well done. There were a few terms that seem archaic now, but probably were colloquial during that period.

The story revolves around a riverman, Cap'n Marsh and his partner Captain York. York happens to be a vampire. I use the term vampire because that is how GRRM simplifies it from Marsh's viewpoint, but York and his brethren are not cut from the same cloth as Bram Stoker's Dracula. Martins vampires are altogether a different species from humanity. They cannot creat new vampires by infection. Neither are they sucseptible to holy items, garlic, or most of the traditional things in the stories. They can be harmed by sunlight, decapitation, stakes to the heart, or double barreled shotgun blasts to their skulls.

But all that was merely the sitz im leben, the setting.

The story really asks "Is good and evil real or are they illusions?" and "What is sane behavior?" Marsh and York believe that good and evil exist. They believe that each person constantly chooses between the two. GRRM does not mean The Force here... You don't know the power of the Dark Side!.. No, he puts his characters in positions to choose between good and evil... sometimes more precisely between good and better or bad and worse.

Contrasting York and Marsh are Damon Julian, the vampire lord, and his minion, Billy Tipton. These two believe only in power. Power makes right. Those who lament over choices deny the right of the strong. There is only strength and life, weakness and death, and there's also obedience.

All characters, the protagonists and antagonists deny formal religion so there is no theological discussion about good and evil vs. power.

If you choose to worship strength, then might makes right... and as long as you are stronger you'll live or at least obey the strongest of the strong. But there is no future or hope, there is no creating, there is only the corruption of beauty and the murder of innocents.

If you choose to do good and deny evil, then you'll have a clean conscience. You may die at the hands of those who are stronger, but you'll die with for a noble cause. The downside is that you'll bring loved ones into your losses and sufferings... many hopes will be unfulfilled.

As for the pace of the story, I felt that GRRM had done his homework on earlier American and English authors. Robert Louis Stevenson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Jules Verne, and Thomas Hardy all came to mind as I read Fevre Dream. I know the Roger Zelazny quote on the back claimed this book "will delight fans of both Stephen King and Mark Twain", but works such as The Master of Ballantrae, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Secret Agent, The Deerslayer, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Turn of the Screw, and a Tale of Two Cities are what kept coming up in my mind.

Martin writes in an older style in Fevre Dream. The pacing is seemed either slow or completely stand still. He referenced Dickens once... if that was what he was going for, more power to him. I personally would rather get a facial tatoo than ever read Dickens again.

Dickens, Stevenson, Hawthorne, and Hardy had some tremendous ideas for stories. But in my estimation, they were not engaging story tellers. Mayhaps they need modern translators or mayhaps they needed to know how to get a reader's undivided attention. Nothing I've read has convinced me that Conrad or James could write action, but they could sure develop suspense... and that gets my attention.

Fevre Dream had too much Hawthorne (great setting and tremendous story concept) and too little Conrad (not really suspenseful).

Though in all fairness I think I've come across this book too late. I've seen Underworld, Van Helsing, Blade, The Lost Boys, and all of the other modern vampire movies. Perhaps I knew too much of the super powered vampires and the debunking of the holy items, garlic, mirrors, and all the rest.

All in all I think GRRM went for a period piece and succeeded. It has the same feel that a black and white indy film about 1930's gansters, a trip to a Nantucket lighthouse, or a viewing of Beijing opera might be. Fevre Dream feels authentic to the core.

Mayhaps Fevre Dream could never live up to ASOIAF. FD feels like Battle of the Centaurs compared to ASOIAF's Sistine Chapel ceiling. What I mean by this is that Battle of the Centaurs is a highly interesting relief carved from marble. No weapons are evident nor hardly any of the equine parts. It's just a boiling mass of flesh, angry and violent. When compared to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the viewer sees Michaelangelo's transition beyond muscle and sinew to the human soul and it's connection to the divine.

I think I see Martin's use of conjoined characters. Marsh/Billy. Marsh/York. York/Julian. Julian/Billy. Curious Orange recently started an excellent thread on conjoined characters in ASOIAF.

Martin shows great ideas for FD. Steamboats. Vampires. Slavery. Ante-bellum New Orleans. Racing. Survival.

I think I see Martin's process of setting up characters as protagonists and antagonists and then seemingly reversing them. Is Marsh good? Is Marsh evil? Is York good? Is York evil? Can Billy be redeemed? Martin does this very well in ASOIAF with the Starks and Lannisters... I love Tyrion and Jaime.

I just think he was not in his prime yet with FD.

Mayhaps I'm too much a child of the TV, video game, internet, entertain me NOW generations of Americans to enjoy Fevre Dream properly... that would be sad.

[tangaloomababe]

I loved this book. I first read it maybe 15 or so years ago, borrowed it from the library. I really enjoyed it, anyway back in November last year I started looking for it again, couldn't remember the name or the author but remembered the plot line. Well to cut a long story short, its how I ended up on chrons, I asked if anyone knew the name and I don't recall who now, but someone was able to help me. I then went and got my own copy, read it, loved it as much as the first time round. It remains one of my fav books now.
I love the spin on the traditional vampire story, you can feel Cpt Marsh's love and pride in his Fevre Dream throughout the book and you can't help but fell sorry for York. Damon Julian is one of the more evil characters I have come accross in books and yopu revel in his demise.
Its a great book, one I would recommend!

[GOLLUM]

FD is a fantastic book written by a master storyteller. Martin really shows what a great writer he is with this novel, easily the best Vampire novel I have read.

[Nesacat]

Fevre Dream is the very first Martin book I read and it's my favourite book of his. I've always liked both the riverboats and vampires and here was a book that put them both together with very memorable characters and a compelling plot.

I too would like to see this made into a movie but they would have to follow his pace and style. Am going to keep an eye out for the graphic novel definitely.

[Slyde]

I bought Fever Dream when I bought the first 4 ASoFaI books, and I plan to read it as soon as I finish AFFC (very soon).

Now that I see how much some of you liked it, I'm looking forward to it.

[Boaz]

Yeah, I'm definitely in the minority here. I did not dislike it, but it never really grabbed me. I never felt sympathy towards York.

The best part of the book for me was the Eli Reynolds chase of Fevre Dream. I've seen and read enough spy/thriller/adventure/detective stories to know that Marsh was too obvious in his pursuit. When the pursuers became the pursued, I felt the tension in the characters. When Marsh was alone on the ER, I felt the story finally got spooky.

But in the end, the vampires did not chase the good guys enough. How many times can Marsh escape fighting the vampires and live to fight another day?

One highlight for me was the lack of gratuitous sex and violence. Most of American TV and movies glory in random forays into gratuity for gratuity's sake... Tarantino's just the tip of the iceberg. Now the writer's are on strike... I heard them chanting "Why make us wait? Why don't you negotiate" They must be on strike 'cause I'd be ashamed if I wrote that dumb slogan.

Anyway, GRRM does not make his vampires sexual predators or overly sadistic... with the notable exception of Julian. Julian is sadistic for the sake of sadism. He revels in the excercise of power... this means the thrill of the kill is what drives him even though the necessity to feed is long gone. He kills and he lets his subjects feed off his kills because it shows his authority.

In my previous post I mentioned that York and Marsh believed that people (humans and vampires) always have a choice to do good or evil. Fevre Dream supports the notion that as long as a person chooses good, then the ability to choose remains with that person. But when a person continually chooses evil, then that person loses all judgement and only retains the capacity for evil.

I would not dissuade anyone from reading Fevre Dream. Mayhaps it's just that it's not ASOIAF for me. But like ASOIAF, FD was thought provoking.

[Shacklock]

Not that I've read this book but it sounds very simmilair in part to Interview with a Vampire.