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.
