“…the killing would go on and on, the red thirst would flow down the centuries unquenched,
the fever dreams would turn to sickness and to rot…”
– Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin
After the phenomenal success of HBO’s Emmy and Golden Globe winning series Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin has become a household name, a bearded pop culture icon with suspenders. His A Song of Ice and Fire novels (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, et. al.) are all back on national bestseller lists and some of his earlier work is being unearthed and reissued to a whole new audience of readers – like Fevre Dream, a bloody little vampire fiction gem that has been included on countless “best vampire novels of all time” lists.
Originally published in 1982, this chilling vampire story set largely on the Mississippi River in 1857 went on to be nominated for both the Locus and World Fantasy Awards.
Fans of A Song of Ice and Fire will find this novel to be archetypal GRRM – powered by incredibly deep and insightful character development, a richly and meticulously described setting, and a storyline that is impressively intricate.
Abner Marsh is a larger-than-life riverboat captain – “a massive man, six foot tall and three hundred pounds heavy. He had a red face and a full black beard that he wore to cover up a flat, pushed-in nose and a faceful of warts, but even the whiskers didn’t help much; they called him the ugliest man on the river…” After losing most of his boats in icy winter mishaps, the brash Marsh is struggling mightily. But when a strange man with pale skin and gray eyes named Joshua York not only offers him an unbelievable amount of money to co-captain a brand new state-of-the-art steamboat with him but the boat itself, Marsh agrees to the strange offer: and gets himself entangled in York’s secret mission, which is either heroic or insane – or both.
Fevre Dream brilliantly showcases GRRM writing skills. While most writers may use a few adjectives – or at most, a few sentences – to describe York’s eyes, GRRM uses the opportunity to not only begin to delve into York’s character but to also intensify the story’s dark ambiance and to hint at a possible foreshadowing of things to come. And he does so with a furious lyricism:
“York's eyes were gray, startlingly dark in such a pale face. His pupils were pinpoints, burning black, and they reached right into Marsh and weighed the soul inside him. The gray around them seemed alive, moving like fog on the river on a dark night, when the banks vanish and the lights vanish and there is nothing in the world but your boat and the river and the fog. In those mists, Abner Marsh saw things; visions swift-glimpsed and then gone. There was a cool intelligence peering out of those mists. But there was a beast as well, dark and frightening, chained and angry, raging at the fog. Laughter and loneliness and cruel passion; York had all of that in his eyes."
While the storyline to Fevre Dream begins in relatively conventional style, GRRM manages to put his own unique spin on the vampire mythos. Fans of vampire fiction who have yet to discover this bloodsucking classic – which more than holds its own when compared to vampire fiction standards like Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire and Stephen King’s 'Salem's Lot – should seek out and read the Bantam paperback reissue, which hits shelves in a few days.
Bottom line: Fevre Dream is storytelling at its very finest. I dare anyone to not finish this book once they begin reading it – and I also bet that more than a few hardcore A Song of Ice and Fire fans will enjoy this novel just as much if not more than GRRM’s epic fantasy. Take that, Tyrion Lannister...
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for the last two decades and has written thousands of reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and BarnesandNoble.com. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
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