Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin

Read: 4 August 2009

I'd been dreaming of buying this book for a while, but kept putting it off. I love vampire stories, and the blurb of this hooked me--"Bram Stoker meets Mark Twain." Fortunately, I got it in one of our book club book swaps, courtesy of Peter.

Capt. Abner Marsh, Fevre Dream's main character, used to be a prosperous steamboat captain and owner, but no longer. Due to some disasters, he lost his fleet of boats. One day, he is approached by Joshua York, a mysterious gentleman who offers him enough money to build the grandest boat the Mississippi has seen, with certain conditions. Joshua wants to co-captain the boat, though the daily running of the steamship will be left to Abner. Periodically, Joshua might have peculiar requests, which are to be obeyed at all times and never questioned. The temptation of a boat grander and faster than what currently plies the Mississippi pushes Abner to agree to Joshua's requests.

And so the Fevre Dream is built, named after Abner's hometown. Joshua is the perfect co-captain for Abner, intelligent yet non-interfering, that Abner chooses to ignore some strange habits of his co-captain and the friends he tagged along, such as sleeping all day and being up all night. Eventually, however, Abner makes certain sinister discoveries about his co-captain, so much so that he confronts Joshua, whom he had already come to respect and befriend, about them.

You guessed it--Joshua is a vampire. Except, in Martin's mythology, "vampire" is just a comfort word to describe what Joshua and his kind are. They are not undead, they are not immortal. What they are is a different species, the race of Cain. They are born, they age, albeit much more slowly, and they eventually die. They cannot turn someone else into one of them for the same reason you can't turn a cow into a human, no matter how many times you bite it or drink its blood (sorry. gross analogy.)

The story's primary conflict does not actually arise between Joshua and Abner, but between Joshua and Damon Julian, another of Joshua's kind. You see, one similarity between Joshua's race and vampires is that they both possess a strict hierarchy. Joshua is a bloodmaster, superior to the vampires within his reach. Damon Julian is another bloodmaster, originally inhabiting a New Orleans plantation, when the book begins. But where Joshua seeks to free his race from their bloodthirsty fate, Damon Julian seeks to perpetuate the bloodlust. What ensues is a battle between Joshua's ideals and power and Damon Julian's. And caught in the crossfire is Abner Marsh and his Fevre Dream.

I learned that Fevre Dream was originally published in 1982, and was out of print for several years until it was republished in 2001 as part of the Fantasy Masterwork series. For that, I am very glad.

In a time when there is a plethora of vampire books and vampire stories, Fevre Dream, outdating all of them, still presents something unhackneyed--the vampire seeking for salvation, not merely personal salvation, but salvation for his entire race. The vampire race believing in a prophecy of one of their kind saving all of them and bringing them to a land of their own. The vampire humbled, not by love (which is extremely cliche already), but by a realization of the limits of his own power.

Moreover, Abner Marsh, the human collaborator of the vampire, does not fit into the usual stereotypes of humans surrounding vampires. He is not subservient, but nor does he hate vampires. He is ugly and brash. He is old. Yet, as I was reading the book, it was Abner Marsh's passion for his steamboats that drew me in. And it was his devotion to Fevre Dream that made me care so much about the story and about Joshua.

And fever dream it is. It is Marsh's dream of owning the biggest, brightest, and fastest ship in the Mississippi. It is Joshua's dream of uniting his race and relieving them of their bloodlust. In the middle of their dreams, the nightmare begins.

The story is a horror classic, but, gothic-like, the horror comes from the atmosphere and mood of the prose than the events. There are some gross moments, but never were they gratuitous and unrestrained. (Or maybe I have a strong stomach.) And, although I would not count the book a fast-read, I would say it is interesting all throughout.

Since the story deals with the issue of salvation, it seems that George Martin also put a healthy dose of biblical hat-tips. Obviously, there's the Cain myth. But I'm also fond of noting character names. For instance, the name Joshua is the anglicized form of Yeshua, which is actually the name of Jesus in Aramaic. Then there's Damon Julian. Never mind what Damon sounds like but the names themselves are pagan, from the Christian perspective, in origin. And Abner is a Hebrew name which turns out to mean "father of light." I like an author who puts some thought into the symbolism of names.

One other thing that I especially liked Martin's creation, Abner Marsh, is that, at the beginning of the novel, you can tell he's not a cultured man at all. He cannot fathom Joshua's love for poetry. He even derided it to begin with. Yet, you see his character slowly gaining curiosity about reading and eventually becoming quite a reader himself, because he found it interesting. And I thought that was a charming development to an already winning character, whom I sincerely hope you have an opportunity to read.

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