{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/17",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 17,
    "subject": "\"Citadel of the Autarch\" and \"Fevre Dream\"",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": null,
    "last": null
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v8-111-7@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "John Redford",
        "address": "vlsi at dec-marlboro"
      },
      "date": null,
      "subject": "\"Citadel of the Autarch\" and \"Fevre Dream\"",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "All you people who have been waiting for the last volume of \"The\nBook of the New Sun\" to come out before reading any of it no longer\nhave any excuse.  The fourth volume, \"The Citadel of the Autarch\", is\nnow out in paperback.  The previous books have all been nominated for\nHugos and Nebulas.  The only reason they haven't swept all the awards\nis that the individual books are only pieces of the whole.  Read them\nin order, and fairly soon after one another, because Wolfe has no\ncompunctions about referring to events that took place eight hundred\npages before.  I wish someone could nominate the entire series for an\naward, for it would be a welcome change from stuff like \"Foundation's\nEdge\" or \"Friday\".  These are competent books, but they are clearly\nminor compared to Asimov's and Heinlein's earlier works.  Wolfe, on\nthe other hand, is at the height of his powers.  I won't try to\ndescribe the books, since others have already done that, but suffice\nit to say that Wolfe takes the setting and tone of Vance's \"The Dying\nEarth\" (he acknowledges the debt) and fills it with a depth of\nlanguage and storytelling style that I have never seen in any other\nauthor.\n\n     Another new paperback worth more than its price is \"Fevre Dream\"\nby George R. R. Martin.  The setting is the Mississippi in the mid\n1800's, the heyday of the riverboats.  A rambunctious but\ndown-on-his-luck steamboat skipper is made an odd offer by a pale,\nmysterious stranger.  He will pay for the construction of the grandest\nboat the River had ever seen, in return for the skipper's cooperation\nin a quest.  The stranger is a vampire, and his quest is to find the\nothers of his kind and unite them in an effort to finally make peace\nwith humanity.  What better way to search a continent, than by\ncruising the endless waterways of the Mississippi and it tributaries?\nBoth river life and the vampires are well drawn.  For instance, the\nboats were all woodburning, and so sealed their own fate by denuding\nof timber all the riverbanks of the Midwest.  Or, if vampires are\nimmortal and have the strength of ten, then why haven't they taken\nover the world?  Because the strength of vampire infants makes\nchildbirth a terrible process, which kills the mother as often as not.\nThis sort of background detail makes \"Fevre Dream\" a very solid\nadventure novel.\n\n/jlr"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}