Subject: "Citadel of the Autarch" and "Fevre Dream"

From: John Redford <vlsi at dec-marlboro>
Date: Sat, 05 Nov 1983 21:35:00 +0000

All you people who have been waiting for the last volume of "The Book of
the New Sun" to come out before reading any of it no longer have
any excuse.  The fourth volume, "The Citadel of the Autarch", is now out in
paperback.   The previous books have all been nominated for Hugos and
Nebulas.  The only reason they haven't swept all the awards is that the
individual books are only pieces of the whole.  Read them in order, and
fairly soon after one another, because Wolfe has no compunctions about
referring to events that took place eight hundred pages before.
I wish someone could nominate the entire series for an award, for it
would be a welcome change from stuff like "Foundation's Edge" or
"Friday".   These are competent books, but they are clearly minor compared to
Asimov's and Heinlein's earlier works.  Wolfe, on the other hand, is
at the height of his powers.   I won't try to describe the books, since
others have already done that, but suffice it to say that Wolfe takes the
setting and tone of Vance's "The Dying Earth" (he acknowledges the debt) and
fills it with a depth of language and storytelling style that I have never seen
in any other author. 
    Another new paperback worth more than its price is "Fevre Dream" by
George R. R. Martin.  The setting is the Mississippi in the mid 1800's, the
heyday of the riverboats.  A rambunctious but down-on-his-luck steamboat
skipper is made an odd offer by a pale, mysterious stranger.   He will
pay for the construction of the grandest boat the River had ever seen,
in return for the skipper's cooperation in a quest.  The stranger
is a vampire, and his quest is to find the others of his kind and unite them
in an effort to finally make peace with humanity.  What better way
to search a continent, than by cruising the endless waterways of the
Mississippi and it tributaries?  Both river life and
the vampires are well drawn.  For instance, the boats were all woodburning, and
so sealed their own fate by denuding of timber all the riverbanks of the
Midwest.   Or, if vampires are immortal and have the strength of ten, then why
haven't they taken over the world?  Because the strength of vampire infants
makes childbirth a terrible process, which kills the mother as often as not. 
This sort of background detail makes "Fevre Dream" a very solid adventure
novel.

/jlr