"Citadel of the Autarch" and "Fevre Dream"

John Redford · undated · from sf-lovers.1983.mbox

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From: John Redford <VLSI at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: "Citadel of the Autarch" and "Fevre Dream"
Date: 5 Nov 1983 1635-EST
Message-ID: <sflovers-v8-111-7 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V8 #111
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-08

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

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