James Nicoll Reviews

George R. R. Martin’s 1982 Fevre Dream is a stand-alone (but see footnote one) historical horror novel.

1857: Abner Marsh is a steamboat entrepreneur without steamboats. An unusually cold winter saw the Mississippi freeze solid, crushing all but one of March’s precious riverboats like eggs. His remaining paddle-wheeler, the Eli Renolds, being seven years old and surely on its last legs, Marsh faces the end of his Fevre River Packet Company.

Enter Joshua York, a wealthy man with a need for a steamboat and a partner who understands the Mississippi. York offers to finance a splendid new paddle-wheeler, the Fevre Dream, to Marsh’s specifications. The deal seems too good to turn down. Marsh accepts his new business partner.

Only after the Fevre Dream begins plying the Mississippi does Marsh begin to suspect he should have asked more questions about York.

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George R. R. Martin’s 1986 Tuf Voyaging is, I believe, intended to be a fix-up of shorter pieces. It reads like a collection of stories, so that’s how I will review it. The central figure is Haviland Tuf, a minor trader to whom fate grants great power. With great power, as they say, comes even greater megalomania. 

Animal harm warning. 

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1987’s Wild Cards is the first volume in George R. R. Martin’s ongoing superhero shared-universe project of the same name. 

Here’s a bird’s‑eye view of the anthology (i.e. the table of contents). 

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1977’s Dying of the Light was George R. R. Martin’s first novel. While this novel is set in the same Manrealm as a number of Martin’s other stories¹, this is a standalone. You don’t need to have read the other works to understand this one. This isn’t volume five of some interminable fantasy series.

Centuries after the collapse of the Federal Empire, the human worlds are still recovering. Fourteen of the more isolated, backward worlds collaborated on an ambitious project: terraforming the rogue world Worlorn as it passes by the giant star Fat Satan. 

By the time Dirk t’Larien arrives on Worlorn, hoping to help a former lover, Gwen Delvano, Worlorn’s Festival is over. Its path will take it past Fat Satan and back into the lightless interstellar depths. All life on the world is doomed.

As is Dirk, if he sticks around.

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