River of Blood: George Martin’s Fevre Dream and the road to dark designr

Abstract

With his publication of Fevre Dream in 1982, George R. R. Martin tried his hand at the “sympathetic vampire” tale, one popularized just a few years previously by Anne Rice.  A tale of vampires haunting the American South during the lead up to the Civil War, Fevre Dream focused upon moral ambiguity, the brutality of power, and other narrative aspects that would eventually emerge more fully developed in the author’s magnum opus, the acclaimed A Song of Ice and Fire series.  Largely forgotten, Fevre Dream is important in that a close reading of the text indicates Martin’s embrace of dark fantasy, not only in the bleak thematic material but also in the embrace of real-world historical events (the American Civil War) and institutions (slavery).