Fever Dream is fast-paced, fairly entertaining, and will satisfy most of the avid Pendergast fans out there longing for their Aloysius fix. At the same time, it's not a very good novel. Let me be clear - I have enjoyed the Preston/Child novels, to various degrees, since Relic, and I am as intrigued by the enigmatic Special Agent as most readers out there. Over the years, however, Pendergast has grown less interesting and more . . . well, more predictable. I sometimes find myself speaking his lines in my head before I read them. He doesn't surprise me anymore. He has become a caricature of himself, which is disappointing.
Preston and Child have succumbed to two of the most egregious failings of recent popular fiction. First, Fever Dream has a plethora of mini-chapters (many are 2-3 pages in length), which work to push the plot forward but allow no time for character development or depth. This leads to the second failing - the novel is nothing more than its fairly absurd plot. I'm as willing as most to suspend my disbelief as mutated scientists wreak havoc on musty museums or crazed lunatics plot dastardly deeds against family members. But to make those stories work, we have to really care about the characters, the settings, and the world Preston/Child have so beautifully created. In Fever Dream, we get a bunch of the expected characters (Pendergast, D'Agosta, Laura Haywood) acting pretty much as we expect them to act. The central plot, however - about Pendergast's hunt for the people who murdered his wife twelve years earlier - doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't read it yet, but the "murder weapon" is patently absurd, as are the motives of the "bad guy" (whose identity I guessed the moment he was introduced, even though Pendergast, D'Agosta, and Haywood never seemed to get it, even in the end).
Which brings me to a third failing - Fever Dream is written as the first in another series of novels, meaning there IS no ending. I have nothing against sequels, but it does bother me when writers work harder to sucker a reader into their next book than they do making the current one worth reading. Relic worked on its own; Reliquary was a good sequel, but it wasn't NECESSARY to buy Reliquary to understand and enjoy Relic. If you want to know what happens at the end of Fever Dream, you'll have to buy the next book in the series (and maybe the next TWO books, if Preston/Child follow their established pattern). That's a cop-out, and it's a lazy cop-out.
I see that Preston/Child are beginning a new series of books with a new investigator (Gideon Crew, who they describe as "uncommon," meaning he'll be intriguing and enigmatic and probably very eccentric). I think they, as much as any of us, realize that their Pendergast novels can't go on forever. I only wish they would spend a bit more time writing good stories and a bit less time setting up their marketing plan. Their earlier work (Relic, Reliquary, Riptide, Thunderhead) remains their best. Fever Dream, while not bad for a beach read, is pretty much just fluff with some familiar names.
