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Abner Marsh
An aged steamer captain with the dream of building the fastest one ever built, the Fevre Dream
- Above the Influence: Resists Julius' offers of wealth, women, and even his boat back.
- A Father to His Men: Is this aboard the Fevre Dream but Subverted with his other boats as he's considered a cursed oddball. Especially after the Fevre Dream is taken.
- Big Eater: Abner Marsh has a prodigious appetite and is constantly thinking about his next enormous meal.
- The Captain: A cynical foul-mouthed and cranky old one who is, nevertheless, a man of great courage.
- Character Development: Gradually becomes an abolitionist due to how much he loathes Damon Julius' The Right of a Superior Species rhetoric.
- Crushing Handshake: The burly Abner likes doing this as a show of strength and dominance, but finds himself on the losing end when he attempts it with York.
- The Determinator: His obsession with finding the Fevre Dream once it's stolen borders on superhuman. Subverted when the practicalities of his quest become too much and he seeks more lucrative work.
- Skewed Priorities: He wants to defeat the Eclipse in a boat race more than anything else. Even above his actual business' success. Later, finding the lost Fevre Dream overcomes even his business sense and personal safety.
- Vampire Hunter: Briefly becomes this but is only interested in killing Damon Julius. In the end, he only manages to kill one, who turns out to be the wrong vampire.
Joshua York
A European investor who wants to finance Abner's steamer business. Oh and he's a vampire.
- Ambiguously Evil: Joshua, whose motives and nature are kept a secret for the first third of the book.
- The Atoner: Joshua York's raison d'etre.
- Becoming the Mask: Joshua York is a Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire because he grew up around humans and started to see them as more than just "cattle". Damon Julian mocks him for this on several occasions.
- The Chosen One: Joshua believes he's the vampire destined to save his race, and lead them into a new era of peace, cooperation, and understanding with their human cousins. His followers also believe him to be this, referring to him as the "Pale King." Julian, on the other hand...
- Consummate Liar: Joshua constantly lies to Abner and always does so with perfect grace.
- Cultured Badass: Joshua York, to the core. His penchant for poetry even rubs off on Marsh, of all people.
- The Determinator: Every bit as much as Marsh, never giving up on his dream to free his people.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Joshua York was never what you could call evil, but he always viewed his feeding on humans as a regretful necessity. His hatred of humans that attempt to act like vampires is unbridled, and his greatest achievement is discovering a way to quiet the red thirst so that killing humans is no longer necessary.
- Life-or-Limb Decision: Once Joshua decides to kill himself and chains himself by the hands to be burned by the sunlight. But then he changes his mind and starts trying to break out of the manacles. One chain snaps... but the other holds, and so Joshua is forced to tear off his arm. He gets better, though.
- Meaningful Name: Joshua is the proper version of Jesus' name. It is also a Hebrew name associated with salvation.
- Messianic Archetype: Is believed to be the prophecized Pale King who will free them from the red thirst. May be Metaphorically True depending on whether vampires survive.
- Mercy Kill: Joshua kills a mortally wounded Billy to end his suffering.
- Monsters Anonymous: Joshua wants to turn his group of vampires, and all of the species, into this.
- Suicide by Sunlight: Joshua York tries this after his Horror Hunger gets the better of him. He chains himself up outside, throws the key out of reach, and waits for the sun to come up. It's an excruciating process that takes several hours. He changes his mind halfway through, severing one of his hands to get away in time. Despite being very badly burned, he recovers over the course of a week, and even regrows his hand, much to his surprise.
- Spanner in the Works: Julian to Joshua, whose plans to save his race are rendered moot by Julian — the more powerful blood master — conquering him and keeping the vampires firmly in the past. Also, Billy to Julian at the very end.
- The Starscream: Joshua to Julian after being conquered.
- Vampires Are Rich: Joshua has built a huge fortune by the time he meets Abner and easily pays for the construction of the Fevre Dream.
Damon Julian
An ancient vampire and the Bloodmaster of the New World. He is a plantation owner in the Deep South at the start of the book.
- Ancient Evil: He's several thousand years old.
- Consummate Liar: He lies effortlessly and to everyone around him, particularly Sour Billy Tipton.
- Cultured Badass: Averted. While he's ungodly powerful and dresses beautifully, he cares very little for history, poetry, reading, and other finer things in life, using them more as a front to keep up appearances and hide the primal, bloodthirsty monster resting within.
- Dark Is Evil: He dresses in dark clothing and has black hair. By contrast, York has white hair and dresses in white.
- Death Seeker: Joshua believes Damon is immensely bored with life, but his inner beast won't let him die. Therefore, Damon amuses himself by taking big risks, like offering Sour Billy's job to Abner despite the probability of Abner trying to kill him when his guard is down.
- Empty Shell: Joshua believes the rhetoric Julian spouts to Marsh about his right to consume humanity and the splendors it produces was what motivated him once. But to Joshua's eye even that is long subsumed, emerging only briefly, and he is no more than an evil, hollow beast with no goals or motives. He spends most of his free time simply sitting in the dark, staring into space. Joshua finds this more frightening than his sadism.
- Faux Affably Evil: He seems to be an easy-going fellow at first, like when he offers Marsh a meal. In reality, he's a vicious psychopath who sees himself as superior to everyone else.
- For the Evulz: Julian's entire motivation. He believes vampires exist to feed upon the "cattle," who should accept their role as the lesser species. Ironically, Julian himself is not afflicted by the red thirst, and kills only for the pleasure of it.
- Impoverished Patrician: Julian is such a poor businessman that he frequently lives in hovels and ruins.
- Orcus on His Throne: Damon Julian spends the vast majority of his time couped up in his plantation, his room on the Fevre Dream, and later in the Fevre Dream's ruins. Justified as he is so old that life holds little interest for him.
- Would Hurt a Child: Julian mutilates and murders a baby just to prove a point.
Sour Billy Tipton
A former Plantation Overseer who has become The Renfield due to his lust for eternal life.
- All for Nothing: Humans cannot become vampires and everything Billy does is it to this goal.
- The Dragon: Sour Billy Tipton to Julian. He's a mix of The Igor and a Battle Butler, seeing to the day-to-day running of Julian's various fronts, venturing out into the world on his boss's behalf (mostly to abduct unsuspecting victims), and serving as Julian's guardian and protector during daylight hours. Unlike most examples, though, he's unquestionably the physically weakest member of the villain team, being the only one who isn't a vampire.
- Dragon-in-Chief: Billy intimidates the vampires under Julian's command and handles all of their affairs.
- The Dog Bites Back: The last act of Sour Billy Tipton, once he's outlived his usefulness and finally accepted the truth, is to partially blind Damon during his final showdown with York.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Deconstructed with Sour Billy Tipton who has no problem with killing black victims but balks at killing white ones. In other words, his standards actually make him worse. He also casts them aside when his master orders it.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Much like Abner to Joshua, he's responsible for the vast majority of his vampire owner's success. Damon Julian may be have occasional flashes of brilliance, but Sour Billy Tipton runs all his affairs to such an extent that Julian would clearly be a sad sight without the aid of Billy or someone like him.
- Irony: Billy is the only reason Julian is a threat, despite being a human being, because he handles all of the vampire's affairs. He's also a slave owner unaware that he is, himself, a slave, who can no more become the master he dreams of being than the black people he so despises can become white.
- The Renfield: Unlike many examples of the type, he's actually extremely useful to his master. Humans in fact can't really be transformed into vampires, but Damon has told him they can to keep him as a servant. He's also amused by Tipton trying to drink blood and eating human flesh in an attempt to be more like them.
- Vampire Vannabe: His service to Damon is motivated by his desire to become a vampire. In this setting that is impossible, and results in him attracting contempt from real vampires (protagonist and antagonist both) and humans.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Billy lives at the mercy of this trope, but doesn't truly realize it until the end.
