Stephen R. Donaldson

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Highly recommended

Stephen R. Donaldson’s Land (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever) series is one of the earliest reactions against the carbon-copy Tolkien-like works that proliferated soon after the success of The Lord of the Rings and stands in start contrast to another book published the same year— Sword of Shannara — which simply rewrites Tolkien rather than responds to it.

The first series is known as the Chronicles of Thomas the Unbeliever (more on that later), after the main character appearing in the opening trilogy. Covenant reappears in the second trilogy, but shares the spotlight with Linden Avery throughout, even to the point of being overshadowed by her at times. Avery remains a main character in Donaldson’s recent new trilogy, begun with The Runes of the Earth.

Anyone familiar with fantasy will recognize the genre’s typical elements: small bands gathering together to undertake urgent quests, a dark lord trying to dominate the world, horse-loving peoples, elves, etc. Donaldson doesn’t simply round up the usual suspects, however, and then let them play out in all the predictable fashions.

For the most part, Donaldson breathes some fresh air into the old stalwarts (though they weren’t really all that old in terms of modern fantasy when he began the series and the fact that they still feel somewhat fresh today is a testament to his creativity). The races aren’t simply the same-old, same-old elves, dwarves, and so on. His giants especially are a wondrous creation, both as a species and in their individual form. The Land itself is a marvel of description and truly feels as alive as it is meant to (making it all the more heartbreaking when that life is threatened); it is not the same dreary trudge through funny-named mountain ranges, grassy plains, etc. There are some standby plot points—the small band infiltrating the dark lord’s lair, the siege by an overwhelming army of bad guys— but these are more than balanced by the plot’s overall originality as well as by its individual scenes. His characters too, avoid falling into the realm of dull fantasy types. They are complex creations, often flawed, often frustrating, and sometimes detestable. Many grow throughout a single book and/or across the series (singular and plural), rather than appearing onstage fully formed and immune to experience.

But what sets the series most apart is not its simple quality but that aspect of Covenant’s name that lends itself to the title: Unbeliever. Covenant is that rare hero who not only doesn’t want to be a hero (after all, how many of those reluctant would-rather-stay-in-their-protected-hamlet-heroes have we seen), but who willingly chooses not to be. Even stranger are his reasons—he chooses not to be a hero not out of fear or modesty but because he doesn’t believe in Donaldson’s world creation. A leper (literally, not metaphorically) in the real world he is transported from, Covenant refuses to believe that the Land is anything but a fever dream. 

Donaldson’s choice of leprosy as his main character’s disease is brilliant, as lepers simply can’t afford a fantasy life, can’t afford a daydream or a distracted moment because the smallest bump, scratch, or cut when they aren't paying attention (they can't feel the warning pain) can end up in loss of limb and life. Donaldson goes further than simply having Covenant be reluctant, even further than having him disbelieve the whole thing (and not simply for a few pages of tension—he is the Unbeliever throughout almost the whole work). He risks turning the reader totally against his character at a very early stage when he has Covenant commit a truly horrendous act that will reverberate throughout the whole series of books.

The act itself, the way it echoes down the years and the millennia (time moves differently in the Land), Covenant’s inner struggles, the pondering of life and death, of existence and being, puts the series in the “serious” fantasy category. That doesn’t mean the story itself isn’t exciting or compelling. The books are filled with great battle scenes, tense quests, acts of wildly exhilarating desperation, high magic, stirring speeches, personal bravery (I defy anyone not to get chills when Mhoram comes into his own) as well as moments of pain and suffering, heartbreaking sacrifices, and realizations of futility that threaten to crush the spirit of the reader as much as the characters.

But with his choice of Covenant as the main character and his exploration of free will and responsibility, Donaldson raises the importance of all of these elements of entertainment. Something he does as well, though slightly less satisfactorily with Avery in the second series. While this is overall a positive aspect of the series, it can at times be somewhat detrimental, during those moments Donaldson seems too hyper-aware of writing “seriously”. Sometimes the waxing philosophical is a bit too much; sometimes his diction is over-the-top in its use of obscure words. But while these moments exist (perhaps even worsen over the life of the series), they aren’t much more than minor annoyances.

You won’t fall in love with Thomas Covenant. In fact, though I find he grows on you, you may never even like him. But that doesn’t mean you won’t find his story compelling. And you will, I believe, fall in love with the Land and many of its denizens. If you find it difficult to get through the opening of book one, Lord Foul’s Bane, try to keep going, even if it means skimming a bit (something I don’t normally advise). More importantly, even if you don’t like book one, give book two a shot for at least awhile. You’ll find more characters to balance Covenant’s despair and angst (not to mention his whining). Highly recommended.  —Bill   Comments

Lord Foul's Bane: Beauty on a grand scale

I was a freshman in high school when I bought Stephen R. Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane at the local bookstore. Just having finished The Lord of the Rings, and The Sword of Shannara, I was eager to discover what it was that caused critics to say that Donaldson played hardball to Tolkien's softball. It wasn't long before I found out.

Thomas Covenant (for those who don't look for allegory in fiction, think of Christianity's doubting Thomas), a leper from the "real" world, is transported to a magical place, refered to simply as "The Land," where through its innate Earth-power, he finds his leprosy healed, long dead sensations returning to him not like glory, but rather like plague. So long has he tied his identity to that of a leper (outcast unclean!) who is comfortable only in self-pity, and so convinced is he that what he is experiencing is not real, that he allows himself to lose control and rapes the girl who helped to heal him. It is a sobering beginning, one which sets the tone for the rest of the series.

Here in The Land, Covenant learns that the white gold wedding ring he still wears—though divorced, as his wife left him, took their son away in fear after he contracted leprosy—is a paradox. White gold does not exist in The Land, is not bound by the laws that rule and subdue The Land, and is the keystone of wild magic. "There is wild magic graven in every rock, contained for white gold to unleash or control..."

What Donaldson does here is create a true fantasy world. Not one modelled after medieval or Renaissance Europe, not a copycat of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (though, indeed, in this series, the fate of the world rests in a reluctant hero and a ring — but the similarity ends, severely so, there), but one crafted from his heart, like a fairy tale.

The strength of this book lies not in its plot; indeed, I find the plotting here to be simple, a trend that does not continue in the next two books of this trilogy. While this is the story of a quest (The Lords of Revelstone set out with Thomas Covenant to wrest the Staff of Law from Drool Rockworm, to keep it away from Lord Foul himself who delves deep within the earth for banes far more powerful and vile), it is also the story of an anti-hero and his discomfort, his challenges. It is easy to dislike Covenant, easy even to hate or despise him. We fall in love with The Land that Donaldson creates, see that Covenenant himself loves The Land, and yet it is Covenant's inability — or refusal — to come to terms with his own Unbelief, that may spell disaster. As a teenager I found myself longing to step into the pages of this book, wrest the ring from Covenant, and challenge the Ravers (Foul's servants), Drool Rockworm — even Lord Foul, if he dared.

Lord Foul — who is he? He is "...the Despiser ... Satansheart and Soulcrusher ... Fangthane ... Corruption ... the Gray Slayer." He is every bit our Devil, is trapped in The Land by the Arch of Time as Lucifer is in Hell, and lusts to break free from his prison, to challenge his "enemy," known simply here as the Creator.

Covenant, it seems, is the only one who can stop him. —Todd   Comments
Adapted from a review originally published 2/2001

  Lord Foul's Bane: I'm sorry. I just can't appreciate the anti-hero device.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever are hugely popular. But personally, I’m not a fan. I appreciate his writing style and his vivid descriptions of The Land; however, I just don’t like Thomas Covenant.

But, that’s Donaldson’s point. Covenant is the anti-hero — he’s a reaction to Tolkien’s nice guys. Not only is Thomas Covenant NOT nice (he rapes a woman shortly into Lord Foul's Bane), he doesn’t even believe in the world he’s the hero of (hence “the Unbeliever”). He’s a 20th century leper who gets transported to The Land, which is a beautiful place where he is the hero, but he thinks he’s hallucinating.

That’s a really cool premise. And who can resist a book titled Lord Foul’s Bane? That’s got to be the best title in all of fantasy literature! Lord Foul's Bane. (I just wanted to say it again.)

Anyway, too bad I’ve got this weird requirement that I actually need to like the hero. I used to think this was a female thing, but I've heard from plenty of women who like The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. So for the first time—and I hope the last time—I suggest that you don't take my recommendation on these books. Read them for yourself.

Lord Foul's Bane. Lord Foul's Bane. Lord Foul's Bane. Lord Foul's Bane. Lord Foul's Bane. Lord Foul's Bane.  —Kat   Comments

The Illearth War: Not a sophomore slump

It's obvious that Stephen R. Donaldson was cutting his teeth, so to speak, while writing Lord Foul's Bane. To be certain, that book had periods of brilliance, such as the occurrences in Andelain, but all in all it was probably the weakest book in the Thomas Covenant series. (That doesn't mean it isn't good — just that the rest of the books are incredible.)

In The Illearth War, Covenant is called back to The Land for a second time, and his image of a reluctant hero is burnished in our mind even more than it was in the previous book, for while he was being summoned he was also on the phone with his ex-wife, Joan. The woman who left him for fear of his leprosy, the woman with whom he was still in love, the woman who was telling him, right then, that she missed and needed him. So he protests his summoning vehemently, but to no avail. As the new High Lord Elena indicates, they have no knowledge of how to send a person back once a summons is complete.

The Council of Lords has some new faces on it. It's been forty years since Covenant has been to the Land, and seven years (seven "Land" years) remain until the fulfillment of Foul's ominous prophecy from Lord Foul's Bane. The Lords are desperate. While they regained the Staff of Law and found High Lord Kevin's Second Ward at the end of Lord Foul's Bane, they have learned very little. The language, they find, is difficult to penetrate, and they find themselves unequal to the task of mastering the lore. Due to their sense of overwhelming failure and inadequacy, and other baleful events, they make the decision to summon Covenant.

There is another addition to Revelstone: Hile Troy. He is a character from the "real world," someone who has read (or had read to him) Covenant's best selling novel. This is, perhaps, Donaldson's way of telling us that Covenant's experiences most definitely is not a dream (which Covenant is still convincing himself of). He's also blind, and unlike Covenant — who maintains fierce unbelief — Troy believes in The Land with a passion that precludes life.

Many readers interpret Troy's character as what Covenant should be. If Hile Troy had a white gold ring, his passion, his love for The land (for it allowed him to see again — and besides, everyone, even the readers, fall in love with The Land) would lead him directly to a confrontation with Foul. Unfortunately, not understanding the dilemmas of power, he would likely experience a resounding defeat. What people don't understand about Covenant, and Troy's character is supposed to help them understand this, is that Covenant's stubborn unbelief exists for a reason. In Lord Foul's Bane, Donaldson meticulously discussed the rigors of leprosy, what it meant to be a leper, what it meant to survive as a leper. And though bitter and angry at life and everything around him — or perhaps because of his bitterness — Covenant made the decision to live. And living entails never, ever letting your guard drop for one second. Because if you do, you can bump into something, not realize that you're bleeding internally, and die of hemorrhaging; gangrene can set in; and much more. So Covenant's unbelief, while incredibly frustrating, is completely understandable. He needs to believe that The Land isn't real, because if he gives in to it, then when he wakes up from his dream (for it may be a dream), his guard may drop, and he could die.

So it's unfortunate that people don't recognize Troy for what he is, and instead see him for exactly the opposite of what Donaldson intended.

I love The Illearth War, as it introduces some extremely intriguing relationships and concepts (Elena and Amok, the latter of which is the key to High Lord Kevin's Seventh Ward — talk about heightened anticipation), and the devastating fear that Foul has mastered the Illearth Stone to such a degree that he can cut chips off of it and give it to his servants (Ravers).

The battle of Garrotting Deep (yes, similar in placement and scope to the epic battle of Helm's Deep in The Two Towers) shows that Donaldson, like Tolkien before him, can write both of beauty and of beauty's absence in the heart of darkness of war. He is quite adept at handling battle scenes.

Many second books suffer from the so-called sophomore slump. Not The Illearth War. I don't think Donaldson is capable of writing such a book, as The One Tree (the second book in The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant) is probably the most intriguing of the series, and within that book in particular are the seeds for The Last Chronicles, which everyone — and I mean everyone — should read.  —Todd   Comments
Adapted from a review originally published 11/2004

The Power That Preserves

I'm a great fan of Donaldson's. Even today, decades after the initial release of The Power That Preserves, as I'm being spoiled by fantasy artists such as George R.R. Martin, I still look back on The Power That Preserves with amazement. There are chapters in this book, notably Lord Mhoram's Victory, that should receive a special place in a "Fantasy Hall of Fame," that should be used as templates in high fantasy writing seminars.

(although the book is decades old...)

I'd like to offer one argument to those who brand Stephen R. Donaldson as being too dark: Lord Foul was defeated by what? Laughter. Hardly a dreary weapon.   —Todd   Comments
Adapted from a review originally published 1/2001

The Wounded Land: A Remarkably Creative Follow-Up

Whereas many follow ups to successful first works seem to be written purely as a vehicle to squeeze another dollar out of a good idea (see Terry Brooks' second go with the Shannara series and David Eddings' Mallorean), this beginning of The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant logically follows the First.

I read this book many years ago, and am as impressed with the concept of a "Wounded Land" now as I was then. Some refer to this work as "Dark Fantasy." I see it more as realism...within the scope of a fantasy setting, of course. Stephen R Donaldson has a feel and touch to "The Land," an affiliation so natural that his third person omniscient sounds exactly so.

Upon reaching the end of this trilogy — The White Gold Wielder — it is obvious that the story has not yet reached completion. We can't hold our breath, as it's going to take several more years, but we can bide our time. As impatient as it seems, at times....  —Todd   Comments
Adapted from a review originally published 1/2000

The Runes of the Earth: Compelling if a bit repetitive, mostly welcome return

Fans of Stephen R. Donaldson's earlier work in the Land will find much to like here. Much of what was so good in the first two trilogies is here: conflicted characters; examinations of power and guilt, sense of loss, familiar etc. That's both a positive and a negative, however, as there is a distinct sense of been there done that. Not overpowering, as the story does expand, deepen, and in general differ in slight, subtle ways from its predecessors. But the sense remains through much of the book, as once again the Land is under assault, once again characters are ignorant or unwilling, once again a character wrestles with use/control of power, once again a character is taken hostage, once again we deal with Stonedowners and Ranhyn and Bloodguard, once again Kevin Landwaster has lessons to tell us. Again, the book manages, I think, to evade this as a major pitfall, but one is willing to give a bit more slack to the first book in a projected trilogy/tetralogy; one hopes the rest of the books move down more original paths.

The opening is a bit slow, as Linden Avery's life since the last book is summarized and she is set down the path toward reentry into the Land. Part of the slowness comes from too much unnecessary introspection on her part, unnecessary because it's redundant (we've heard it already), repetitive (goes on too long in the same vein), or because it is telling us something we should probably be shown. A bit of it also seems somewhat contrived, but as its main purpose is to get her to the Land we can accept its arbitrariness.

Once in the Land the story picks up and becomes much more compelling as Avery learns of the Land's new ills (loss of the Staff of Law, time storms, a ban on earthpower, and more) and picks up some allies and of course some enemies in her attempts to save the Land and her hostage son. As usual with Donaldson, half the fun is the shiftiness of what it means to be ally and/or enemy.

For longtime readers of Donaldson, there will be some moments of annoyance as he goes over past Land history that we've all read about or even better seen occur. Most times he goes a step further, filling in some backstory or forward-story, adding a few details, but it seems much of it could have been streamlined. I suppose that was for the benefit of those who haven't read the previous books (a quite detailed prologue is available for them) but I'm not sure I understand why anyone would pick this book up not having read those others. Not only do characters, themes, and plots repeat or expand upon those from earlier, but the whole thrust of the series revolves around the love of the Land and unfortunately, in this book, the Land is pretty pallid. One just can't understand why it's so important that Avery save it unless one has seen it in all its first trilogy glory. Sure, Avery keeps telling the reader why it's important and tries to recall the past glory (though she never really saw it fully herself), but that's a very poor substitute. For that reason alone I'd never recommend this book as a starter (plus, reading the first six cuts down on the wait time for the sequel to The Runes of the Earth).

Flaws in the book are relatively minor. Sometimes it's a bit contrived, sometimes a bit rushed, sometimes too familiarly predictable. As mentioned the Land itself no longer glows, and “Kevin's Dirt” is just an awful letdown in terms of sheer language; I mean, this is the same guy who gave us the Ill Earth War, The Ritual of Desecration, the Unfettered, the Unhomed, and Lord Mhoram's Victory. Is “Kevin's Dirt” really the best he could do? But this, like the other flaws, are insignificant in the book's hold on the reader and if one hopes to see some more expansive character and thematic lines, the first two trilogies bode well for such expansion, making The Runes of the Earth both a welcome return and a hopeful beginning.   —Bill   Comments

The Runes of the Earth: Bravo! Well done, Mr. Donaldson!

I want to direct my first comments to those readers who have never read any of the Covenant books, but are contemplating reading The Runes of the Earth. Your main concern, undoubtedly, is, "How can I possibly enter a complex series at book seven? Won't I be so incredibly lost that it won't make any sense for me to buy this book and see what all the fuss is about Covenant?" Both questions are easily answered. Donaldson has taken extraordinary care to construct the beginning of this book in such a way that if you are entering the Covenant series at this late point, by the time you get to page 200, all that went before will be explained, and you'll (almost) feel as if you have read the first six books. He does this primarily in two ways. First, he has written a "What Has Gone Before" prelude, which succinctly wraps up the essential plots and dilemmas of the first six books into about eight pages. It is superbly done. Second, from almost the very beginning of the book itself, he meticulously and purposefully takes the reader back to prior events in the last two trilogies, while at the same time moving the story forward with the tremendous urgency of his past works. While someone like myself (who is probably more familiar with these books than I should be), can see what's happening as plainly as I can see that Shaquille O'Neal is a very large man, people less familiar with the work will not feel burdened or bludgeoned by what is, essentially, catching readers up. For a reader like me, this will likely feel somewhat tedious as we know all of the legends of The Land. But for readers who are unfamiliar with the legends, you will find them to be like a drink from the source of a mountain spring. The stories and legends of The Land are as tantalizing, exciting, and wondrous as the story itself.

So — new readers to Covenant, feel safe. Whereas you couldn't jump into Book 7 of Jordan's Wheel of Time series, you can jump into The Runes of the Earth. You will not be disappointed.

And now to the book. There is a wonderfully written 77-page "Prologue" which details the events that take place in the "real world," the events which lead to Linden and, perhaps others, to be conveyed to The Land. I read this in astonishment. I've read everything that Donaldson has ever written, and this was his best piece of writing. It was like reading Henry James. His descriptions were immaculately clear, the kind of descriptions that distinguish good writing from bad; the kind of descriptive writing that allows the reader to touch, feel, hear, see, and smell; the kind of writing that separates truly great writing from mediocre writing (which, sadly, accounts for about 90% of what's being published today, regardless of genre).

When we arrive in The Land, the threat is less clear than it was in the previous Chronicles. In the first, Lord Foul laid it out to Covenant in no uncertain terms — he was going to destroy The Land, destroy The Lords, and he stopped just short of telling him how he was going to do it, so great was his confidence. Foul's approach was distinctly Hitlerian, his tactics a blitzkrieg in every way. In The Second Chronicles, his attack was more insidious and subtle, but still devastating. Here he attacked nature, Earthpower; the Sunbane was a blight that all could see and feel, and the millions of readers who had fallen in love with the stunning beauty and tangible health of The Land in The First Chronicles couldn't help but to weep at the devastation. In The Last Chronicles, the threat is palpable, it is significant, and it is devastating (not to mention terribly creative). The difference is: the threat isn't only Foul. As we delve deeper into the book, and learn some of the secrets therein, we come to realize that The Land has more than one enemy, with perhaps a different agenda than Foul, and only one true defender with any estimable might: Linden Avery, The Chosen.

It is a testament to Donaldson's mastery of The Land that an entire book can be written in a series titled, The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and not have Thomas Covenant in the book for more than ten seconds, and still have that book turn out to be a revelation. So many other author's sequels don't make sense — they don't follow logically from the prior book, or series. (For example, anything by Goodkind, The Mallorean by Eddings, Shannara.) I can't be similarly critical of Donaldson. His sequels follow a perfect logic flow. The Sunbane was absolutely what Foul would have done after spending three and half millennia licking his wounds, and while we don't know Foul's full intentions yet, the events that occur within The Runes of the Earth are exactly what they should be, considering the events of the First and Second Chronicles. Donaldson is not writing this to make money, although he is certain to make truckloads of it. He's writing this because he had a vision of how to complete the "Covenant cycle", and waited twenty-one (agonizing!) years to publish Runes because he needed to grow as a writer. Reading Runes, I understand him completely. This book placed demands on him as a writer that he has never encountered before, and the growth during the intervening years served him well.

The result is a book to be savored, reread, and added to the canon of great fantasy. If The First Chronicles were the War and Peace of fantasy literature, I wonder how this will be judged. It is superior — superior to something that is already recognized as one of the most important works of fantasy of all time.   —Todd   Comments
Adapted from a review originally published 9/2007

Fatal Revenant: The choices of Linden Avery, The Chosen

Donaldson raises the stakes so high in Fatal Revenant that it was difficult, at times, to see how he was going to pull it off. I'll be honest: I doubted that he could do it, and I'm a true, dedicated (not obsessive, thank you) fan. However, after turning the final page of Fatal Revenant and sadly setting the book aside, I'm more than a little embarrassed to admit that my ability to express my emotions and thoughts had been significantly diminished. Rational cogitation evaded me entirely, and I felt like the teenager I was when I first stumbled on Stephen R Donaldson in the early 1980s (gulp). All that ran through my mind, in a continuous loop, for about five minutes, was "Dude! This is awesome!" And it was. It is. I hold Donaldson to a higher standard than most writers, because he's earned it. Not only did he meet meet my already inflated expectations, he by far exceeded them. To say that I'm anxiously awaiting the third book, Against All Things Ending, is like saying that as a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan, I really want them to win a World Series. (Against All Things Ending will likely arrive first...*sigh*)

At the end of The Runes of the Earth, Linden Avery discerned six figures riding to Revelstone. "One was Jeremiah; her son beyond question... The other stranger was unmistakably Thomas Covenant." If you're a fan, you've been waiting three years to find out how or why Jeremiah seemingly regained control of his mind, and why Covenant is corporeal (he's supposed to be dead, after all). Donaldson will answer your questions, and the answers will stagger and satisfy you, and leave you gasping for more. In typical Donaldson fashion — and something he's been getting better and better at over the years — the answers, or solutions to the problems, aren't what they seem. Nothing is. Hellfire <wink> — Covenant, alive? Jeremiah, talkative and energetic? Surely this is impossible.

The book opens with Linden facing a corporeal Covenant, and a responsive Jeremiah. Read the first few chapters carefully. Don't speed through them in a mad desperate dash to start the marathon run to the finish, because if you do, several events leading up to the ending, and the ending itself (Donaldson has become, I daresay, the master of the cliffhanger) might not make a bit of sense to you. For that matter, the entire book should be read carefully. After finishing this book I see more and more why Donaldson thought that he needed to take time away and work on other projects before coming back to this. Most fantasies — his First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant included — are fairly straightforward in their presentation. That's why The First Chronicles had such a broad appeal. They most certainly were not simple — when you scratched the surface, there was surprising depth — but you could, at thirteen years of age, read the books and fully enjoy them without looking into the vast abyss of nuance Donaldson wrote with. While I don't want to say that young readers should be wary of these books, they have layers and layers of subtlety and subtext. I expected Donaldson to write a book that made me think, but I wasn't expecting to be addled and befuddled, and I just want to say THANK YOU to SRD for writing a book that that caused so much cerebration.

Linden needs answers. The Demondim are at Revelstone's gate. The Mahdoubt is nowhere to be found. Covenant and Jeremiah are too foreign for her to trust completely, and so Esmer is her only resource. His duality often prohibits him from speaking clearly, and his aid often creates more problems than it solves. The book starts out with a simple (yeah, right) quest, and her companions are two who should bring more delight to her than any: Covenant and Jeremiah. But they do not, because she cannot physically touch them, something she longs to do, for reasons I'll let Donaldson dramatize. But imagine Linden's grief. After ten years in the "real world," and several audacious days in the Land (The Runes of the Earth), Covenant and Jeremiah stand before her, restored. The only man she ever loved, and her son. Essentially, this book is about the choices she makes. Perhaps she was dubbed "The Chosen" for more reasons than we know.

The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant began with Donaldson setting the pieces on the board with great care. Since the First Chronicles, Donaldson's writing has at times reminded me of a chess master. He is meticulous in the placement of his pieces. When I finished reading The Real Story: The Gap Into Conflict, the first book of his five-book space opera, The Gap Series, I couldn't see how he was going to get five books out of it,  yet he did, and the universe that he unveiled to his grateful readers was breathtaking in its conceptual amplitude. It was like being inside the tiniest Russian doll, and escaping, to find that there's a larger doll, then a larger doll, etc., and finally you escape and you're in, well, Russia. Maybe not as exciting as warm and inviting as Hawaii, but you get the idea.

Donaldson's characters aren't always likeable. (Covenant's first act in The Land in Lord Foul's Bane was to rape a girl and there's a fan group who call themselves THOOLAH, The Holy Order of Linden Avery Haters.) But that's kind of the point. Would you rather be reading about morally altruistic characters like Richard and Kahlan from Goodkind's universe? I prefer my characters to not only have grey spots on their morality gauge, I like them to be real. Whine all you want about Linden's whining (regarding her son), but find me a mother that wouldn't be doing and thinking and struggling exactly as she is. Good luck. (I mean no offense to THOOLAH members, or Goodkind fans.)

Donaldson picks and chooses words carefully, and nowhere do we see his wordsmithing at play more than in the Covenant series. Some readers might find that his books require too much work to get through. But, if you do the extra work required, you're more often than not rewarded. Sometimes you'll find hidden humor, sometimes added depth. In my experience, it's rare to find a word that he absolutely shouldn't have used, or that he should have replaced with a simpler synonym, because the word he chose is precise. Not all synonyms mean the same thing. To use a very simple example, "black" is a synonym of "dark." So is "gloomy." All three words have very specific definitions.

A sentence that I was initially frustrated with became beautiful when I went one step beyond looking the words up and thought about how they were used, where they were used, and then, of course, why. Some fine folks at Kevin's Watch were most helpful in this. That particular sentence appears on page 229 of the American hardcover edition: "'You can hear me,' she pronounced, speaking now in lambent chrysoprase and jacinth rather than saffron blots." I won't tell you what I found, because doing so would be giving away a REAL gem in the book, but I'm pointing it out to make sure that YOU do the work I was initially too lazy to do. It will help you appreciate the scene. I promise. 

When I saw the cover art for Fatal Revenant — a figure of a wizardly-looking chap bearded and robed in snowy white — I cringed. It was bad enough that Del Rey tried to cash in on the success of The Lord of the Rings movies by releasing mass market paperback editions of The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant with pastel covers displaying a yellow gold wedding ring. (They hoped that the new readers of fantasy that the LOTR movies gave birth to would see a gold ring while perusing the shelves at their local bookstore, and think, Hey! I need to read this Tolkien knock-off — which it most certainly is not.) The problem there is that our buddy Tom wore a white gold wedding ring, and it is the nature of the alloy of white gold that formed the paradox of "white wild magic gold" in The Land. Now we are treated to what looks to me, and probably every fan of fantasy extant, Gandalf the White or, as depicted in the films, perhaps the figure more closely resembles Saruman. Let me reassure you that neither Gandalf nor Saruman appear in this or any other Covenant book. Who is it then? I'm not saying, but even a casual reader of the Covenant series should be able to make a good guess.

Happy Reading. Donaldson himself said that we would be going on a ride. I am more anxious, now, given how high he has raised the stakes, to see the third book than I was this one. The time until Against All Things Ending gets released will go very slowly.  —Todd   Comments
Adapted from a review originally published 10/2007