The Last Dark Book four of the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever By Stephen R. Donaldson

The Last Dark
Book four of the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever
By Stephen R. Donaldson
Copyright 2013

Stephen R. Donaldson finally brings to climax the story he has been telling for 37 years. The end of The Land is at hand and he and Linden Avery must decide what course of action they will take in the face of insurmountable odds.

The story begins where Against All Things Ending left off. Jeremiah has been released from his mental prison. Covenant has killed his ex-wife, Joan and taken her white gold wedding band. Linden has Covenant’s original white gold wedding band.

Linden, Jeremiah, and the company awaken expecting to see the dawn. But the sun does not rise. The Worm of World’s End is making its way toward the land and darkness has fallen. Daylight is just a faint glow. The party watches in horror as the stars begin to wink out, one by one. The stars are the Elohim, being consumed, one by one, by the worm.

Reasoning that the Elohim must be saved, Jeremiah builds a small fortress for him, using his talents as a builder and invites them in where they can be safe. They enter reluctantly, taking with them the tormented Elohim, Kastenessen, who has generated Kevin’s Dust that blocks the party’s health sense. The Elohim are safe.

Linden then creates a fissure in time to go back and seek the power of the Forrestal to create a Forbidding to slow the worm’s progress. With her she takes one of the Haruchai who is transformed into a Forrestal. They return to their own time where Linden is delighted to see that Covenant has found his way back to the party. Linden and Thomas decide to get married.

Covenant decides The Land’s fate is sealed; there can be no stopping the Worm. However, he wants to make sure that Lord Foul does not become a part of the Arch of Time when the world ends and sets out to defeat him.

The party battles their way through Mount Doom where Covenant faces Lord Foul, inhabiting the body of his son, Roger. It is then that Covenant defeats the Despiser once and for all not with white gold, but with compassion. As he does this, the worm destroys the world.

The party finds themselves in a meadow after the end of the world. It has been reconstructed anew. They decide to spend their days there, building a new Land.

The plot of this installment of the Covenant series moves with a pace that I didn’t think Donaldson had in him. The constant self-recrimination, self-loathing, and second guessing that were such a distraction in the earlier books is almost absent from this one.

Both Linden and Covenant are decisive. They act out of instinct. The book is filled with battles, meticulously written. Donaldson employed a wonderful device to bring the story to a close and define the relationship between Lord Foul and Thomas Covenant.

The last series made for tedious reading. But the climax in the fourth made up for it and brought together all of the plot elements nicely. Thirty-seven years is a long time to wait, but this final part of the story is well worth the time spent reading Thomas Covenant’s saga.

Against All Things Ending By Stephen R. Donaldson

The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant Book Three
Against All Things Ending
By Stephen R. Donaldson
Copyright 2011

Against All Things Ending opens with Thomas Covenant, resurrected from the dead, standing before Linden Avery and her friends. But he’s not himself. His mind is awhirl with random thoughts and memories of his own and of the Land’s – many of which were acquired when he became part of the Arch of Time. He has acquired a new title of Timewarden. Far from being able to aid Linden in her decision making, the man is barely coherent.



Shortly after Covenant is resurrected, The Harrow arrives on the scene and renews his offer to Linden to take her to where her son is being held in exchange for the Staff of Law and the White Gold. He intends to use them to confront the Worm of World’s End, set loose by Linden’s alteration of the Arch of Time.

Her experiment with Covenant has failed. She has no one to advise her or help her. She ascents to the Harrow’s agreement. Before it can be consummated, Infelice of the Elohim arrives and argues the case of the Elohim against it. Then they are joined by another of the Insequent. The Ardent – a corpulent being of great power – says his people have sent him to assure that the Harrow strikes a fair deal with Linden and sticks to it.

While they barter and argue, Covenant struggles with his memories. He grabs the Krill. It’s ability to focus and channel magic has a restorative effect on his brain and his thoughts become cogent again. But because the Krill channels Wild Magic, Joan is able to attack him directly with the white gold – and there’s nobody Joan wants to attack more than her ex-husband.

With the deal struck and The Ardent there to assure The Harrow’s compliance, The Harrow transports the entire group to the remote location where Jeremiah is being held – the Lost Deep located at Landsdrop near Foul’s Creche. This former warren of the lost race of Viles is warded by narrow bridge and a door sealed by runes. The Harrow’s plan to acquire the lore of the Viles is apparently thwarted because he cannot open the door.

Whilst the Insequent and others try to decipher the runes, Anele, who loves stone for stone has memories lost on the transient nature of soil and wood, reads the oldest stone in the Land. It tells him that the Worm of World’s End will ultimately drink of the Earthblood to bring about the end of the Arch of Time.

Linden is able to open the door to the Vile’s lair by using the runes inscribed on the Staff of Law by the Forestal in the Garrotting Deep. Once inside the wondrous underground palace of the Viles, Linden learns the source of Kevin’s Dirt – the “pollution” that blocks earth sense in the Land. It is a demoness with the moniker “She Who Must Not Be Named.” This demoness is a combination of tormented souls of women spurned – Kastenessen’s mortal lover, Diasommer who once loved A-Jeroth before he evolved into Lord Foul, and others. They must be careful not to awaken this guardian.

The Harrow leads them to where Jeremiah is being held. He plans to take Jeremiah and leave before The Ardent or anyone else can stop him. His plot is foiled when he finds that Jeremiah is held by a parasitical creature called a Croyel who has attached itself to his neck and controls him. They pair are protected from The Harrow’s magic by one of Jeremiah’s constructs. The Croyel summons a Skest that the party must battle while fearing the arrival of the tortured and malevolent lady spurned.

Linden deconstructs Jeremiah’s construct which had been shielding his location from Roger Covenant. Roger arrives and father and son face off for the first time. Covenant wields the Krill. Roger first dispatches the Harrow, killing him and makes a grab for the white gold wedding band and the Staff of Law.

Just as Thomas Covenant prepares to do battle with his son, Joan, sensing her ex-husband through the Krill, attacks him with her white gold. Covenant’s fingers are badly burned as he wields the weapon. Linden takes up the Staff of Law and the white gold wedding band and joins Covenant in the battle against Roger, badly wounding him and forcing him to flee. With the battle over, Covenant releases the Krill. His fingers are burned beyond use.

Meanwhile, She Who Must Not Be Named has arrived. She is a fiery demon without soul or remorse. She hates all living beings – especially those who have loved or been loved. She has her eyes set on the party when Covenant comes forth to challenge her. First, he tries to reason with the deity. Then, to divert her attention, he summons the soul of his deceased daughter, Elena who is compelled to join She Who Must Not Be Named because she has been spurned in life and in death by her father whom she wanted to take as her lover.

The Ardent transports the group out of the deep cavern to a location at Landsdrop. There, the Bloodguard Stave keeps the Croyel at bay by holding the Krill to its throat. They cannot kill it without killing Jeremiah, but Stave is able to keep it from harming the child and using Jeremiah and his power to harm the party.

Linden is stunned into a state of catatonia by the carnage and death around her and the hopelessness of her position. She can’t save the land and she can’t save her son. Covenant is able to release her from her mentally frozen state, but rejects her overtures of love.

The company is stuck at the bottom of Landsdrop. In an deus ex machina move, The Ardent, who died beneath the mountain with the Harrow, shows up with generous quantities of food and water for the company. Linden, desperate to save her son, tries combining the might of the Staff of Law and the White Gold to kill the Croyel. All she accomplishes is to attract Joan’s attention. Joan, sensing the white gold, sends caesures down upon the party.

The Stonedowner, Liand, decides to make the attempt using the Orcrest. He is overpowered and killed by Kastenessen who is channeled through Anele, who has ventured from the rock that shields him from Kastenessen and Lord Foul.

Roger regroups and attacks the company with an army of Cavewights. As the Giants and the Humbled Haruchai do battle with the Cavewights, Esmer arrives for one more betrayal of Linden. However, he is pursued by ur-viles who actually manage to capture him and place manacles that leave him powerless.

Meanwhile, Anele leaves the safety of stone one more time to take up the Orcrest, fallen from Liand’s hand, and uses it to kill the Croyel. Jeremiah is now free of the controlling succubus that was attached to his neck.

Linden lets loose with a torrent of power from the Staff of Law – which emits now only black energy – and slaughters dozens of cavewights. With the army disposed of and Roger once again fleeing from the scene, attention turns to Esmer – who has aided and betrayed Linden and her friends so many times. He begs her for the release of death. A blow from the Krill will do it. Linden wants to kill the half-Haruchai/half Merewife, but she can’t bring herself to coldblooded murder. Stave has no such compunctions and kills Esmer with one swift blow. He reveals the recently slain Humbled, Galt, was his son, estranged from him after Stave repudiated the Masters.

Covenant and two of the Humbled slip away from the party unnoticed. Covenant plans to find Joan and end her torment. They travel toward the eastern shore of the Land. There, they encounter a race known as the Feroce who serve the Lurker of Sarangrave who attacked Covenant and his giant friend eons before as they journeyed to Foul’s Creche. They speak on behalf of their master, saying the Lurker wants an alliance with Covenant because they have a common enemy in the Worm of World’s End. Covenant accepts the bargain.

Covenant and his Haruchai are attacked by Skest. The Feroce hold them off while Covenant and the Bloodguard enter a caesure where Thomas Covenant finally meets his ex-wife face to face. He tries to reason with her. Failing that, he tries to kill her but can’t because of the power she wields in her white gold. Recalling her love of horses, Covenant summons the princely Ranyhyn whose majesty captures Joan’s attention. With her focus diverted, Covenant drives home the Krill into Joan’s chest. She dies and the raver that possessed her flees. Thomas Covenant takes up his wife’s white gold.

Meanwhile, Linden and the company pursue Covenant. Linden, once again the mousy, self-pitying failure, eschews her leadership role in the party and allows the Ranyhyn to guide them to wherever they think she and her friends can be of the most service. They come upon a pit full of ancient bones from a long forgotten battle.

Once there, the still mindless Jeremiah begins another of his constructs, using the ancient craft of Marrowmeld to forge bones into shapes. He is building a cage. As he commences his construction, Infelice arrives and explains to Linden Jeremiah’s role in the end of the world. Lord Foul needs Jeremiah to construct a cage for the Creator. When the Arch of Time falls, the Creator will be trapped and Lord Foul will be free to rule the universe.

Infelice offers the protection of the Elohim for Jeremiah if he will cease his construction. Linden rejects the offer, wanting Jeremiah to accomplish what he’s set out to do. Linden carries with her the metal toy car her son left her. He tosses it to her and it becomes the final piece in the construct. With its completion, Infelice is trapped. Jeremiah, having accomplished his purpose, is free of the snare that has held his mind for more than a decade. He and Linden rush into each other’s arms.

The book ends with Thomas Covenant, the Ranyhyn, and the Bloodguard fleeing from the tsunami that precedes the arrival of the Worm of World’s End in the Land.

I loved this book and I hated this book! At times, reading it felt like a grudge match with the author who loaded it with so much contemplation, self pity and self loathing. At times, action would stop for more than 100 pages while actions and events were discussed, analyzed, and debated. It made for tortuous reading! There were times I wanted to give up. And it takes a lot for me to give up on a book -- especially one in a series I've been reading for 26 years!

However, Donaldson does point his story toward a conclusion. After more than 30 years since the publication of the first novel, we know Lord Foul’s ultimate goal. We know that the ultimate battles with the Worm of World’s End and with Lord Foul are coming. Jeremiah, having completed Lord Foul’s bidding is now free and we will certainly learn much from him in the final volume. Joan, at the periphery of the story since the second novel, is finally brought to closure.

All of this is good. What is bad is Donaldson reverting back to form with the endless contemplation and self-pity in Linden. She is supposed to be a hero. Sometimes heroes have self doubt. Sometimes heroes lapse into a state of self pity. A perfect hero is a poorly written hero. But to allow her to wallow in it for dozens and dozens of pages without interruption undermines her character. I really wanted one of the giants or Bloodguard to slap her across the face and tell her to quit being such a ninny!

Some of this can be laid at Donaldson’s feet. Much of it is bad editing. Writing this sort of prose is not bad. It can help the author develop a mindset for his character that allows him to develop his or her actions appropriately. A good editor would have recognized that the book was weighted down with too much contemplation and excised much of it. Donaldson was a victim of bad editing.

There's also several instances of deus ex machina. The aformentioned arrival of The Ardent's "spirit" with food for the company on the barren wastes of Land's Drop is just one instance. The most glaring is the insertion of the "Gift of Tongues." Apparently, when the giants of Seasearch arrived on the island abode of the Elohim, they somehow forgot to mention to Covenant that they had struck this ill-fated bargain with the Elohim that would allow them universal understanding of all languages. But with the entrapment of Infelice, they got it and they were able to communicate with the ur-viles.

Just one more book to go in the epic saga of Thomas Covenant! Unfortunately, those who have been reading the books since the publication of Lord Foul’s Bane in 1977 will have to wait until 2013 to find out how it all ends. That is when the final volume of the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenent quadrilogy, The Last Dark, is scheduled for publication.

Fatal Revenant by Stephen R. Donaldson

Fatal Revenant
The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant Book 2
By Stephen R. Donaldson
Copyright 2007

Stephen R. Donaldson misses not a beat in picking up his story where he left on in book one, Runes of the Earth. Linden and her party are in besieged Revelstone, trapped by a large contingent of Demondim wielding the power of the once lost Illearth Stone. Thomas Covenant and her son, Jeremiah, are riding to the doors of Revelstone.

Covenant and Jeremiah arrive at Revelstone and are allowed in. Linden, delighted at the arrival of her beloved and her son goes to embrace them. Covenant says she can’t touch them. Covenant has become part of the Arch of Time and he is bending time to allow him to be with her. In doing so, he has brought her son with him although his corporal being is still trapped with Lord Foul.

Linden climbs to the top of Revelstone to bathe in the waters of Glimmermere, hoping that its waters, rich with earth power will provide an anodyne for her dilemma over the siege of Revelstone and the return of Thomas Covenant who is not himself. Covenant has told her that he plans to use his place in the Arch of Time to travel back 10,000 years to partake of the Earthblood – waters that flow beneath Melenkurion Skywier, the highest peak in the Land. It was there, many millennia before, that High Lord Elena drank of those waters and acquired the power of command that sundered the law of death and nearly destroyed the Land.

While at Glimmermre, she is visited by Esmer, the enigmatic being who is the grandson of Kastenessen and the son of the Bloodguard Cail and the Merewife of the sea that bewitched him. Esmer tells her that Kastennesen, formerly one of the Elohim whose lives transcend the needs of the Land, has his own plans to destroy the Arch of Time. Esmer, who has both helped and betrayed Linden, tells her that she must be the first to drink of the Earthblood.

Linden returns to the gates of Revelstone where the Demondim are massing for an assault. They are channeling the Illearth Stone through a caesure – a storm that is a time anomaly – created by Covenant’s ex-wife, Joan – who is mindlessly wielding the power of her own White Gold wedding band. Using the Staff of Law she found in the Land’s past by using a similar caesure, she closes the caesure and cuts off the Demondim’s access to the evil artifact.

She meets with Covenant and Jeremiah and Covenant tells her that he plans to leave today to transport them to Melenkurion Skywier where he will gain the power of command to end Kastennesen and Lord Foul’s assault on the Arch of Time.

Linden notices some subtle changes in Thomas Covenant. While he was always gruff, self pitying, and generally negative, he was always compassionate and abhorred violence and killing. Now, he’s coarse, uncaring, and dispassionate about most things except gaining power. He has also hinted that he’d like to have his white gold wedding ring back. Linden demurs.

Linden joins Covenant and Jeremiah as they prepare to make the trip in time. Covenant whispers the words and they are transported not to Melenkurion Skywier, but to a snowy field, hundreds of leagues from Melenkurion Skywier. They were waylaid by one of the Insequent – a race of beings similar to the Elohim in that their lives transcend time and their powers exceed those of the Land. He is the Theomach and makes no apologies for having altered their plans. They will journey to Melenkurion Skywier on foot, he tells them as he joins the party – much to Covenant’s chagrin.

They start across the Land as it was 10,000 years ago. The party happen upon a camp of warriors commanded by none other than Berek Heartthrew – also known as Berek Halfhand – Lord Father of the Land and founder of the Council of Lords. Berek and his men are engaged in a great battle with the forces of the King who would rule the Land as an autocrat.

Linden senses pain and suffering all around her as tents are filled with the wounded and dying. Her first instinct is to heal, but Theomarch warns her to do so judiciously so that she does not alter the course of history. Using her medical training as well as earthpower, Linden aides and heals many of Berek’s wounded soldiers, earning his trust. The Theomach reveals to Berek and to Linden the knowledge of the seven words of power. Theomach tells Linden he will remain with Berek, perhaps to assure that history goes as it should. He sends Linden on with Covenant and Jeremiah, who carries with him a relic of his former life, a small metal race car.

Covenant and Jeremiah attempt the bending of time again to teleport to Melenkurion Skywier, leaving Linden alone. She encounters the ancient race known as the Viles. These Viles will be corrupted by Lord Foul to become Demondim and will eventually creating the self loathing race known as ur-viles who will bedevil the Lords and Thomas Covenant in the first trilogy with their powerful lore and merciless attacks. She tries to forewarn them of their corruption, but before she can do so, Covenant and Jeremiah arrives. Their arrival draws the Forestal, Caer Wildwood who hates all walking beings who he deems responsible for the massacre of trees since the dawn of time. The Forestal proceeds to slaughter the Viles. Linden, Covenant, and Jeremiah escape and head for Melenkurion Skywier.

The party finally arrives in the large cavern beneath the high peak. Remembering Esmer’s words to her, Linden drinks deeply of the Blood of the Earth and gains the power of command. Suspecting that Covenant is not who he claims he is, she commands that the truth of her companions be revealed to her. Covenant is instantly revealed to be Roger Covenant, Thomas Covenant’s son who so desperately wants to get his hands on his mother’s white gold wedding band to aid Lord Foul. She also sees the truth of her son. He bears a bullet wound he received when Roger Covenant shot it out with the sheriff and his deputies back in their world. Linden now knows that her son has probably sustained a fatal bullet wound, just as she and Roger did in that shootout.

Roger and Linden battle it out with the power at their disposal and the cavern is rent. Roger and Jeremiah flee and Linden is transported out of the cavern via the Black River, depositing her alone in the forest known as Garroting Deep, alone and 10,000 years displaced from her own time.

She begins to wander in despair. She sees a campfire off in the distance and makes for it. There, she finds the maid from Revelstone, the woman who calls herself the Mahdoubt. The Mahdoubt reveals that she, too, is one of the Insequent. She tells Linden that the Insequent are a race of advanced, highly independent beings who guard their names and their purposes closely. Linden wins her loyalty by removing a small piece of flannel and sewing it into the Mahdoubt’s piecemeal cloak. In turn, the Mahdoubt speaks on Linden’s behalf to the Forestal who inscribes the Staff of Law with runes to add to its power. She then returns Linden to her proper time and place.

Upon her return to Revelstone, she learns that the Demondim have been waylaid by a single man who now camps outside the gates of Revelstone. The Haruchai who guard Revelstone have not approached him. Linden sets out to find out who this powerful being is.

She confronts him and he reveals that he is also of the Insequent. He bears the title, The Harrow. He wants Linden’s staff and White Gold and attempts to take it from her. The Mahdoubt arrives to confront Linden’s foe and forces him into a promise to make no more attempts to take what is not his. He agrees, but tells Linden that she will soon give up those things to him because he can take her to her son.

Having seen her son and knowing his peril, Linden’s single purpose is to get to him. To do so, she decides, she needs more power. She informs her companions that she intends to go to Andelain where Thomas Covenant received guidance from his dead friends after the law of death was broken and where her friend Hollian was resurrected when the Forestal, Caer Caveral died so that she might live. There, she hopes to find the Krill, the sword that allowed Thomas Covenant to channel his power over the White Gold.

Linden sets off with her friends. She is accompanied by the Stonedowner, Liand, who befriended her when she was imprisoned in Mithil Stonedown upon her arrival in the Land; Stave, the former Master and Haruchai who renounced the Masters to stand with Linden in her quest; The Maithrall of the Ramen and two of her kin who tend the great horses of the Land known as Rhanyhyn; three of the Haruchai who bear the title, The Humbled for having half of their right hands removed to resemble Thomas Covenant; and Anele, the deranged son of Hollian and Sunder, the two stonedowners to whom the new staff of law and future of the land was entrusted at the end of the second trilogy.

The party enters a deep forest known as Salva Gildenbourne which surrounds Andelain. The forest is dense and not easily traversed. As they travel, they are attacked by a Skurj, a serpent like creature created by Kastenessen to inflict harm upon the inhabitants of the land. The battle is going against them when a giant arrives. Linden remembers with fondness the giants who aided her and Covenant in their quest for the One Tree. However, this giant attacks her.

Linden is sure it is all over for her and her party, beset by a powerful magical creature in the Skurj and a crazed giant. Just as it seems all hope is lost, a large party of female giants arrives on the scene. They dispatch the Skurj and imprison the rogue giant.

The giants tell Linden the sad tale of Longwrath, the grandson of the First of the Search who aided Thomas Covenant and Linden eons before. He went insane shortly after reaching adulthood, always scheming to leave home and search out a mysterious “her,” constantly exclaiming, “Kill her! Are you insane?” Their purpose was to discover the source of Longwrath’s madness which they now know is focused on Linden Avery. They agree to join the quest, hoping to learn more about Longwrath’s ailment.

As the party nears Andelain, they are attacked again. This time at least a dozen of the powerful Skurj are pursuing them. With the giants and the Haruchai doing battle with the Skurj, Linden and her companions make it to Andelain where the Skurj cannot follow.

Upon their arrival in Andelain, the party encounters the benevolent Wraiths – creatures of pure energy that resemble floating balls of flame. They guide her to the resting place of the Krill. When Linden arrives, the Harrow of the Insequent and Infelice of the Elohim – she who drove Thomas Covenant deep into his own mind to keep him from using his White Gold during the quest for the One Tree – arrive to try to convince Linden that her desire will be her ruin and the ruin of the land.

Linden beseeches her dead and the breaker of the law of death, the former high lord Elena – daughter of Thomas Covenant; the breaker of the law of life, Caer Caveral; and Thomas Covenant whose power over the White Gold. None will offer her counsel. The Harrow offers to take her to her son if she will give up the White Gold and staff of law. The Humbled try to overpower her. Linden’s purpose is singular and not to be thwarted.

She grasps the Krill. She now has the power to wield the staff of law and the white gold which destroys law. Using this new power, she summons Thomas Covenant to her aid. When he arrives, the Elohim, terrified, tells her that by this act, she has awakened the Worm of World’s End – the most powerful creature in the world, capable of destroying the Arch of Time and the universe with it.

There ends the second installment of the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

This was by far the longest of any of Donaldson’s books – 590 pages of tiny font. While it was long, it was compelling and move the story forward.

Linden Avery has been transformed as a character. She is no longer the self doubting, mousy follower of others who can seldom make up her own mind. With the singular desire to save her adopted son from the clutches of Lord Foul, she is now purposeful, active, and decisive.

This transformation, which Donaldson carries out quickly, but plausibly, makes the story much more compelling. In previous reviews of Donaldson’s work, I have complained about the contemplative nature of his characters who, between bouts of self loathing and deprecation, analyze and second guess every move for page after page. That is not the case in Fatal Revenant. Linden Avery sets her sight on a goal, overcomes obstacles, and achieves them which makes for much more interesting reading.

Donaldson has also introduced some ambiguity to this story which was not present in the first two trilogies where the enemies, the friends, the goals, and the potential consequences were known to the reader from the outset. Lord Foul is the constant and Linden’s primary concern because he has her son.

We know Roger Covenant is evil and serves Lord Foul’s purpose. But we don’t know to what end.

Kastenessen attacks the world out of spite with no clear target or reason. We don’t know his ends.

Somewhere, out there, Joan Covenant, in her madness wields power almost equal to that of Linden Avery. She is a wild card because she acts without ends or purpose. But her deeds always spell trouble for Linden and her friends.

The character, Anele was mostly a spectator in this book. But with his knowledge of the Land’s history after the fall of the Sunbane and his close connection to Thomas Covenant, Lord Foul, and the staff of law, the reader knows that he is going to emerge as a major player in the story to come.

The Worm of World’s End has been unleashed. We got a taste of its power at the end of The One Tree. It can devour the earth and time itself. We do not know enough, nor does Linden Avery, to know how it may be countered.

Of all the books dedicated to telling the story of the White Gold, this is Donaldson’s most exciting and compelling. Characters acted. The story moved. New elements were introduced. Mysteries remained unsolved. I look forward to taking in the next book!

The Runes of the Earth

The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever: Book One:
The Runes of the Earth
by Stephen R. Donaldson
Copyright 2004

Almost 20 years after he left us with Linden Avery weeping over the dead body of Thomas Covenat, Stephen R. Donaldson prepares us for one final excursion to The Land where Linden Avery will have to once again face her old foe, Lord Foul as Foul prepares to attack the Arch of Time and unleash himself into the universe, free to wreak havoc among the cosmos.

Linden has moved on with her life. She now operates a mental clinic she established. Among her patients is Joan Covenant, ex-wife of the late Thomas Covenant. Since his death, she has lived in a state of mental isolation, unreachable by any stimuli. The only thing that keeps her from engaging in maiming herself is the white gold wedding band she wears on a chain.

She has also adopted a son. The boy, Jeremiah that was one of the misfortunate children in the cult that kidnapped Thomas Covenant is now her ward. In the insanity of those final moments of Covenant’s life, the young boy thrust his hands into the fire. Linden was forced to amputate two of his fingers.

Jerimiah is as unreachable as Joan Covenant. He responds to no voice or command. His only interaction with the world is in his intricate constructs of Tinker Toys, KNex, and Legos. Now entering adolescence, Jeremiah spends his days building things.

Joan is shocked one evening when Roger Covenant – Thomas and Joan’s son – walks into Linden’s clinic to claim his mother. He has reached the age of 21. He’s ready to inherit his estate and take over the responsibility of seeing to his mother’s care. Linden tries to convince him of the folly of trying to take care of a woman in Joan’s condition outside of a medical facility. Roger is not to be dissuaded.

Joan arrives at home to care for Jeremiah. As she tries to relax, she receives a call, informing her that Roger Covenant has kidnapped his mother and killed hospital personnel in his escape. Linden goes to the hospital to deal with the chaos ensuing there. While she is there, Roger goes to her home, badly beats the babysitter, and kidnaps Jeremiah.

Linden and the police pursue Roger and his hostages into the woods to the area where Thomas Covenant died in order that Joan may live. Roger opens fire on police. Joan is struck by lightning just as police return fire. Roger is hit by their bullets. Linden, trying to save Jeremiah, takes a bullet to the chest. Roger, Joan, Jeremiah, and Linden disappear from the world.

Linden materializes in The Land, high atop Kevin’s Watch. She knows that thousands of hears have passed in The Land since she left ten years ago by her reckoning. She studies The Land, no longer under the sway of the Sunbane. But Linden can’t gauge the truth health of The Land because her healthsense – her ability to see the health and vitality of all living things in The Land – is blocked.

As she assesses her situation, she is set upon by a withered old man calling himself Anele. He is fleeing in terror from his pursuers he calls The Masters. As Linden tries to gain some knowledge from the paranoid and panicky man, a storm hits Kevin’s Watch. Anele and Linden flee down the steps from the watch and stand witness as a defining edifice of The Land comes crashing down in the storm.

They are then captured by the Masters Anele fears so much. Linden is horrified to see that they are actually Haruchai – the race of the Bloodguard who offered their fealty in defense of the lords and The Land. They are taken to Mithil Stonedown, the village that Thomas Covenant visited upon his arrival in The Land a millennia before. There, they are held prisoner.

Eventually, a Haruchai named Stave comes to talk to Linden. He recognizes her from the lore passed down from the Haruchai her journeyed with her. Linden’s only concern is the recovery of her son. She has no idea where he is or what Lord Foul’s plans for him. Stave tells her that they have captured Anele because he is strong with earthpower and the use of that lore is forbidden. Earthpower, Stave tells Linden, has always been the source of ill in the land. As the self proclaimed Masters of The Land, the Haruchai have forbidden its use. All of the lore of The Land has been withheld from the generations that followed Sunder and Hollian, the two Stonedowners who were left with the Staff of Law to banish the Sunbane and restore the earth to health.

Linden is later visited by a young stonedowner named Liand. Linden tells Liand of how The Land used to be and how people used its lore to improve their own lives and maintain the vitality of The Land.

When a storm hits the village, Linden seizes her chance to escape. She takes with her Anele, to whom she has promised to care for. They flee south into the mountains. As they battle the storm, Anele stops and turns to her. He speaks to her in the voice of Lord Foul. He tells her that she is his tool and he wants to help her achieve his ends. He guides her to hurtloom – the sand that contains healing power – so that she might restore herself. Foul has Jeremiah with him. He tells her that the Haruchai unwittingly serve his ends. Anele serves his ends, and she will serve his ends. Plans have been put into motion to shatter the Arch of Time.

As Linden starts to flee again, the young stonedowner, Liand, catches up with her and offers to join her. He wants to learn more about earthpower. As they seek shelter from the unnatural storm that is attacking them, they are discovered by Stave. Stave tells them that he is there to capture Anele and bring him back, but there is a pack of Kresh – giant wolves – on his heels. He tells them to prepare to fight.

The odds seem overwhelming with dozens of wolves the size of horses descending upon them. From behind them come a group of wiry, agile people armed with garrotes. With their help, Stave is able to drive off the Kresh.

Those that have come to Linden’s aid are the Ramen – caretakers of the great horses of The Land known as Ranyhyn. They take Linden and the others to the Verge of Wandering – a valley in the southern mountains they visit infrequently to check on the status of The Land. It has been many thousands of years since the Ranyhyn and the Ramen vacated the Plains of Ra and fled The Land since the coming of the Sunbane.

Anele is entranced with the stone in the valley and is able to use it to tell Linden how he lost his birthright. Anele is the son of Sunder and Hollian. When Hollian’s life was restored by the Forrestal, her unborn baby was imbued with unsurpassed earthpower that has sustained his life all these years. His birthright was the Staff of Law which was fashioned by Covenant to replace the old staff with which the old lords wielded earthpower. But one day, after venturing out of his cave for food, he returned to find the staff gone. He has spent the ensuing millennia searching for it, insane with grief.

While staying in the Verge, Linden learns that the Ramen have formed an alliance with ur-viles, the demondim spawn created by Lord Foul. These self-loathing creatures have always been enemies of The Land. Unable to communicate with them, she is unsure of their motives.

She also meets a creature called Esmer with whom the Ramen have formed an alliance. Esmer says he is the offspring of the Haruchai Cail who was overcome by the Dancers of the Sea as Covenant and Linden sailed across the ocean to find the One Tree from which they’d hoped to fashion a new Staff of Law. Esmer immediately challenges Stave to fight for having dishonored his father in casting him out after his moment of weakness. Esmer beats Stave badly, but does not kill him.

Linden tells everyone her only mission is to save her son held captive by Lord Foul. The Ranyhyn offer their aid and ask her to join them in a horse rite where they will reveal their knowledge to her.

The Ranyhyn take Linden and Stave to a small pond. The horses been galloping around the pond and Linden drinks of its water. She learns that the storms, called caesures, are caused by the insane Joan Covenant unleashing gouts of power from her white gold wedding band. They are disturbances in time; attacks upon the Arch of Time itself.

After the horse rite, Linden decides she is going to utilize the storms, or caesures as they’re called – to travel back in time and retrieve the staff of law before Anele lost it. As she is retrieving the staff with the help of the ur-viles, Esmer betrays her and summons Demondim – the father race of the ur-viles -- to oppose her. Tapping into the White Gold she still wears on a chain around her neck, she creates a new caesure. The whole party – including the Demondim and the evil Illearth Stone that Linden thought – are transported forward to current time. The time is right, but the party lands far away from the southern mountains from whence they started. They find themselves near the foot of Revelstone – past home to past Lords and current home to the Masters.

The Haruchai are able to get the party safely into Revelstone and engage the Demondim. Linden,Stave, Liand, and a few of the Ramen are welcomed to Revelstone and provided quarters where they are cared for by a doughty old woman named Mahdoubt who seems to have no past and no future but caring for those who stay at Revelstone. They are watched over by a Bloodguard who has had two of his fingers removed. The humbled are mutilated to resemble Thomas Covenant to remind them of the failure of the Bloodguard in handling the Illearth Stone centuries before.

After settling into Revelstone, Linden appeals to the leader of the Masters, Handir, for assistance in her search for her son. Handir is deaf to her appeals on behalf of her son and on behalf of the Land which is in dire danger from Lord Foul.

The party then receives word that two riders are approaching the keep. Linden and the rest climb to the battlements, she is startled to see her son Jeremiah riding with Thomas Covenant, seemingly back from the dead.

There, volume one of the final chronicles ends.

As a stand alone book, this one does not stand well. One has to remember it is an installment in a much larger story and Donaldson’s volume one is but a table setter for the story to come. There is scant story in this first volume. Much of it is dedicated to developing new characters and to putting players where they need to be to get the story rolling. The character development without plot developments makes for slow, sometimes tedious reading.

In the 20 years in between visits to his Land, Donaldon’s writing style has not changed much – and neither have his characters. The narrative gets heavily bogged down in debate, self doubt, and self recrimination. Linden is the same self-pitying, self doubting person she always was. She has discovered profanity in the last ten years.

However, without Thomas Covenant with her to guide her and provide her historical knowledge, she is on her own in the Land and is forced to lead and to convince others to follow her as she pursues her one and only motive: to save her son.

Donaldson has set up what promises to be an interesting tale. Roger Covenant is introduced. Although he is referenced frequently in the first two trilogies, the reader never meets him. It would appear that he is going to be our new villain.

Joan is back and her ability to so deeply affect the land promises that she will be developed further. It was for her that Thomas Covenant, hero of our first two trilogies, sacrificed his own life. Her role is not yet defined. But as an insane person wielding unlimited power, she promises to be a disruptive force.

And we have Thomas Covenant back from the dead. We’ll find out if Donaldson can provide the reader with a sound explanation for Covenant’s return or if he’ll make us groan with disgust at something ill conjured and poorly though out. It will be interesting to see how Covenant weighs the needs of Linden and her son against his own if the conflict comes to that.

Donaldson fans know that if you stick with his stories which can sometimes become tedious and if you can stomach his sometimes pitiful heroes, that he is going to tell you a great story. The first two installments were trilogies. This final chronicle will be four books. He took one entire book to set the stage. It looks promising with the return of Thomas Covenant. One can only hope that Donaldson races forward with an exciting and compelling story.

White Gold Wielder by Stephen R. Donaldson

The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenent, Book Three:
White Gold Wielder
By Stephen R. Donaldson
Copyright 1983

White Gold Wielder picks up where The One Tree left off with the Giants of Seasearch, Thomas Covenant, and Linden Avery leaving the sunken island of the One Tree with no direction, no purpose, and no goal.

With them as well are Findail, the Elohim, and Vain, the enigmatic ur-vile who says and does nothing. Vain is altered by the encounter at the One Tree. Earlier, he had placed on a wrist and ankle the metal ornaments of the staff of law. Now, that arm has become wood with bark and all.

The company decides to head back to the Land because Covenant has decided that if he does anything else, it will be to extinguish the Banefire burning at Revelstone.
The giant ship, Drummond heads west, but is blown off course by strong winds out of the south and is driven into a field of ice, many miles north of their course. The giant in charge, the First, decides that they will not free their ship of the ice field in time to reach the land, so she leads a small company of giants and Haruchai to assist Covenant and Linden ashore.

The company crosses the ice field and is soon back in the Land. They meet up with Sunder and Hollian, the stonedowner couple Covenant left behind to spread the gospel of the White Gold and to try to rally the people of the Land against the Sunbane. Sunder reports that they were met in this quest with indifference some places and outright hostility in others.

He also reports that the na-Mhoram have stepped up their kidnappings to feed and strengthen the Sunbane. Most stonedowns and villages are made up now of the very old and the very young, with the healthy and vital taken for their blood.

Joined by Sunder and Hollian, the company heads east toward Revelstone. They arrive to find the place silent. They enter and Covenant, now barely able to control the white gold due to the raver’s venom pulsing in his vains, elects to use another means to bring down the sunbane. He summons the Sandgorgon, Nom, who killed his bloodguard on the island of Bhraithar and then proceeded to single handedly wreck the keep there. It must answer the summons of the person who says its name and kill them. However, wielding the white gold, Covenant is able to control and subdue the sand gorgon and make it do his bidding.

Covenant, Linden, and the giant, Grimmand Honninscrave, enter Revelstone to find the Raver Gibbon who leads the na-Mhoram. The rest of the company is left at the entrance to fight off the attack from behind. The raver, now desperate, has summoned his warriors as well as lowly peasants to strike blows at the giants who guard the rear.

Once inside, the group finds Gibbon in his chamber, wielding his Rukh with which he controls the power of the Sunbane. Gibbon captures Honninscrave by sealing his arms and legs in stone. He prepares to bring his might against Linden and Covenant so he may take the White Gold and supplant Lord Foul as the master of the universe. But before he can, Nom enters and knocks from Gibbon’s hand, his Rukh. This releases Grimmand Honninscrave who attacks Gibbon and kills him.

With the death of Gibbon, the soul of the raver is free. It enters Honninscrave. Honninscrave struggles for mastery of his own body as he duels the raver inside. He begs for Covenant to kill him while he holds the raver at bay. Nom kills Honninscrave as he holds the raver, thus slaying both. Now, no one leads the Clave, the keepers of the Sunbane.

Covenant is distraught and depressed after yet another friend has made the supreme sacrifice on his behalf. Crazed with grief, he steps into the Banefire and unleashes the magic of the white gold upon himself, enduring his own rite of Camora – the rite of immersion in fire used by the giants to cleanse their souls of hurt and suffering. Linden watches with horror as Covenant endures the pain. However, he steps from the Banefire a changed man. He is now at peace with himself and his power for the first time.

They travel to the top of Revelstone where they meet The First and her husband, Pitchwife who are there with Nom. Nom has used his immense strength to channel through the stone and plan to sluice the waters of Glimmermere Lake into the keep and to extinguish the Banefire. Nom lets the water flow and the Banefire is ended.

The end of the Banefire does not mean the end of the Sunbane for it is now deeply woven into the fabric of the Land. Covenant lays the foundation of what he hopes will be a new regime of peaceful people who will once again someday be able to see a healthy Land and make use of its innate power. He instructs his remaining Bloodguard to remain at Revelstone, keep it, and make it ready for a new generation of lords who will oversee the Land’s restoration.

Hollian and Sunder join Covenant, Linden, the two giants, Findail and Vain as they depart Revelstone and head for Lord Foul’s lair in Mount Thunder. Along the way, they are attacked by ur-viles, and the pregnant Hollian is slain. Sunder is bereft of speech with grief. He recovers Hollian’s body and takes it with him, acting if she was still alive.

The company arrives at Andelain where Covenant spoke with his dead and received the gift of Vain. There, the company meets the old forestal, Caer Caveral. Caveral is now old and tired from keeping the Sunbane from sundering Andelain – the only place in the Land that is still pure. He asks that he be killed to save the Land. Sunder obliges him with a knife to the back and Hollian’s life is restored. As High Lord Elena destroyed the Law of Death centuries before in The Illearth War, Caer Caveral has destroyed the Law of Life, restoring life through death.

Sunder and Hollian stay behind in Andelain which is no longer protected by the forestal and is slowly being warped by the Sunbane. Covenant and the rest of the party head for Mount Thunder.

Along the way, Linden becomes uneasy with the new Thomas Covenant who is so at ease with himself and his choices. She fears that he has surrendered and will surrender the white gold to Lord Foul. She resolves that she will take whatever means are necessary to prevent that from happening.

The company arrives at Mount Thunder and enters. They are attacked by Cavewights who want to use Covenant’s ring to resurrect Drool Rockworm, the cavewight who found the staff of law and was tricked into summoning Thomas Covenant to the Land for the first time. The Giants stay to hold off the cavewights while Covenant and Linden venture forward to meet Lord Foul.

Lord Foul is waiting for them. Immediately upon arrival, Linden’s body is seized by a raver and she is left as a powerless spectator as Covenant does what she’d feared. He gives the white gold ring to Lord Foul. Foul grasps the wring and immediately kills Covenant. He then begins unleashing gouts of power at the Arch of Time itself – the device which keeps him chained to the land. With the fall of the Arch, Foul will be unleashed into the cosmos to dominate the universe.

However, something blocks Foul’s attack. It is the spirit of Thomas Covenant, now unbound by both the laws of life and death, to meet Foul head on. Foul eventually uses up all of his power and is forced into submission and retreats from the Land.

Linden is able to break free of the grasp of the Raver and seizes the white gold wedding band. She sees Findail desperately trying to kill Vain and she understands their conflicting, yet synergistic purpose. The fluid earthpower of Findail of the race of the unhomed and the stoic rigidity of the ur-vile Vain, are complementary. Linden uses the white gold to bond the two and they slowly lose their earthly forms and are reshaped into a new staff of law.

With Covenant gone, Linden begins to fade from the Land. Before she leaves, she takes the staff of law and the white gold and combines the power of law and chaos to destroy the Sunbane. Before she leaves, she places the new staff of law into the hands of the giants.

While in an ethereal state between the Land and her own world, the spirit of Thomas Covenant speaks to her. He tells her that he could not use the white gold to attack and kill Foul for the battle would have destroyed the Arch of Time, allowing Foul his victory. He simply needed Foul to wield the power against himself, for as Covenant was told so many times by those repeating prophecy, he is the white gold. He leaves her with the promise of undying love.

Linden awakens in the glade where she witnessed Covenant being stabbed by the maniacal preacher. His body is dead and prostrate upon the stone, a knife protruding from his chest. Her friend and mentor, Dr. Berenford is there with the police. People have been hurt and as doctors, their place is among the wounded. The police are left to tend to the dead.

So ends the third and final volume of Stephen Donaldson’s Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

The second trilogy really pales in comparison to the first. It opens with promise as we see the Land, which Donaldson imbued with so much beauty and spirit in his first trilogy, warped and ruined. The first book was about action, reaction, and learning. Plots and subplots were put into motion and promised an epic battle for the heart and soul of the living Land.

However, Donaldson wallowed in lugubrious reflection, second guessing, and overwrought emotion. Thomas Covenant was an anti-hero. We were supposed to root for him, but not like him. After all, his first act in the Land was to rape a 16 year old girl. He finds redemption in the first trilogy.

But he’s not very likeable in the second trilogy because he’s a whiny, petulant, mouse of a man. Every little setback turns into page after page of morose introspection. Covenant is cleansed of this narcissistic brooding by his immersion in the Banefire. But by then, it is too late for the reader because the remainder of the book is written from Linden’s point of view.

Linden isn’t very likeable either. She’s no anti-hero, although Donaldson makes a half-hearted effort at making her one. We learn that Linden killed her mother by suffocating her as she lie dying in a hospital bed. This would be a tragic and painful ordeal for a real person and would certainly fill them with guilt. But it lacks the despicable nature that creates an anti-hero. The seminal and defining event in Linden's life that makes her so unsure of her emotions is seldom referenced and does not serve as a defining characteristic. It seems tacked on.

Linden is also almost always sulking about something. Much of the second trilogy, especially the second book, is page after page of Linden brooding about something Covenant said or did. Reading the interaction between them was like hanging out with a couple who look for the smallest reasons to fight with each other and ruin your evening. You don’t want to hang out with them anymore and there were times that I wanted to put these books down and quit spending time with Mr. Doom and Mrs. Gloom, aka Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery.

The second book was pointless. Through 500 pages, little new information was revealed. The plot advanced little. The point of the book turned out to be false. It was as if Donaldson was cranking out words and storylines while searching for the resolution of his story – a resolution he did not find before completing the second book.

The third book brings some redemption to the story. We rejoin the main plot. As he head toward Revelstone with the goal of bringing down the Clave and ending the Sunbane, Thomas Covenant once again becomes a man of action. With purpose defined, he becomes a less brooding figure and a more heroic one.

The story’s climax is fitting and almost makes it worth enduring the second book. The climax is brilliant because it is rather anti-climatic, but revealing. At the beginning of the book, Foul tells Covenant that he will willingly hand over the white gold. The reader dismisses this as boastful bloviating. The anti-climax is developed as Covenant does just that. There is no epic battle, just simple surrender and self sacrifice. Foul is not destroyed. We find that Foul and his existence are as essential to the existence of the Land as is the staff of law.

The end of the second trilogy sets up another sequel which Donaldson would undertake almost 30 years later. Three books have been published in the Final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. I have read the first two, and they show promise for an exciting conclusion to this epic story.

Reading this trilogy was frequently a struggle, but worth it for no other reason than it sets up the third Chronicles. No matter how badly Donaldson’s plots sometimes falter, he remains a brilliant wordsmith. His expansive vocabulary, his strong character development (when they are not overwrought with self pity), and his descriptive narrative make him one of the most enjoyable writers I’ve ever read.

The One Tree by Stephen R. Donaldson

The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Book 2
The One Tree
By Stephen R. Donaldson
Copyright 1982

The One Tree picks up at the end of The Wounded Land. Covenant has just delivered the tormented souls of the Giants of Seasearch their long sought peace by sending them to their final rite of Camora – the Giant rite of cleansing pain and grief by fire. In exchange for Covenant helping end the torment of their lost brethren , the Giants of Seasearch agree to take Covenant to find the One Tree from which the Staff of Law was hewn.

Without any real idea of where they are headed, The party sets sale aboard the Starfare Gem – the giant warship made of stone. After a few days out to sea, Linden becomes uneasy. She senses a raver is aboard the ship. The Giants conduct a search of their massive ship, but find no stowaways. Just as they complete their search, the ship is attacked by a swarm of rats containing the spirit of the raver.

Covenant is bitten which reactivates his venom. His power grows and he begins to let loose with blasts of white magic from his ring. Fearing for the safety of his friends and their quest, Covenant mentally seals himself off from the rest of the world, lapsing into a catatonic state.

Linden, ever fearful of intimacy and human contact, is forced to enter Covenant’s mind and possess him so that she can force him to come back. Covenant is restored, but more nervous and paranoid than ever about his growing power.

The Giants lead the ship to an island inhabited by a race known to Giants. The First of the Search informs Linden and Covenant that the inhabitants of this island are temperamental barterers with whom they need to tread lightly. Covenant and his Giant host come ashore along with several Bloodguard. There, they are greeted by the Elohim – a race of people who are not quite corporal, who emerge and disappear from the earth and air. From them, they hope to learn the whereabouts of the One Tree.

The Elohim are delighted to greet Linden Avery, whom they hale as the Sunbane and savior of the land. However, they are exceptionally displeased to find out that Covenant possesses the ring. Linden perceives that the Elohim are not a people but an entity composed almost entirely of earthpower. This the Elohim acknowledge. They also claim that they are forbidden in aiding the quest in any way.

Covenant pleads and then demands that they reveal the location of the One Tree. The knowledge was stored in Covenant’s mind by the Forrestal when Covenant visited with his dead friends in the plains of Andelain. The Elohim meet Covenant’s demand. They reveal to the Giants the location of the One Tree. However, in the process, Covenant is once again rendered semi-comatose. When the ritual is done, he will not communicate or respond. He simply mutters, “Don’t touch me,” to any statement.

The Starfare Gem once again sets sail with the party aboard. Days pass and Covenant’s silence persists. Linden fusses and worries about how she can release whatever spell the Elohim have cast upon him. Meanwhile, the one Giant aboard the ship who shares Linden’s earth sense inexplicably starts attacking a ship’s mast. The giant forces from the stone the leader of the Elohim, Findail, who stowed away aboard their ship. Findail refuses to reveal his purpose aboard their ship and refuses any aid. He, like the ur-vile Vain, takes a place on the foredeck of the ship and remains still.

The next day, the ship is hit by a giant storm. It is severely damaged by the storm, having lost its center mast and taking on water. The crew is forced to put in at an island called Bhraithar. Bhraither is a militaristic society ruled by a leader known as gaddhi, Rant Obsolane who it is said dominated the powerful and evil Sandgorgons – an indigenous creature thought to be indestructible – that had bedeviled the inhabitants of the city for generations.

Once again, Linden is joined by the First of the Search, along with several other Giants and Bloodguard. They also bring Covenant along. They are first greeted Kaseryn – the Gaddhi’s major domo who is solicitous and cordial. Kaseryn assures the Giants that they may use whatever stone is necessary to fashion a new mast and that their supplies will be restored.

They are then taken to meet the Gaddhi who turns out to be a small, petty, seemingly powerless man. IT occurs to Linden that Kaseryn is the power behind the throne.

Kaseryn’s true goal is to possess Covenant’s ring. One night, he kidnaps Covenant from his room and attempts to release the spell holding his mind hostage. Unable to free Covenant and compel him to give up his ring, he decides to turn his attention to Linden.

Kaseryn takes the party hostage with his guards and leads them to the city wall, accompanied by the Gaddhi. Once there, the Gaddhi – petulantly angry with the party over the slaying of one of his guards – tosses a piece of his jewelry over the wall and demands that the Bloodguard Cail retrieve it. A rope is lowered and Cail descends. There he is attacked and slain by a Sandgorgon. The rest of the party is taken prisoner and Kaseryn promises more death if Linden will not free Covenant’s mind so he can give up his ring. Linden enters Covenant’s mind, but she tricks Kaseryn by instructing Covenant to say the Sandgorgon’s name, thus summoning it. She removes the spell placed on Covenant and places it on herself to free him. He says the Sandgorgon’s name, summoning the creature who immediately begins to attack and destroy the city’s walls.

Kaseryn seizes Covenant and takes him to his laboratory to take the ring. Before he can, however, the Bloodguard Brinn kills him and saves Covenant.

The party retreats from the city as the Sandgorgon destroys it. They get to the Starfare Gem to find most of the repairs completed and provisions replaced. They flee Bhraithar headed toward the one tree.

Covenant and Linden fall in love.

They sail for days and eventually reach the island that is home to the One Tree. The party takes a boat ashore, accompanied by Vain who takes it upon himself to enter the boat, and Findail. Once there, Brinn tells them that their people believe that one of their own is the guardian of the One Tree and a Bloodguard must best him in battle for access to the tree to be possible. To master the guardian, Brinn tells them, is to learn the meaning and the purpose of their rigid and joyless existence in servitude.

Brinn ascends the cliff and fights the guardian, besting him. Brinn returns to the party and tells them that he has taken the place of the guardian for all time and directs the party to follow him to the One Tree.

The party arrives in a deep cavern inhabited by a solitary, giant tree. Linden can sense the overwhelming earthpower in seeping through the bows and the trunk. As Covenant begins to search for a bow that is straight and true to serve as the new staff, the Giant Cable Seadreamer, gifted with earthsight and cursed with speechlessness, tries to get Covenant to stop what he is doing. Finally, in frustration, he rushes at the tree, summoning its true guardian.

The Worm of World’s End, Findail tells them, is the guardian of the One Tree. Covenant’s white magic springs to life and is more powerful than ever. He prepares to slay the worm to gain the tree. Findail tells Linden that events have transpired to the designs of Lord Foul. Lord Foul wanted Covenant to gain the One Tree to fight the worm. To best the worm, Covenant, now brimming with uncontrollable white magic, will unleash enough power to destroy the Arch of Time and release Lord Foul from The Land and allow him to do his will across the cosmos.

Meanwhile, a change has come over Vain. He is struck by one of the balls of energy unleashed by the arrival of the worm. His arm, bearing one of the bands of the original Staff of Law, turns into wood.

With Covenant ready to burst with power, Linden is able to talk Covenant down. Recalling the cryptic words the ghost of his old friend, High Lord Mhoram, “that which you seek is not what you need,” he releases the power.

The island begins to shake and collapse around them. The party flees with Brinn’s help. They return to Starefare Gem in time to watch the island collapse. The quest for the One Tree and a new Staff of Law has failed.

Thus, the book ends inconclusively with the party having achieved nothing. This is my primary frustration with this book and the reason it is the only book in the entire series I did not like at all.

The pace of the book is ponderously slow with page after page of lugubrious introspection on Linden’s part. This book does develop her character a great deal. But she is revealed as a pitiful, mousy person full of self loathing. Perhaps Donaldson was trying to make her more pitiful than Covenant. But at least Covenant was defiantly pitiful and self loathing.

The two diversions both feel like they were tacked on to pad the story. Findail does become essential to the story later. But he joins the party early in this book and is set on the foredeck of the ship, out of the reader’s way and out of his mind. That seems like cheating a little. The trip to Bhraithar is a pointless diversion that adds nothing to the central story.

Donaldson spends almost 500 pages in taking the reader on a doomed quest that accomplishes little and reveals nothing. I understand the concept of a trilogy and how each book is but one segment of a story. But each segment must advance the central plot. In The One Tree, Donaldson zigs and zags around, but doesn’t take us anywhere.

The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson

The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever
The Wounded Land
By Stephen R. Donaldson
Copyright 1980

Ten years have passed since Thomas Covenant defeated Lord Foul at Foul’s Creche and saved The Land. Now, he lives on his farm where he has resumed his writing career.
Linden Avery is a young physician with a tragic backstory. Her father committed suicide when she was just 10. She found him hanging from the attic rafters. Her mother lived out her years a slothful, self pitying creature who longed for death. She and Covenant will be linked in a new effort to save The Land now completely under the sway of Lord Foul.

Linden’s mentor, the chief of staff at the local hospital, beseeches her to visit Thomas Covenant and check on him. He is dealing with a problem which he refuses to divulge, but wants Linden to ascertain how he is doing. Linden reluctantly agrees.
On her way to Haven Farm, Linden notices that there are several people dressed in burlap and rags in town. They are holding signs that tell people they must repent now. As she turns into the drive leading to Covenant’s farm, she sees and old man standing alongside the drive, dressed in ochre robes. Upon Linden seeing him, he collapses to the ground.

Linden starts CPR and is able to resuscitate him. After regaining consciousness, the man whispers to her, “You will not fail, no matter how he may assail you.” He then disappears.

Startled and unnerved, she makes her way to Covenant’s house. As she stands at the door, waiting for Covenant to answer, she can hear the plaintive screams of a woman inside the house. Covenant answers the door and tells her to get lost, that he doesn’t want her help or her company. She tells him about the man in the ochre robe and Covenant is startled enough to let her into the house.

There, she finds Joan, Covenant’s ex-wife, bound to a bed, screaming and raving. Covenant is trying to care for her. Covenant releases one of her arms and she scratches him and then licks the blood from her nails. Joan apologizes, saying, “He’s in my head, Tom.”

Linden is horrified and insists that Joan be taken to a hospital. Covenant will not have it. He will take care of Joan – alone. Covenant tells Linden that Joan has recently had a breakdown. It started as a sudden devotion to religion. She took their son, left her parents’ house, and joined a commune. But she soon left, returning to the farm she once shared with Thomas Covenant and tried to claw him to pieces. Since then, Covenant has been caring for her while keeping her restrained. “He,” is using her Covenant tells Linden, to torture Covenant. Linden quickly comes to believe that Covenant himself is mentally ill.

She leaves Covenant’s house and travels down the drive toward the main road, her thoughts troubled by how the old man suddenly disappeared and by Covenant’s madness. Linden Avery, the cold and aloof physician whose life is dedicated to science and logic, must find the rational explanation to the riddle. She parks her car and heads back toward Covenant’s house on foot.

As she approaches the house, she sees that Covenant has company. An old man dressed in burlap tells Covenant that the master has demanded his soul and asks him to come. To Linden’s astonishment, Covenant goes willingly with the man.

They travel through the woods to a clearing. There, Linden sees men, women, and children, all dressed in burlap, standing around a stone alter. Staked to that alter is Joan Covenant. Thomas Covenant is brought forward and asked if he will take Joan’s place. Covenant does so willingly. He is placed on the alter.

Linden is horrified that Covenant is so willing to lay down his life. Just as the leader of the strange cult is preparing to plunge a knife into Covenant’s chest, she begins to scream. Her scream distracts the followers, but the knife continues its downward course into Covenant’s chest.

Covenant feels the knife pierce his chest. But before he can die, his once again summoned to the Land where he is greeted by Lord Foul’s voice, just as he was when he first ventured to the Land 10 years prior. Foul tells him he is now powerless and eventually, will willingly hand over the white gold wedding ring to him.

Covenant finds himself high atop Kevin’s Watch, just as before. However, Linden has made the trip with him. Her highly rational mind can’t grip what she’s seeing. Covenant tries to explain briefly where they are, but they are caught in a fierce electrical storm and cover is their first order of business.

They descend from Kevin’s Watch and are greeted by an old man who takes them to his lonely, remote stone home. He tells Covenant that, for generations, his father and his fathers before him for thousands of years have awaited the return of the White Gold Wielder. He tells Covenant he must put right what is wrong in the Land.

The old man says he must travel to Mithil Stonedown to tell the people that the White Gold Wielder has returned and sets off, leaving Covenant and Linden to wrap their minds around what has happened. Covenant immediately recognizes that he has no earth sense – no vision of what is right and what is corrupt in the Land as he did in his first journey here. Linden tries to cope with the fact that she does have earth sense. To her rational mind, it is nearly too much to bear to be able to see disease and corruption as she sees in Covenant’s leprosy.

Covenant decides to head off to Mithil Stonedown himself. As they depart, the find the old man slain by a knife in the back. Linden is nearly overcome with the horror of the corruption in the act. They continue to the stonedown. Once they arrive, they are immediately taken prisoner by the stonedowners and locked in a room without explanation.

After a few hours, they are summoned to the center of the village and surrounded by the stonedowners who simply stare silently at them. Covenant starts asking questions and making demands. All the while, they stonedowners look on without reaction.

Finally, a voice from the back demands that their blood be spilled. Another man says that he is the graveler of the stonedown and the ritual of silence is his to begin and end. When, in his stream of consciousness ramblings, Covenant mentions the name, Mhoram, the voice from the rear says that since Covenant has named the na-Mhoram as friends, he must die. He launches an attack. But the attack is quickly put down by the graveler using a glowing rock of power. The man is led away and Covenant and Linden are returned to their prison.

Linden says she saw utter corruptness in the man who tried to attack them. Covenant immediately recognizes by her description that the man was held by a Raver – one of Foul’s three disciples who can inhabit the body of the unsuspecting. He also recognizes the graveler’s stone as an orcrest –a magical stone that uses earth power.

The graveler joins them later that evening and tells them that they are to be sacrificed and their blood used to benefit the stonedown. The graveler, who introduces himself as Sunder, the son of the old man who greeted Covenant, says that the blood will be used to control the Sunbane so that the people can extract water and crops from the land which does not yield such without the spilling of blood.
Covenant explains to the young graveler that his father was right and using the man’s orcrest, is able to display the power of the white gold. Sunder is stunned. Covenant implores Sunder to help guide them to Revelstone so that Covenant may learn what went wrong and put it right.

Revelstone, Sunder tells Covenant that Revelstone is where the Clave, the controllers of the naMhoram make their home and the place from which the Sunbane emminates. Covenant insists upon going there. Convinced by Covenant’s display of power, Sunder agrees. They set off under the cover of darkness.

As they travel north along the dry bed of the Mithil River, Covenant learns how wicked the Sunbane is. Sunder must cut himself and draw blood to use his orcrest to summon water on days of desert sun. On days of the sun of pestilence, one must take cover out of the sun or stand on solid stone lest their flesh be corrupted and they converted into horrible monsters.

As they are traveling, Covenant is beset upon by a strange reptilian like humanoid that bites him and injects him with venom. Linden tries to extract the venom, but is unsuccessful. Sunder explains that the being who attacked Covenant was the man who tried to kill them back at Mithil Stonedown. As punishment, he was left to be corrupted under the sun of pestilence and became this creature.

The venom infects Covenant and he becomes ill. In his delirium, he is unable to control his wild magic. Through the use of treasure berries, Linden is able to nurse him back to health, but while the venom is dormant, it is still present.

As they come to the end of the Mithil River, Covenant shows them Andelain and tells them it is a place of beauty and wonder. Sunder is unwilling to enter Andelain, having heard tales of Andelain driving people mad. Covenant ventures forth to see if the Sunbane has infected Andelain as well as the rest of the land.

Covenant finds that the inherent beauty of the Land is still present in Andelain. He wanders about with the venom still coursing through his veins. He eventually encounters the last forrestal, his old friend Hile Troy. With Troy are all of Covenant’s dead from his previous time in the Land. Elena, Saltheart Foamfollower, Mhoram, and Bannor. Bannor implores Covenant to save his people whose plight is an abomination. They give him a gift, an ur-vile to accompany him. He is the last of his kind. The forrestal tells Covenant that his name is Vile, and his purpose is his own. However, he can be commanded just once to carry out Covenant’s wishes.

Covenant returns from Andelain to find his friends are gone. He tracks them to a nearby stonedown where he learns that they have been seized by the Clave and taken to Revelstone. He sets out to rescue his friends who have a large head start on him.
Soon, he is picked up by a rider of the Clave who bears him to Revelstone. There, the na-Mhoram profess to be the only protection between the Sunbane and total destruction of the Land. They invite Covenant to shed a little of his own blood to learn more about the Sunbane. He volunteers and is trapped. His blood flows freely into the banefire while he watches the history of the land unfold; how a raver took control of the lords and corrupted them and the land to create the Sunbane. He also learns that the blood that feeds the Banefire most potently is that of the Haruchi – the Bloodguard.

As his life force dwindles, the white gold, which he can no longer control or harness, kicks in. It wipes out the members of the Clave in the room and he is released. Delirious from blood loss, he only can think of his friends imprisoned in the dungeon. He heads there where he is able to free Linden and their friends as well as several Haruchai.

They head north from Revelstone to Glimmermere Lake which remains untouched by the Sunbane. There, Covenant recovers the Krill of Loric – a magical weapon effective against Ravers. Covenant then decides he must leave the land and search for the One Tree so that a new Staff of Law can be fashioned to help restore the Land to its former glory. Covenant, Linden, the ever silent and implacable Vile, and several Bloodguard head west toward Coerci – the home of the lost giants who died at the hands of the ravers thousands of years before.

As they near the coast, they encounter Giants who are part of an expedition seeking out a source of ill in the world Covenant convinces them that the only way to rid the world of the Sunbane is to use their ship and take him abroad so that he may find the One Tree. After much arguing and convincing, they agree.

The party heads for Coerci and the giants are horrified at the tale Covenant tells them about the giants willingly laying down their lives in shame at what had become of their three brothers. Covenant uses his white gold to bring forth the dead of Coerci and each completes the rite of Camora – a rite where giants immerse their flesh in fire to relieve guilt and anguish. The grief of the dead of Coerci is released and these new giants proclaim Covenant Giantfriend.

Covenant tells Sunder and Hollian – a stonedowner captured with Linden and the others, to take the Krill and return to the Land to fight the Sunbane. He promises to return with the Staff of Law to put things right. The book ends with Covenant and Linden setting sale with the giants, in search of the One Tree.

Donaldson gives us a whole new Land with this second trilogy. Juxtaposed against the Land as we knew it in the first trilogy, this is a vile place. Blood is shed to commit even small acts of survival. The weak are killed and bled so that their friends and neighbors can survive. Hostages are taken to Revelstone – once an icon of love of earthlore – to be bled to feed the Sunbane.

While Donaldson wrote from a few points of view in the first trilogy, it was clear that Covenant was the focal point of the story. In the second trilogy, we get a sense that Linden Avery is a greater focal point than is Covenant. She has earth sense. It is she that perceives and it is she that can reveal knowledge. Covenant, perhaps because he’s dead back in the real world – has not these abilities anymore.
Donaldson tries to make Linden an emotional cripple the equivalent of Covenant in the first trilogy and doesn’t quite get there. Yes, she is sullen, emotionally detached from other people, and excessively deliberative. But she lacks Covenant’s status as an anti-hero. There’s no reason to dislike Linden as there was with Covenant. Therefore, she is a weaker hero in this trilogy (so far) than was Covenant in the last.

There is a profound change to Thomas Covenant’s character in the second trilogy. He is much more proactive. In the first trilogy, everyone else laid out the plans and decided what was to be done. Covenant was always passive; going where he was told to go and complaining about his plight all the way.

In this book, it is he who is decisive, dictates action, and fights. Donaldson brings forward this transformation admirably. We learn how much Covenant has come to love the Land since he left it ten years before and how he has come to love those with whom he fought for its safety. The transformation of Covenant from a pitiful whiner (albeit effective anti-hero) into a decisive, heroic figure, is the most remarkable trait of the new trilogy.

Instead of transporting us back to the real world at the end of this book, we stay in the Land. This is good. While the first trilogy was superb in its execution, these seams in the story were a distraction. It is apparent that our entire story is going to take place in the Land – or at least in the world in which it exists.
The next book covers the search for the One Tree. It is aptly titled, The One Tree. In it, we will learn about other lands exist outside the Land and we will learn of the source of the Staff of Law – and Vain’s purpose.

The Power that Preserves by Stephen R. Donaldson

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Book 3
The Power that Preserves
by Stephen R. Donaldson
Copyright 1979

Book three of the first trilogy of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever finds Thomas Covenant in bad straits. Despite the fact that he continues to argue with himself that his experience in the Land is nothing but a dream, he is horribly depressed about the death of High Lord Elena, his daughter, as she battled Kevin Landwaster for control of the Staff of Law.

Covenant has let himself go; his leper’s discipline gone. He’s stopped taking the medication that arrested the spread of his disease. He’s stop giving himself the constant physical examinations necessary to identify and treat cuts and wounds promptly. His grip on sanity is tenuous.

He takes daily walks and one day, upon returning to his home, he finds his groceries have been delivered – courtesy of the local grocery store who does not want him to enter their store. He bites into a roll and there is a razor blade inside, placed there to hurt and maim him by one of his neighbors.

He flees into the woods, distraught, angry, and at his wits end. As he wanders aimlessly, he hears a little girl screaming. He races to her and finds that she has been bitten by a rattle snake.

Just as he’s preparing to help her, he feels that discorporate feeling that tells him he is once again being summoned to the land. He appears in the Lords Keep of Revelstone before Lord Mhoram and the assembly of Lords. He pleads to be allowed to return to his home so that he can save the little girl. Mhoram pleads with him, telling him that this is the Land’s darkest hour and they need him to save the Land. Covenant denies the request, saying he must save a girl in his own world. Unwilling to bring Covenant to the Land against his will, Mhoram releases him.

Covenant sucks the venom from the girl’s wound and then carries her to her parents who are camping in the woods. The father immediately recognizes him and begins to pummel him. Covenant surrenders himself and pleads with Mhoram to take him.

Covenant is summoned to the Land, but it’s not Lords Keep where he arrives, but the peak of Kevin’s Watch. His summoners are Triock, the man who loved Lena, the girl he raped years before, and his old friend, the Giant Saltheart Foamfollower.

They take him to Mithil Stonedown, the village he first visited when he arrived in the Land during his first sojourn. The Land is in the grasp of a preternatural winter, contrived by Lord Foul to starve its population. The Stonedowners are barely surviving the frequent attacks by wolves and other Lord Foul minions. It is Triock, no longer the simple sheepherder, who leads the defenses of the village.

While Covenant is taking in the plight of the Land and Foul’s machinations, the Stonedown is attacked. As Covenant takes cover, he sees and elderly woman, defenseless except for a small dagger, attack one of the assailants. Covenant joins the fray to save her and finds that it is Lena, the woman he ravished years before. She is now and old woman, now insane and obsessed with her love of Thomas Covenant.

After fending off the attack, Covenant resolves to be passive participant in the Land’s battle no more. He directs Triock to take a party to the Forrestal at Garroting Deep and to use his powers to send word to Revelstone to let Mhoram know that the white gold wielder has returned. Covenant resolves to go directly to Foul’s Creche to face down and destroy Lord Foul once and for all. Triock and his friends set off for Garroting Deep. Covenant, accompanied by Saltheart Foamfollower and Lena, whom he feels responsible, set off for Foul’s Creche.

At Revelstone, the siege has begun. The Raver, Satanfist, bearing a piece of the Illearth Stone, has assembled an army before Revelstone. He begins his relentless assault. Those within are trapped. There is no escape through the main gate. The upper plains above the keep that were once fertile and supplied the keep with food, are barren with Foul’s winter. There is little food and much fear. High Lord Mhoram struggles to maintain morale and maintain defenses as the raver launches land-corrupting assaults against the keep that destroy the Land and bring pain to the inhabitants.

Triock’s efforts to use his lomillialor staff to contact Revelstone meets with defeat when he is betrayed by a raver.

Covenant and his party move west toward Foul’s Creche and arrive at the Plains of Ra where the prideful, powerful horses known as Rahynyn live. There, he is captured by Ramen, the keepers of the horses. The Ramen have never liked Covenant because of the Rahynyn’s forced supplication to him. They show him the starvation and deprivations endured by the horses since Foul’s winter set in. The once majestic horses have either died or are near starvation.

Living with the Ramen Covenant finds his former Bloodguard, Bannor. Bannor tells Covenant that their oath to defend the Land and the Lords has been broken because of Bannor’s disclosure of Kevin’s seventh ward. Bannor and the other Bloodguard, once immortal, now age and the years have taken a toll on the once implacable Bannor.

As they talk, they are attacked by wolves and other minion of Lord Foul. Covenant and Lena escape. Saltheart and Bannor promise to find Covenant once they have thwarted this attack. Covenant and Lena flee west into the cold, barren plains.

Soon after fleeing, cold and starving, they encounter a man that Covenant recognized back in the Plains of Ra. Pieten, the young boy whose mind was captured by a raver at Soaring Woodhelvin years before to serve as a trap for Covenant, Hile Troy, and the Lords greets Covenant. Left with the Ramen years before, he has developed a fanatical attachment to the Ranyhyn that leaves him scorning the Ramen’s careful and deferential care as inadequate. He feeds them and prepares a fire to warm them. He then tells Covenant that he will fulfill his destiny by destroying Covenant whom the Ranyhyn fear, but respect. He tells Lena that her daughter, Alena is dead and that Covenant refused to help her in her time of need. The insane Lena is overwrought and tries to kill Covenant. Pieten then kills her to Covenant’s horror. Covenant drives a dagger into Pieten’s heart. He continues westward, cold, alone, and without provision, his ankle broken in the fight with Pieten.

Back at Revelstone, as morale collapses and the keep starts to fall into chaos, Mhoram is pondering his options, including the Ritual of Desecration, uttered centuries before by Kevin Landwaster to thwart Foul’s goals. He ventures into the Lords’ Keep, now destroyed in a fit of rage and despair by Trell, Lena’s father. He finds that the Krill, the sword that Thomas Covenant drove deep into the stone of the table of the keep many years prior, is free of the stone and the stone in the hilt is aglow. Mhoram knows that Covenant has returned to the land and that the defenders of Revelstone must buy him time to do what he needs to do to destroy Lord Foul.

Mhoram begins to ponder Kevin Landwaster and his hour of despair. He had wrought destruction of the Land – the thing he loved most – to avoid violating his Oath of Peace. Mhoram has an epiphany. It is that very oath that has weakened the defenders of the land from the beginning. Pacifism is a laudable philosophy to employ in life to maintain peace and harmony. But when faced by a daunting and willful enemy, sometimes the goal of peace requires the execution of attack. Mhoram orders his warriors to prepare for a full frontal – and probably suicidal – attack on the raver and his army.

Mhoram and his men leave the safety of Revelstone and meet Satanfist’s legions of ur-viles and cavewights. Mhoram, armed with the Krill, seeks out Satanfist the raver himself for a final confrontation. Just as Satanfist is about to end Mhoram’s life, they both notice that the moon – once discolored a nauseating green by Lord Foul’s use of the illearth stone and the staff of law – has returned to its normal color. Emboldened, Mhoram takes the Krill and thrusts it into the giant raver, killing him. The Warward dispatches what remains of his army and Revelstone is saved.

Meanwhile, Covenant wonders through the frozen waste of the Despoiled Plains alone, starving and injured. He collapses and prepares to die. While in slumber, he is found by an Unfettered One who has devoted her life to the healing arts. She takes him back to her cave in Morinmoss Forest and devotes the very last of her energy to healing him, recognizing him as the last hope for the Land.

Covenant awakens to find the dead Unfettered One and realizes the sacrifice she has made for him. He sets off, more determined than ever, to get to Foul’s Creche and do battle. He continues his journey and eventually arrives at the great stone monolith the protectors of the Land call Coloussus which separates and protects the land from Lord Foul and keeps his power confined within the Despoiled Plains and Foul’s Creche. There, he meets Triock who was dispatched to the south to try to get a message to Revelstone. He is surprised and ask Triock how he got to the plains.

Triock, bitter and angry over all that he has lost at the hands of Thomas Covenant, tells him his journey met with a raver and they were waylaid. Then, two of the Ramen appear and they have been taken over by the other two of the three triplet ravers. They take Covenant’s ring from him.

They have brought with them those Covenant has longed to see for many days – Saltheart Foamfollower and Bannor. But they are controlled by the ravers through the use of their slivers of the Illearth Stone. Triock, his oath of peace long forgotten and his desire to kill Covenant unsated, advances to finish the job. The ravers tell him to halt and direct his and Covenant’s attention to the hillside. There, they see High Lord Elena, Covenant’s daughter by birth and Triock’s by adoption, approach the party.

She informs them that she means to kill them slowly, but not before making Covenant watch his friends die. She carries with her the Staff of Law. With the Law of Death put asunder by her own deeds, High Lord Elena is brought back to destroy that which she loves, the ravers tell Covenant.

But they are momentarily distracted when Elena discovers that the Lords of Revelstone have turned the tide of battle and that Soulcrusher is threatened. That distraction releases Saltheart, Triock, Bannor, and Covenant from their bonds. Triock attacks Elena and knocks the Covenant’s ring from her finger. Covenant recovers it. Elena strikes at him with the Staff of Law. The power of Covenant’s ring reacts to the tainted highwood and blasts it into ashes. Elena is released. Before she dies, she utters the plea, “Strike a blow for me, beloved.”

Covenant, in his desperation, issues a plea to the Forrestal for help. Bolts of lightening discharge from Colossus, driving the ravers from the bodies of the Ramen. Triock is mortally wounded by his battle with Elena. Before dying, he tells Covenant to forgive Elena, that she was flawed from birth.

Covenant, Bannor, and Saltheart now stand at the edge of the Land. Bannor says he will go no further, that his service to the Lords has come to an end as with all the Bloodguard. He shares his knowledge of the Despoiled Plains with Covenant and takes his leave, returning to the Ramen to help them serve the dying Ranhynyn.

From there, Saltheart and Covenant continue their journey. They cross the Despoiled Plains and gain the entrance to Foul’s Creche. Saltheart, immune to damage from heat, bears Covenant across a moat of lava and Covenant enters. Saltheart is seemingly lost in the pit of molten lava.

Finally, Covenant finds Foul in his lair. There, Foul has imprisoned Saltheart Foamfollower by chaining him to a wall. First, Lord Foul tries to bribe Covenant with promises of power, then tries to make him grovel by inflicting upon him the end stages of leprosy. Covenant realizes that Foul is toying with him because he isn’t sure whether or not Covenant has yet mastered his wring.

Just as Mhorman, Covenant has an epiphany every bit as contradictory as Mhoram’s. Just as Mhoram found that one must sometimes employ warfare for the sake of peace, Covenant found that the contradictions of his disbelief and his love of the Land and its people were his essence. He is the White Gold, he’s been told. And this contradiction of love and disbelief is him.

The white gold erupts in a verdant blaze of power. Foul’s godlike appearance is blown aside and his mortal self revealed. The power of Covenant’s ring coupled with the crippled law of death summons the Lords and many friends that have died in the fight against corruption. They implore Covenant to kill Foul.

Covenant looks at Lord Foul in his mortal guise and refuses. Killing him will not stop him, Covenant tells them. They must drive him from the Land with that which he hates most – joy. He asks Saltheart to start laughing. Saltheart starts with a mirthful, painful laugh, but soon summons a belly laugh born of true humor. Soon, the dead join in. Foul, unable to endure the joy unleashed by Covenant, begins to regress in age. He becomes a child, and infant, and this ceases to exist.

Lord Foul is driven from the Land.

The cataclysm that ensues brings Foul’s Creche down around them. Saltheart and Covenant are killed in the collapse.

But Covenant is transported to an ethereal place where he meets the homeless man who, just days prior in his own world, implored him to be true when he returned Covenant’s wedding band to him. He is the Creator.

He explains that, as Creator, he could not meddle in his own creation lest the Arch of Time be destroyed and all law fall with it. He chose Covenant, so willing to part with the white gold wedding band, as his proxy. He offers Covenant a life of peace and leisure, unafflicted by his disease. Covenant refuses. His world is his world and he is a leper.

The Creator tells Covenant that he is lying in a hospital bed dying because he has taken in some of the rattle snake poison and is allergic to the antivenin. The Creator tells Covenant that he will make it possible for him to survive his physical injuries in his own world.

There, Covenant awakens. He learns that he is a hero for having saved the small child and that through the efforts of his lawyer, he will be able to keep his home. Covenant lays back, prepared to resume his life as an outcast leper.

So ends the first trilogy of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.

This was the first fantasy trilogy I ever read – even before Lord of the Rings. It immediately hooked me on fantasy literature.
Donaldson’s work is hailed as one of the great fantasy works of all time. What sets it apart from most fantasy literature is how it sets itself apart from Tolkien’s work.

Too many writers rely on Tolkien’s framework for a story. The heroes are all heroic. The mystical magical items are readily employed. The journeys from place to place are long and there is always the ultimate villain to slay.

Donaldson’s hero, such as he is, is the antithesis of Tolkien’s hobbits. The reader loathes him because he is a self-pitying, whining, coward – and a rapist. He has no courage, no core values except his leper’s rules of survival. Conjuring Thomas Covenant and making the reader root for him is an accomplishment that puts Donaldson at the pinnacle of fantasy character creators.

The other primary character in Covenant’s trilogy is the Land. Tolkien had his Middle Earth, but it was Middle Earth’s inhabitants we loved. Donaldson’s characters were not inhabitants; they were servants of the Land. The Land was the beginning and end of their purpose. From that purpose flowed power, unlike most fantasy literature where magic and power flow from a conjuring being.

Finally, Donaldson writes a well plotted, well paced novel. Never are we in one place too long. Never are the characters too ponderous or given to overlong philosophical debate. The story stands well against any told in fantasy literature.

I have to admit, Foul’s demise reminded me just a little of that horrible Star Trek episode, Day of the Dove, when the Enterprise crew and the Klingons who have invaded all drive out an alien life force by laughing at it. It’s not quite that foolish because Donaldson has set it up nicely. All through the trilogy, joy is center of all the characters’ lives. They live to bring joy to each other. They find joy in their service to the Land and the earthpower that flows from the Land brings them joy. It is not improper, therefore, for joy to be the ultimate weapon deployed against their tormentor.

Donaldson’s trilogy was well received at the time. Liner notes praising the story come from legends of fantasy and science fiction such as Clifford Simak, Robert Bloch, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. That is high praise indeed.

Few books have brought me as much pleasure as these. I don’t recall exactly how many times I’ve read the first trilogy, but it has been at least five and familiarity with the story has not reduced the joy of taking in Donaldson’s fantastic story told with astounding prose.