Transported out of all restraint, Linden turned at last to Mhoram.

“And you,” she said, quiet as venom.  “You.  They called you ‘seer and oracle.’  That’s what I’ve heard.  Everytime I turn around, he tells me he wishes you were with him.  He values you more than anyone.”  Her anger and grief were one, and she could not contain them.  Fury that Covenant had been so misled; tearing rue that he trusted her too little to share his burdens, that he preferred despair and destruction to any love or companionship which might ease his responsibilities.  “You should have told him the truth.”

The Dead High Lord’s eyes shone with silver tears—yet he did not falter or vanish.  The regret he emitted was not for himself: it was for her.  And perhaps also for Covenant.  An aching smile twisted his mouth.  “Linden Avery”—he made her name sound curiously rough and gentle—”you gladden me.  You are worthy of him.  Never doubt that you may justly stand with him in the trial of all things.  You have given sorrow to the Dead.  But when they have bethought themselves of who you are, they will be likewise gladdened.  Only this I urge of you: strive to remember that he is also worthy of you.”

Formally, he touched his palms to his forehead, then spread his arms wide in a bow that seemed to bare his heart.  “My friends!” he said in a voice that rang, “I believe that you will prevail!”

Still bowing, he dissolved into the rain and was gone.

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Finally, my review of the last book of the second Covenant series.  When I first read it twenty years ago, I was sure it was the last book, period, because the ending is very final.  Surprise surprise, it turns out that when Donaldson wrote it, he already had the Last Chronicles planned out to follow.  Those are only half-finished though, and the last book won’t come out until 2013, so this will be the end of my Covenant reviews for now. Read more »

“I know nothing of that,” retorted Brinn.  “I know only that she attempted Ceer’s life.”

Without warning, Covenant broke into a shout.  “I don’t care!”  He spat vehemence at Brinn as if it were being physically torn out of him.  “Linden saved me!  She saved all of us!  Do you think that was easy?  I’m not going to turn my back on her, just because she did something I don’t understand!”

“Ur-Lord—” Brinn began.

“No!”  Covenant’s passion carried so many implications of power that it shocked the deck under Linden’s feet.  “You’ve gone too far already!”  His chest heaved with the effort he made to control himself.  “In Andelain—with the Dead—Elena talked about her.  She said, ‘Care for her, beloved, so that in the end she may heal us all.’  Elena,” he insisted.  “The High Lord.  She loved me, and it killed her.  But never mind that.  I won’t have her treated this way.”  His voice shredded under the strain of self-containment.  “Maybe you don’t trust her.”  His half-fist jabbed possibilities of fire around him.  “Maybe you don’t trust me.”  He could not keep himself from yelling.  “But you are by God going to leave her alone!”

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In this middle book of the second Covenant trilogy, Covenant decides his only hope is to create a new Staff of Law, to give him a way to heal the land without unleashing his increasingly erratic power.  So with Linden, Sunder, and Hollian, he heads east out of the Land, hoping to retrace the steps of Berek Halfhand, the legendary hero who created the first Staff from a limb of the One Tree.

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Covenant snatched at her wrist. “Listen.” His voice must have held emotion—urgency, anguish, something—but she did not hear it. “This you have to understand. There’s only one way to hurt a man who’s lost everything. Give him back something broken.”

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In this first book of The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Stephen R. Donaldson, it has been ten years since Covenant’s last trip to the Land.  During that time, he gets control of his leprosy and begins writing again.  His life reaches a certain level of peace until Lord Foul is able to use someone close to him to pull him to the Land again, to give Foul another shot at using Covenant’s ring to escape the world which is his prison.
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The Giant glanced up at the chill sky, then looked at Covenant’s gaunt face. His cavernous eyes glinted sharply, as if he understood what Covenant had been through. As gently as he had spoken to Lena, he asked, “Do you now believe in the Land?”

“I’m the Unbeliever. I don’t change.”

“Do you not?”

“I am going to”–Covenant’s shoulders hunched–”exterminate Lord Foul the bloody Despiser. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“Oh, it is enough for me,” Foamfollower said with sudden vehemence. “I require nothing more. But it does not suffice for you. What do you believe–what is your faith?”

“I don’t know.”

Foamfollower looked away again at the weather. His heavy brows hid his eyes, but his smile seemed sad, almost hopeless. “Therefore I am afraid.”

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Through these first three books, Covenant keeps trying to find the answer to Lord Foul and to his own relationship with the Land. Refusing to believe or get involved didn’t work in the first one; and deceit and bargains failed in the second; so this time around, he tries hate. As you might expect, that doesn’t go so well either. Eventually he finds an answer that works, for him.

At the same time, Mhoram is finding his own answer as he realizes the Lords’ Oath of Peace is just as damaging in its own way as the violent destruction it was created to prevent. Just as Covenant has to find the balance between wild magic and impotence, Mhoram has to find the sweet spot between passion and restraint, to battle an even greater army than the people of the Land faced in the last book. Mhoram nearly steals the show in this book, as the Land’s tremendous need pushes him to feats he never thought possible.

And Foamfollower is back! After disappearing for a while, he’s back here, and he’s not the smiling optimist he was in the first book. He’s carrying a load of guilt for the terrible things he’s seen and done, and may need redemption as badly as Covenant does. He again becomes Covenant’s best friend in the Land, and is there to make the difference in Covenant’s final battle with Despite.

There are so many good stories here that I can’t get into without spoiling it. The Bloodguard react to their failure in the only way they know how. Triock, even though he hates Covenant, helps bring him to the Land when he realizes the white gold is the Land’s only hope. The Ranyhyn are still keeping their pact with Covenant, even though it’s slowly killing them. The jheherrin are one of my favorite parts of the book: creatures discarded as the waste of Foul’s failed experiments over the years, they live in fear of him; but they find the strength in themselves to help redeem Covenant and Foamfollower.

This book wraps up all the threads from the first two very well; and, for me at least, it makes all the bleakness and setbacks and wrongs that went before worth it. In the end, Covenant is still a leper and evil still exists, but he’s learned to deal with it without self-hatred and has found a sort of peace.

It may seem from my descriptions and quotes that these books are nothing but anguish and talking, so I’ll wrap up this review with a piece of an action scene from this book (one that would look great on screen). The next review will be the first book of the Second Chronicles, which I think is even better.

With all his strength, [Mhoram] leveled a blast of Lords-fire at the Raver’s leering skull.

Satansfist knocked the attack down as if it were negligible; disdainfully, he slapped Mhoram’s blue out of the air with his Stone and returned a bolt so full of cold emerald force that it scorched the atmosphere as it moved.

Mhoram sensed its power, knew that it would slay him if it struck. But Drinny dodged with a fleet, fluid motion which belied the wrenching change of his momentum. The bolt missed, crashed instead into the creatures pursuing the High Lord, killed them all.

That gave Mhoram the instant he needed. He corrected Drinny’s aim, cocked his staff over his shoulder. Before samadhi could unleash another blast, the High Lord was upon him.

Using all Drinny’s speed, all the strength of his body, all the violated passion of his love for the Land, Mhoram swung. His staff caught Satansfist squarely across the forehead.

The concussion ripped Mhoram from his seat like a dry leaf in the wind. His staff shattered at the blow, exploded into splinters, and he hit the ground amid a brief light rain of wood slivers. He was stunned. He rolled helplessly a few feet over the frozen earth, could not stop himself, could not regain his breath. His mind went blank for an instant, then began to ache as his body ached. His hands and arms were numb, paralyzed by the force which had burned through them.

You’ll have to read the books to see how it turns out.

Sometime later, Covenant climbed to his feet, hugging the pain in his chest. His voice was weak from the effort of speaking around his hurt. “Bannor.”

“Ur-Lord?”

“Tell the High Lord about this. Tell her everything–about Trell and me–and Troy.”

“Yes.”

“And, Bannor–”

The Bloodguard waited impassively.

“I wouldn’t do it again–attack a girl like that. I would take it back if I could.” He said it as if it were a promise that he owed Bannor for saving his life.

But Bannor gave no sign that he understood or cared what the Unbeliever was saying.

After a while, Covenant went on, “Bannor, you’re practically the only person around here who hasn’t at least tried to forgive me for anything.”

“The Bloodguard do not forgive.”

“I know. I remember. I should count my blessings.” With his arms wrapped around his chest to hold the pieces of himself together, he went back to his rooms.

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When I first read these books as a kid, The Illearth War was my least favorite. Middle books of trilogies are rarely the strongest anyway, since you don’t get the excitement of meeting a bunch of new characters or the climax of the ending. I didn’t like the fact that the main character from the entire first book disappeared for half of this one; and I didn’t like Hile Troy in the position of protagonist. Most of the interplay between Covenant and Elena went over my head at that age (probably a good thing). Foamfollower, one of the best characters of the first book, is missing in this one. All in all, I found it a disappointment.

Reading it now, I like it much more and find it just as strong as the others. Hile Troy is the perfect contrast to Covenant: a man who was also whisked away from our world to the Land, but who embraces everything about it and wants to be a hero. He has none of Covenant’s fear of power, and dismisses Covenant’s prediction that he’s setting himself up for a fall. If you spent the first book wishing Covenant would stop crying about stuff and start blasting bad guys with his ring—well, Hile Troy is your guy.

Bannor really starts to comes to life as a character here, as he’s forced to take a more active role between Covenant and the Land. The scene I quoted above sums up Bannor and the Bloodguard: they’re completely devoted to their honor and the Vow they made to the Land, and the power of that Vow has given them a nearly unstoppable ability to keep it. But if it is ever broken, how will they handle that?

Mhoram starts to shine here too, especially when Troy puts the survival of the army on his shoulders. A main theme of these first three books is the balance between passion and control—Covenant’s wild magic and Elena’s desperation versus the stoicism of the Bloodguard and the Lords’ Oath of Peace. That develops further in the next book, but Mhoram starts to see the possibilities here.

There is also more action in this book than the first one, with two armies on the move and other things going on elsewhere. That partly reflects Hile Troy’s influence, as he’s very much a man of action who makes Covenant look like a man of sitting around and fretting. By the end of the book, I like Troy a lot. He may not always do the smartest thing, and definitely not the safest thing, but he always has the right intentions.

Covenant knew that he was going to pass out—wanted hungrily to pass out—but before he lost consciousness, the hurt in his chest made him say, “Giant, I— I need friends.”

“Why do you believe that you have none?”

Covenant blinked, and saw everything that he had done in the Land.  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then you do believe that we are real.”

“What?”  Covenant groped for the Giant’s meaning with hands which had no fingers.

“You think us capable of not forgiving you,” Foamfollower explained.  “Who would forgive you more readily than your dream?”

“No,” the Unbeliever said.  “Dreams—never forgive.”

Then he lost the firelight and Foamfollower’s kind face, and stumbled into sleep.

Rating:

I’ve always loved to read.  When I was a kid, our mom had to limit us to five books per library trip, because we’d disappear into our rooms until we finished whatever we brought home, and she wanted us to get some sunshine too.  It’d be hard for me to pick out a favorite single book; one day I might say Monte Walsh, another day Atlas Shrugged, and another day The Stand.  Different moods bring to mind different books.

Picking out a favorite series is much easier.  I love the Belgariad, and I think it’s long overdue to be turned into a TV series or miniseries (the dialogue is perfect for it), but it’s a little too light to call my favorite.  I’d have to give that honor to Stephen R. Donaldson’s “Chronicles (and Second Chronicles) of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.”  Like a lot of Covenant fans, I first read the books in high school when some of the language and topics were honestly a bit over my head, but I stretched to understand them and loved what I could absorb.  I’ve reread them every couple years since.  The Land, the Giants, the Haruchai, the Lords, the Ranyhyn, Andelain, Revelstone—all the characters and places are incredibly vivid and deeply explored.  Even today, my computers are named Bannor and Brinn after two of the Haruchai, and my usual Internet pseudonym is my favorite character from the books.

People often report either loving or hating Donaldson’s books, and the reason seems to be that he explores his characters in such emotional depth.  He takes interestingly flawed people, puts them through hellish circumstances, and shows how they can conquer those circumstances (or not), chronicling every drop of blood and sweat along the way.  Some people get bored with that—stop talking and obsessing and do something!  But some of us love it.  I’ve rarely felt like I knew characters as well as these, even some that only appear in a single book of the series.  With a few paragraphs, Donaldson can make a person come to life: not just the way the person looks, but his hopes and fears and personality.

In the first book, Lord Foul’s Bane, Thomas Covenant is an author whose first book becomes a best-seller, soon after which he is diagnosed with leprosy and loses two fingers and the feeling in his hands and feet.  His wife takes their infant son and leaves him, and the townspeople ostracize him.  After an accident, he wakes to find himself in another world where his leprosy is healed and he’s hailed as a returning hero who will save the world from its ancient nemesis, Lord Foul the Despiser.  His white gold wedding ring, which he still wears in defiance of his divorce, is considered the ultimate magical talisman, with which he will “save or damn the Earth.”

His doctors at the leprosarium warned him against this very thing: when a leper is completely cut off from society, he may begin to have delusions of grandeur and begin to think he can have an ordinary life again—or even a heroic one.  If he accepts the delusion, he won’t be able to handle waking up to his real existence, and he’ll fail to maintain the careful life that keeps his disease under control.  So Covenant insists that the “Land” isn’t real, that he’s dreaming or hallucinating, and names himself “the Unbeliever.”  From then on, he’s torn between the Land and its people which he comes to love, and his absolute need to believe they aren’t real.  In trying to maintain that insistence, he makes mistakes that hurt the people around him, and the more he tries to atone for those mistakes, the deeper in he digs himself.

I won’t go into it any further and spoil it, because it really is a great story, and I hope anyone who likes epic fantasy will read it.  It was shopped around Hollywood for a while and some big names wanted to make a series of movies out of it, but all the studios thought it would be too much like Lord of the Rings because there’s a magic ring in it.  (That’s just stupid; when a teen slasher movie is a hit, all the studios line up to copy it!)  I’m still holding out hope for a mini-series someday, though; it’s really too deep for movies.  In the meantime, I’ll review all six books.  Then there are four more coming in the “Last Chronicles,” but they won’t be finished until 2013, so we’ll have to wait a while on those.