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3.3 AVERAGE
3.3 AVERAGE
Stephen Donaldson not only mastered the English language but is fantastic at worldbuilding. His writing is really well done and even though he can be quite descriptive, especially on the lamentations of Thomas Covenant, he writes it in such a way that you are awed by his ability to write (or the depth of his thesaurus). The world he creates is great. He captures it perfectly that you feel like you are actually there. It is a strange world that seems absolutely believable. The protagonist, Thomas Covenant, is frustratingly perfect. His background and the adventure he gets swept into make a refreshingly different take on a typical fantasy tale. This book doesn't have a unique plot, but all the characters and the world make it a fantastic read.
Not as good the second time around. Read this when it first came out & thought it was great, but years later, it doesn't seem to have the power it did then.
After hearing alot of good things about this book I was looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately I found the writing dry and emotionless. I think it was intentionally so but it doesn't make it enjoyable to read. This is on top of main character being completely unlikable and unsympathetic.
This is a very divisive book, but damn is it not a great conversation piece.
To me the this book seems to be to challenge the trope of fantasy where an unwitting hero is created through an epic story... which at its heart, is exactly what Donaldson's story looks to be. A man hard on his luck is called to another land and is charged with saving it. BUT- what if that 'hero' does not want to help, does not believe he can help, and spends the entire story digging their heels in the sand like a petulant child... yet still is the saviour?
The famous scene that most people speak of is a tough scene to get through and being that the story is told following only the so-called protagonist we feel complicit in the act, and for some, find our morals getting in the way of escaping with the story.
Without spoiling too much, 2/3rds of the book we are led to believe that the world Covenant is huffing and scowling at is a kind of mental dreamworld he is in while his body heals from a car accident. That nothing matters there because he will wake up and it will all be a dream... so the topic of consequence and responsibility is circling the protagonist the whole time. If you cheat on your significant other in a dream did you cheat? Should you tell anyone? So much weird stuff happens in our dreams that we as a society do no heed any statement on character from it... or if we do we take it as metaphor firstly.
So is Thomas Covenant a bad man? That depends on how you choose to empathize with the story? If a coworker or lover perhaps does a heinous act in the dream do you choose to write them out of your life? So, the key to making your way through this exercise in literature you need to understand Covenant's state of being: a man given a rare disease he did nothing abnormal to acquire, is cast out by his wife and child, and the entire town he called home. He is a living dead man who has learned to not get close to anyone else he hurt more; he has a body that will betray him from the tiniest of injury. And no dream is going to fix that overnight.
So he endures as he endured in the waking world.
Now the main issue with the book might seem like this acceptance of a cold character but I think the real test is Can someone read 473 pages of an insufferable human being being tugged along on an adventure without finding a way to empathize with him? It is hard. Man is it hard at times.
But I loved the world, I felt like I 'got' what Donaldson was doing in the naming of places and how they seem jarring or childish at times. I understood Covenant even though I wanted to ring his tiny neck for some of the things he did.
Now, if in the next book we find out the world is real... then I would expect Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever to atone. Oh yes I do.
To me the this book seems to be to challenge the trope of fantasy where an unwitting hero is created through an epic story... which at its heart, is exactly what Donaldson's story looks to be. A man hard on his luck is called to another land and is charged with saving it. BUT- what if that 'hero' does not want to help, does not believe he can help, and spends the entire story digging their heels in the sand like a petulant child... yet still is the saviour?
The famous scene that most people speak of is a tough scene to get through and being that the story is told following only the so-called protagonist we feel complicit in the act, and for some, find our morals getting in the way of escaping with the story.
Without spoiling too much, 2/3rds of the book we are led to believe that the world Covenant is huffing and scowling at is a kind of mental dreamworld he is in while his body heals from a car accident. That nothing matters there because he will wake up and it will all be a dream... so the topic of consequence and responsibility is circling the protagonist the whole time. If you cheat on your significant other in a dream did you cheat? Should you tell anyone? So much weird stuff happens in our dreams that we as a society do no heed any statement on character from it... or if we do we take it as metaphor firstly.
So is Thomas Covenant a bad man? That depends on how you choose to empathize with the story? If a coworker or lover perhaps does a heinous act in the dream do you choose to write them out of your life? So, the key to making your way through this exercise in literature you need to understand Covenant's state of being: a man given a rare disease he did nothing abnormal to acquire, is cast out by his wife and child, and the entire town he called home. He is a living dead man who has learned to not get close to anyone else he hurt more; he has a body that will betray him from the tiniest of injury. And no dream is going to fix that overnight.
So he endures as he endured in the waking world.
Now the main issue with the book might seem like this acceptance of a cold character but I think the real test is Can someone read 473 pages of an insufferable human being being tugged along on an adventure without finding a way to empathize with him? It is hard. Man is it hard at times.
But I loved the world, I felt like I 'got' what Donaldson was doing in the naming of places and how they seem jarring or childish at times. I understood Covenant even though I wanted to ring his tiny neck for some of the things he did.
Now, if in the next book we find out the world is real... then I would expect Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever to atone. Oh yes I do.
I first started reading this series in high school but I don't think I ever had the time to finish it. I remember absolutely loving it but I didn't love it as much this time. At first, it was entirely annoying because of the fantasy language ("I am Lena, daughter of Atiaran...") with no contractions and stiff ways of talking. But the main character, Thomas Covenant, really saves the book. Even though he is an anti-hero in the worst way, you still care about him.
To be honest, I was somewhat dreading rereading this; not necessarily because I feared I'd wonder what I ever saw in it, but because circumstances are so different that I'd have no choice but to take a more critical eye. I speak of [b:Lord Foul's Bane|219205|Lord Foul's Bane (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, #1)|Stephen R. Donaldson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1333217655l/219205._SY75_.jpg|958463] by [a:Stephen R. Donaldson|12980|Stephen R. Donaldson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1425823085p2/12980.jpg], the first and easily the most contentious entry in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the most controversial and polarizing fantasy series to ever be critically acclaimed, which follows the adventures of its eponymous asshole loser in the Land. Lord Foul's Bane is a fantasy novel about a man who develops leprosy and immediately loses everything because his state apparently collectively realized “holy shit, leprosy's still a thing, get this man out of our sight.” So they do their damnedest to get him out of public life, but then he has a fall, and gets sent to a place so imaginatively called the Land, a place so awesome that he desperately wants out because nothing that good can possibly be real.
First impressions of this brave new world were hardly favourable; seriously, what possessed Donaldson to name the first character in the Land we meet Drool Rockworm? It's so silly and out of place in a world with otherwise far more imaginative names that the only way I can make it make sense is imagining the name as a Cavewight insult which he took up as a name because he was too stupid to recognize it for the jibe that it is. And there's also Lord Foul; all things considered, he's actually quite easy to take seriously because his malevolence is so all-encompassing that it really does feel like he's threatening the reader as much as he is Covenant. But come on, Lord Foul? The Despiser? Because it's not enough for him to be foul, you have to tell us he hates everything?
What he had to say was a hell of a lot more promising, fortunately. His hatred is so omnipresent that half the time, it feels like his evil is directed towards you, the reader. Yes, you. Especially you, Bridget, which probably isn't your name, but I just felt like freaking out all the Bridgets of the world and ripping off one of Zero Punctuation's best jokes. I just really like how personal he gets when we've only just met him, preying on Covenant's insecurities, belittling his condition even when offering health in the same breath.
Which reminds me of one of the things I like most about this series: I love how sparing Donaldson is with Foul's appearances; in the first two Chronicles, he only ever appears at the beginning and the end of them. His hand is certainly present in part of the climax of [b:The Illearth War|228990|The Illearth War (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, #2)|Stephen R. Donaldson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387037078l/228990._SY75_.jpg|1105522], but we're denied an audience with him because that's how powerful he's gotten by that point, able to influence others from his base of power. His presence is truly felt across the entire series without him needing to be there all the time, like he indirectly manifests wherever evil appears and stains the earth, which is why it was so disappointing to see him slightly more often in the Last Chronicles. Felt like a bad omen to see Foul not only introduce himself once in [b:The Runes of the Earth|337100|The Runes of the Earth (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, #1)|Stephen R. Donaldson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327916636l/337100._SY75_.jpg|3239005], but possess someone a few chapters later and talk to Linden Avery in a way that comes dangerously close to resembling old friends, though that would hardly be the biggest consequence of that final tetralogy's serious lack of editorial restraint.
Even after having read this book three times, it still takes time warming to the Land, because there's an alternative noun for damn near everything; wild berries can't just be wild berries, no, they have to be aliantha as well, which is admittedly a wonderful name for fruit, but that's just one example of many. Donaldson's a good enough writer that I think he could just as easily have made the Land feel as foreign as it does without resorting to such extremes, and to be fair, if you stick with the first trilogy and like what you read you might find that this will give the Land a strong sense of place, but I wouldn't be bringing it up if I didn't think it wouldn't potentially turn off prospective readers. At least each book comes with a glossary, which only gets bigger with each book, that does go some way to making audiences feel less lost. Now, I do like Donaldson's writing, when it flows well, it flows really well, but there’s at least one moment per book where he gets so lost in his own sea of words, so desperate to please people skeptical of fantasy ever being able to get considered literature that sometimes you get sentences and similes which make no damn sense at all, like this:
"Drool's Moon embittered the night like a consummation of gall."
-Chapter 22, "The Catacombs of Mount Thunder"
...what? I know what all these words mean individually, but configured together like this, what the fuck is that?
That's hardly the most annoying aspecgt of the writing to me; no, my greatest pet peeve with the Chronicles is that the character moments are either deeply understated or lamentably melodramatic, and sometimes one or the other directly follows the other; for every “Unhomed” chapter, there's moments like these:
“...Covenant knew that Atiaran had not been wrong. He had seen himself kill at the Battle of Soaring Woodhelven, and had thought in his folly that being a killer was something new for him, something unprecedented. But it was not something he had recently become; he had been that way from the beginning of the dream, from the beginning. In an intuitive leap, he saw that there was no difference between what the ur-viles had done to the Wraiths and what he had done to Lena. He had been serving Lord Foul since his first day in the Land.
'”No!'” he spat as if he were boiling in acid. '”No, I won't do it anymore. I'm not going to be the victim anymore. I will not be waited on by children.” He shook with the ague of his rage as he cried at himself, You raped her! You stinking bloody bastard!
“He felt as weak as if the understanding of what he had done corroded his bones.”
-Chapter 19, “Ringthane's Choice”
Now compare that to what I consider the single best chapter in the book:
"Foamfollower's question caught him wondering.
'Are you a storyteller, Thomas Covenant?'
Abruptly, he replied, 'I was, once.'
'And you gave it up? Ah, that is as sad a tale in three words as any you might have told me. But a life without a tale is like a sea without salt. How do you live?'
Covenant folded his arms across the gunwales and rested his chin on them. As the boat moved, Andelain opened constantly in front of him like a bud; but he ignored it, concentrated instead on the plaint of water past the prow. Unsconsciously, he clenched his fist over his ring. 'I live.'
'Another?' Foamfollower returned. 'In two words, a story sadder than the first. Say no more - with one word you will make me weep.'"
-Chapter 11, “The Unhomed”
These are the extremes in drama and subtlety that exist in these books, and this first book somehow feels more unbalanced in it than the rest of the trilogy, though there are just enough moments of understatement for me to see it through to the end.
Whether or not you can stomach this book or the rest of the series will largely depend on your tolerance for Thomas Covenant himself; the man complains about damn near everything, and though most everything else about his reaction to the Land makes sense to me, what I can't square is why he wouldn't want to live in a world where ableism, the prejudice that most directly affects him in his own world, simply doesn't exist. It's too good to be true, yes, but most other people in his position would settle there in a heartbeat.
Not to say I don't intellectually get why he's like this; he's the sort of person who needs absolute certainty in his life, and regularly examining his frail, emaciated, deteriorating frame is the surest method he has of grounding himself in reality. But the Land takes that away from him; the soil heals him, and he has no idea how to take this, but he certainly doesn't take it well, because it takes away that measure of grounding he once had. So he becomes convinced that the Land's only a dream, because nerves generally don't recover from degeneration or necrosis; once they're gone, they're gone, so a world where this isn't true has to be a fiction, and to accept this is to give into madness. If he accepts that he's healthy once again, he might forget himself, forget what makes him him. And the first two chapters indeed do a good job setting up the state he's in and why his rituals matter, but still, I just don't get why even taking all this into account, he refuses to entertain the idea of a world where he's loved for all his flaws, a world that actively tries to help and cure him, a world that doesn't persecute him for the cruel accident of fate that is his illness.
Now for the biggest sticking point... there's no way to put this delicately: Covenant rapes the first person he meets for no other reason than because he can. There's more reasons to infer from the chapter than that, but ultimately “because he can” is the best explanation there is. Thankfully, the scene is surprisingly indirect in its description, given what's happening, and it barely lasts more than a paragraph, which I thought was harrowing, but that was in the innocent days before I read the Gap Cycle. The more I reread this trilogy, the more I wonder why Donaldson thought this had to happen. I suppose the most pragmatic answer would be that Elena has to be born somehow, The Illearth War wasn't going to write itself, and it is impressive how so many of the terrible things that happen across not only this series, but all of the Chronicles, are in some way a result of this terrible act because this is the sort of fantasy where evil only brings more evil into the world.
But still, it does feel... out of character? Bear with me a moment; Covenant's a shithead, but except for that one part, he's not the “shut up or I'll stick my dick in you” sort of shithead, it was an entirely spontaneous act. In fact, he feels horrible whenever he kills enemy forces, it gets to him so deeply that it gives him moments of suicidal ideation, which is a big deal for someone who fears death so much and otherwise acts mostly in the name of his own self-preservation. With that said, there's no doubt in my mind some readers will be annoyed that he ruminates about killing enemy soldiers more than he does about, you know, sexually assaulting the person who welcomed him to the Land. It takes him about 3/4 of the book for him to internalize that, for the full force of his sin to hit him, but still, that getting to him less than dispatching those who only have killing him on their mind for half the last third, the optics of that don't look particularly good.
Oh, and remember how I said that the first two chapters do a good job setting up Covenant's relentless empiricism? Well, I do stand by that, but the Chronicles as a whole unfortunately shows its hand far too soon, with an apparent transplant from the Land proposing an ethical dilemma about a real person in all the ways we recognize the word suddenly appearing in another place full of new sensations which he must save. The subject refuses the call to action because they don't believe any of it to be real, and the text directly asks us if this behaviour is courageous or cowardly. Now that's just too on the nose; I really wish the book(s) would let us arrive at the question organically rather than directly telling us the questions we're supposed to ask of Donaldson's intent, it takes away from the otherwise intriguing quandaries they pose by telling us outright what we're supposed to interrogate about the premise.
Before I conclude, I'd like to name the book's biggest saving grace: its supporting characters, not least of which because the vast majority of them are all infinitely more likeable than Covenant. I don't read these books for Covenant's adventures, I read them because I'm madly in love with the people who associate with him and I want them to live. Their empathy stands in stark contrast to Covenant's selfishness, cowardice, and rage; their kindness and patience is seldom met with anything other than the most unbecoming antipathy, but it's still uplifting in the face of such overwhelming bleakness.
Frustrating though it is to expend this much effort to understand someone who'd spit in your face if he caught you doing that, it's still rather moving that they put up with this nonsense at all. The idea of a world full of people who know actively try to heal even the worst specimens because they sense suffering in a world where no one should have to suffer needlessly, that left quite an impression on me given the time I was reading these books, and it's still something I cling onto when rereading; sometimes, I can put up with a lot in a book if it has characters that empathetic, because, as the late, great Terry Pratchett once said, people need fantasies to make life bearable.
When all's said and done, Lord Foul's Bane feels more like a proof of concept than anything else; it has that “debut novel” air about it, in all the ways it is clearly inspired by Lord of the Rings but without all the subversions of it that would come later, like it's not entirely sure what to do with that influence. The first half, aside from, perhaps... the incident, deeply engages me with its characterization of the Land and its inhabitants, then the rest of it is more or less a bog-standard quest story, though not without some good small interactions between characters, it feels more like setup than anything else, but it does have basically everything I love about the Land and the people who populate it, that much it does wonderfully, which is enough to make me want to reexperience the rest of the trilogy, which, at the end of the day, is all you can ask for in the first of a series.
First impressions of this brave new world were hardly favourable; seriously, what possessed Donaldson to name the first character in the Land we meet Drool Rockworm? It's so silly and out of place in a world with otherwise far more imaginative names that the only way I can make it make sense is imagining the name as a Cavewight insult which he took up as a name because he was too stupid to recognize it for the jibe that it is. And there's also Lord Foul; all things considered, he's actually quite easy to take seriously because his malevolence is so all-encompassing that it really does feel like he's threatening the reader as much as he is Covenant. But come on, Lord Foul? The Despiser? Because it's not enough for him to be foul, you have to tell us he hates everything?
What he had to say was a hell of a lot more promising, fortunately. His hatred is so omnipresent that half the time, it feels like his evil is directed towards you, the reader. Yes, you. Especially you, Bridget, which probably isn't your name, but I just felt like freaking out all the Bridgets of the world and ripping off one of Zero Punctuation's best jokes. I just really like how personal he gets when we've only just met him, preying on Covenant's insecurities, belittling his condition even when offering health in the same breath.
Which reminds me of one of the things I like most about this series: I love how sparing Donaldson is with Foul's appearances; in the first two Chronicles, he only ever appears at the beginning and the end of them. His hand is certainly present in part of the climax of [b:The Illearth War|228990|The Illearth War (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, #2)|Stephen R. Donaldson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387037078l/228990._SY75_.jpg|1105522], but we're denied an audience with him because that's how powerful he's gotten by that point, able to influence others from his base of power. His presence is truly felt across the entire series without him needing to be there all the time, like he indirectly manifests wherever evil appears and stains the earth, which is why it was so disappointing to see him slightly more often in the Last Chronicles. Felt like a bad omen to see Foul not only introduce himself once in [b:The Runes of the Earth|337100|The Runes of the Earth (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, #1)|Stephen R. Donaldson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327916636l/337100._SY75_.jpg|3239005], but possess someone a few chapters later and talk to Linden Avery in a way that comes dangerously close to resembling old friends, though that would hardly be the biggest consequence of that final tetralogy's serious lack of editorial restraint.
Even after having read this book three times, it still takes time warming to the Land, because there's an alternative noun for damn near everything; wild berries can't just be wild berries, no, they have to be aliantha as well, which is admittedly a wonderful name for fruit, but that's just one example of many. Donaldson's a good enough writer that I think he could just as easily have made the Land feel as foreign as it does without resorting to such extremes, and to be fair, if you stick with the first trilogy and like what you read you might find that this will give the Land a strong sense of place, but I wouldn't be bringing it up if I didn't think it wouldn't potentially turn off prospective readers. At least each book comes with a glossary, which only gets bigger with each book, that does go some way to making audiences feel less lost. Now, I do like Donaldson's writing, when it flows well, it flows really well, but there’s at least one moment per book where he gets so lost in his own sea of words, so desperate to please people skeptical of fantasy ever being able to get considered literature that sometimes you get sentences and similes which make no damn sense at all, like this:
"Drool's Moon embittered the night like a consummation of gall."
-Chapter 22, "The Catacombs of Mount Thunder"
...what? I know what all these words mean individually, but configured together like this, what the fuck is that?
That's hardly the most annoying aspecgt of the writing to me; no, my greatest pet peeve with the Chronicles is that the character moments are either deeply understated or lamentably melodramatic, and sometimes one or the other directly follows the other; for every “Unhomed” chapter, there's moments like these:
“...Covenant knew that Atiaran had not been wrong. He had seen himself kill at the Battle of Soaring Woodhelven, and had thought in his folly that being a killer was something new for him, something unprecedented. But it was not something he had recently become; he had been that way from the beginning of the dream, from the beginning. In an intuitive leap, he saw that there was no difference between what the ur-viles had done to the Wraiths and what he had done to Lena. He had been serving Lord Foul since his first day in the Land.
'”No!'” he spat as if he were boiling in acid. '”No, I won't do it anymore. I'm not going to be the victim anymore. I will not be waited on by children.” He shook with the ague of his rage as he cried at himself, You raped her! You stinking bloody bastard!
“He felt as weak as if the understanding of what he had done corroded his bones.”
-Chapter 19, “Ringthane's Choice”
Now compare that to what I consider the single best chapter in the book:
"Foamfollower's question caught him wondering.
'Are you a storyteller, Thomas Covenant?'
Abruptly, he replied, 'I was, once.'
'And you gave it up? Ah, that is as sad a tale in three words as any you might have told me. But a life without a tale is like a sea without salt. How do you live?'
Covenant folded his arms across the gunwales and rested his chin on them. As the boat moved, Andelain opened constantly in front of him like a bud; but he ignored it, concentrated instead on the plaint of water past the prow. Unsconsciously, he clenched his fist over his ring. 'I live.'
'Another?' Foamfollower returned. 'In two words, a story sadder than the first. Say no more - with one word you will make me weep.'"
-Chapter 11, “The Unhomed”
These are the extremes in drama and subtlety that exist in these books, and this first book somehow feels more unbalanced in it than the rest of the trilogy, though there are just enough moments of understatement for me to see it through to the end.
Whether or not you can stomach this book or the rest of the series will largely depend on your tolerance for Thomas Covenant himself; the man complains about damn near everything, and though most everything else about his reaction to the Land makes sense to me, what I can't square is why he wouldn't want to live in a world where ableism, the prejudice that most directly affects him in his own world, simply doesn't exist. It's too good to be true, yes, but most other people in his position would settle there in a heartbeat.
Not to say I don't intellectually get why he's like this; he's the sort of person who needs absolute certainty in his life, and regularly examining his frail, emaciated, deteriorating frame is the surest method he has of grounding himself in reality. But the Land takes that away from him; the soil heals him, and he has no idea how to take this, but he certainly doesn't take it well, because it takes away that measure of grounding he once had. So he becomes convinced that the Land's only a dream, because nerves generally don't recover from degeneration or necrosis; once they're gone, they're gone, so a world where this isn't true has to be a fiction, and to accept this is to give into madness. If he accepts that he's healthy once again, he might forget himself, forget what makes him him. And the first two chapters indeed do a good job setting up the state he's in and why his rituals matter, but still, I just don't get why even taking all this into account, he refuses to entertain the idea of a world where he's loved for all his flaws, a world that actively tries to help and cure him, a world that doesn't persecute him for the cruel accident of fate that is his illness.
Now for the biggest sticking point... there's no way to put this delicately: Covenant rapes the first person he meets for no other reason than because he can. There's more reasons to infer from the chapter than that, but ultimately “because he can” is the best explanation there is. Thankfully, the scene is surprisingly indirect in its description, given what's happening, and it barely lasts more than a paragraph, which I thought was harrowing, but that was in the innocent days before I read the Gap Cycle. The more I reread this trilogy, the more I wonder why Donaldson thought this had to happen. I suppose the most pragmatic answer would be that Elena has to be born somehow, The Illearth War wasn't going to write itself, and it is impressive how so many of the terrible things that happen across not only this series, but all of the Chronicles, are in some way a result of this terrible act because this is the sort of fantasy where evil only brings more evil into the world.
But still, it does feel... out of character? Bear with me a moment; Covenant's a shithead, but except for that one part, he's not the “shut up or I'll stick my dick in you” sort of shithead, it was an entirely spontaneous act. In fact, he feels horrible whenever he kills enemy forces, it gets to him so deeply that it gives him moments of suicidal ideation, which is a big deal for someone who fears death so much and otherwise acts mostly in the name of his own self-preservation. With that said, there's no doubt in my mind some readers will be annoyed that he ruminates about killing enemy soldiers more than he does about, you know, sexually assaulting the person who welcomed him to the Land. It takes him about 3/4 of the book for him to internalize that, for the full force of his sin to hit him, but still, that getting to him less than dispatching those who only have killing him on their mind for half the last third, the optics of that don't look particularly good.
Oh, and remember how I said that the first two chapters do a good job setting up Covenant's relentless empiricism? Well, I do stand by that, but the Chronicles as a whole unfortunately shows its hand far too soon, with an apparent transplant from the Land proposing an ethical dilemma about a real person in all the ways we recognize the word suddenly appearing in another place full of new sensations which he must save. The subject refuses the call to action because they don't believe any of it to be real, and the text directly asks us if this behaviour is courageous or cowardly. Now that's just too on the nose; I really wish the book(s) would let us arrive at the question organically rather than directly telling us the questions we're supposed to ask of Donaldson's intent, it takes away from the otherwise intriguing quandaries they pose by telling us outright what we're supposed to interrogate about the premise.
Before I conclude, I'd like to name the book's biggest saving grace: its supporting characters, not least of which because the vast majority of them are all infinitely more likeable than Covenant. I don't read these books for Covenant's adventures, I read them because I'm madly in love with the people who associate with him and I want them to live. Their empathy stands in stark contrast to Covenant's selfishness, cowardice, and rage; their kindness and patience is seldom met with anything other than the most unbecoming antipathy, but it's still uplifting in the face of such overwhelming bleakness.
Frustrating though it is to expend this much effort to understand someone who'd spit in your face if he caught you doing that, it's still rather moving that they put up with this nonsense at all. The idea of a world full of people who know actively try to heal even the worst specimens because they sense suffering in a world where no one should have to suffer needlessly, that left quite an impression on me given the time I was reading these books, and it's still something I cling onto when rereading; sometimes, I can put up with a lot in a book if it has characters that empathetic, because, as the late, great Terry Pratchett once said, people need fantasies to make life bearable.
When all's said and done, Lord Foul's Bane feels more like a proof of concept than anything else; it has that “debut novel” air about it, in all the ways it is clearly inspired by Lord of the Rings but without all the subversions of it that would come later, like it's not entirely sure what to do with that influence. The first half, aside from, perhaps... the incident, deeply engages me with its characterization of the Land and its inhabitants, then the rest of it is more or less a bog-standard quest story, though not without some good small interactions between characters, it feels more like setup than anything else, but it does have basically everything I love about the Land and the people who populate it, that much it does wonderfully, which is enough to make me want to reexperience the rest of the trilogy, which, at the end of the day, is all you can ask for in the first of a series.
I can understand why some people would hate this book. But I think that my lifetime spent on the outskirts of society, never truly belonging, allows me to have a strong empathy for the main character. I also believe that heroes should be flawed, it makes them more believable.
This book was incredibly well written. The descriptions of the land are rich enough with detail to feel as though you are really there, but not so much that they drag down the story. The author also does a fantastic job with character development. Each character is given a purposeful role in the story.
Part of me wishes that I could jump straight in to book #2, but I have other reading obligations first. I also want to ponder this one a bit more. Give it the time in my brain that it deserves.
This book was incredibly well written. The descriptions of the land are rich enough with detail to feel as though you are really there, but not so much that they drag down the story. The author also does a fantastic job with character development. Each character is given a purposeful role in the story.
Part of me wishes that I could jump straight in to book #2, but I have other reading obligations first. I also want to ponder this one a bit more. Give it the time in my brain that it deserves.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book delivered an interesting fantasy tale, unique in many ways from some of the more popular fantasies like Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire. But I was not as invested in this story as some of those other fantasies.
I particularly liked the creativity with the different classes and unraveling the Wards. I wish the mystery of the Wards played a bigger part in the story.
I didn't care for Covenant as a character. He starts by being a terrible person and feels cheated through the whole story. While it was almost refreshing to have a main character whom the reader can hardly like, I feel it hurt the overall story.
I particularly liked the creativity with the different classes and unraveling the Wards. I wish the mystery of the Wards played a bigger part in the story.
I didn't care for Covenant as a character. He starts by being a terrible person and feels cheated through the whole story. While it was almost refreshing to have a main character whom the reader can hardly like, I feel it hurt the overall story.
Interesting and mostly dislikable main character. Some fascinating themes-- the ability to see/feel health/illness in the world around--and interesting moral issues raised. The writing felt really overwrought at times. Better than a run of the mill sword'n'elf epic, but I doubt I'll ever read the rest of the series.