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velvetsilk42's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Rape, Death, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Medical trauma, Chronic illness, and Adult/minor relationship
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury and Forced institutionalization
deimosremus's review
adventurous
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
TW: Sexual assault
I get what this novel is going for completely— I think that to call Thomas Covenant an anti-hero isn’t quite accurate. Characters like Moorcock’s Elric or Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are anti-heroes— that despite their allegiances or physical constraint, they’re still capable of being powerful figures in the heroic tradition or may employ dubious means to carry out otherwise heroic acts. Covenant is a complete inversion of the fantasy hero by being not only physically impotent and damaged, but mentally fractured and embittered as well. A character defined by his constant pain and anguish as a leper, which shapes his morality and his relationships. When pain is of such normalcy to him, he reciprocates by inadvertently inflicting pain on others. I think this creates a very fascinating kind of protagonist, having the main character in a genre known for its larger-than-life heroes, as a misanthropic, weak-willed cynic. Unfortunately, that’s where my interest in Lord Foul’s Bane kind of stops, and I think these ideas/themes could have been conveyed with a different impetus than that of the rape of an underage girl.
I’ve read other reviews on here, decrying Covenant as an intensely unlikeable character, and how that makes the novel bad. That’s not what I have a problem with-- unlikeable heroes are something of a draw for me. However, by making this vile deed his first major act as a character, Donaldson must’ve known that any of his redeeming qualities were going to be very hard to convince the reader of, and I really don’t quite think the story succeeds as a redemptive one, and I don’t think it ever could (whether this was intentional on Donaldson’s part, I don’t know). Covenant acknowledges that he is beyond forgiveness, but it still begs the question of why the event occurs in the first place. Lena’s rape is even framed as a “sacrifice that had to be made for the greater good” which left a really sour taste in my mouth right from the get-go. It’s not that the material in this novel is too dark, too grim or too unsavory, it’s that (from what I understand of later novels) I feel the rape scene seems to be a device to later punish Covenant as an exchange of karmic blows, when the novel could’ve easily used a different and less… wretched way of introducing the reader to not only the themes surrounding the main character, but the world in which the characters inhabit (seeing as though it’s the first thing of consequence that happens in “The Land”). It fosters this dilemma where it could easily become a series known for how much the characters suffer more than anything else, and I ultimately don’t see much of a point in reading that.
As for the fantasy elements— as I’ve said in past reviews (notably in my review for Steven Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon), I’m not a huge reader of very world-building-centric SFF, as the world has to be exceptionally interesting (Dune, Hyperion, Left Hand of Darkness for example) for me to invest time and effort into fully retaining those details. Lord Foul’s Bane is yet another fantasy that carries the tradition of detailed worldbuilding, and while I can commend the effort it takes to form a fully-realized fantasy world, it doesn’t make for the most engaging stuff when a good chunk of the dialogue is spoken in lore-dumps and when a lot of it is the homogenous details found in most high-fantasy, Tolkien-derived novels of this type.
In the end, despite all my objections, I won’t say it’s a bad novel necessarily, but definitely an unenjoyable one— Donaldson’s writing quality is generally high, I can appreciate what he was trying to do with a character like Covenant as a reaction to heroic fantasy, and the lingering idea that “the Land” could be a coma-induced dream-like state… I can also chalk up some creative choices as a fantasy novel as not being my thing rather than being objective flaws (I like my fantasy to be either much weirder/more solitary or more subtle with fantastical concepts). However, I definitely feel that it’s a product of its time. I’m not very likely to read the sequels, as while it’s not my least favorite thing I’ve read this year (that still belongs to GotM), I don’t think it quite reached that threshold of enjoyability for me to invest the time into reading further.
I get what this novel is going for completely— I think that to call Thomas Covenant an anti-hero isn’t quite accurate. Characters like Moorcock’s Elric or Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are anti-heroes— that despite their allegiances or physical constraint, they’re still capable of being powerful figures in the heroic tradition or may employ dubious means to carry out otherwise heroic acts. Covenant is a complete inversion of the fantasy hero by being not only physically impotent and damaged, but mentally fractured and embittered as well. A character defined by his constant pain and anguish as a leper, which shapes his morality and his relationships. When pain is of such normalcy to him, he reciprocates by inadvertently inflicting pain on others. I think this creates a very fascinating kind of protagonist, having the main character in a genre known for its larger-than-life heroes, as a misanthropic, weak-willed cynic. Unfortunately, that’s where my interest in Lord Foul’s Bane kind of stops, and I think these ideas/themes could have been conveyed with a different impetus than that of the rape of an underage girl.
I’ve read other reviews on here, decrying Covenant as an intensely unlikeable character, and how that makes the novel bad. That’s not what I have a problem with-- unlikeable heroes are something of a draw for me. However, by making this vile deed his first major act as a character, Donaldson must’ve known that any of his redeeming qualities were going to be very hard to convince the reader of, and I really don’t quite think the story succeeds as a redemptive one, and I don’t think it ever could (whether this was intentional on Donaldson’s part, I don’t know). Covenant acknowledges that he is beyond forgiveness, but it still begs the question of why the event occurs in the first place. Lena’s rape is even framed as a “sacrifice that had to be made for the greater good” which left a really sour taste in my mouth right from the get-go. It’s not that the material in this novel is too dark, too grim or too unsavory, it’s that (from what I understand of later novels) I feel the rape scene seems to be a device to later punish Covenant as an exchange of karmic blows, when the novel could’ve easily used a different and less… wretched way of introducing the reader to not only the themes surrounding the main character, but the world in which the characters inhabit (seeing as though it’s the first thing of consequence that happens in “The Land”). It fosters this dilemma where it could easily become a series known for how much the characters suffer more than anything else, and I ultimately don’t see much of a point in reading that.
As for the fantasy elements— as I’ve said in past reviews (notably in my review for Steven Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon), I’m not a huge reader of very world-building-centric SFF, as the world has to be exceptionally interesting (Dune, Hyperion, Left Hand of Darkness for example) for me to invest time and effort into fully retaining those details. Lord Foul’s Bane is yet another fantasy that carries the tradition of detailed worldbuilding, and while I can commend the effort it takes to form a fully-realized fantasy world, it doesn’t make for the most engaging stuff when a good chunk of the dialogue is spoken in lore-dumps and when a lot of it is the homogenous details found in most high-fantasy, Tolkien-derived novels of this type.
In the end, despite all my objections, I won’t say it’s a bad novel necessarily, but definitely an unenjoyable one— Donaldson’s writing quality is generally high, I can appreciate what he was trying to do with a character like Covenant as a reaction to heroic fantasy, and the lingering idea that “the Land” could be a coma-induced dream-like state… I can also chalk up some creative choices as a fantasy novel as not being my thing rather than being objective flaws (I like my fantasy to be either much weirder/more solitary or more subtle with fantastical concepts). However, I definitely feel that it’s a product of its time. I’m not very likely to read the sequels, as while it’s not my least favorite thing I’ve read this year (that still belongs to GotM), I don’t think it quite reached that threshold of enjoyability for me to invest the time into reading further.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Sexual assault
The rape CW isn't graphically described, but is a major moment in the book.
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