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kvclements 's review for:
Lord Foul's Bane
by Stephen R. Donaldson
This is an awful book. The similarities between "the Land" and Middle-Earth are so close they border on plagiarism. The plot is dull and breaks no new ground. The only character who piqued any interest for me was the mysterious and ever-patient Lord Mhoram, one of the Lords of the Land, but he doesn't get much time in the book and apparently even less as the series progresses.
The biggest strike against this book is the main character Thomas Covenant. He's afflicted with leprosy, which would give him some sympathy, except he acts like a total douche to everyone he meets. When he is transported to the Land, his leprosy is cured...and yet he continues to act like a dick and keeps trying to find a way home. Why? In the Land he's cured of an incurable disease, and yet all he wants to do is go back to the world where his flesh is constantly rotting from his bones. Worse, he rapes a 16-year-old girl, the daughter of the people who welcomed him to the Land. He makes no apology for it and seems to try to repress the memory and responsibility for doing this horrendous act throughout the book. Only at the very end does he have a bizarre attack of conscience, but by that point, I had already lost any shred of sympathy I had for him. What author makes the protagonist of their heroic fantasy tale a rapist and expect us to still hold any possible kind feelings towards them? The only reason I kept reading this book was because it was for a class. Otherwise I would have tossed it across the room.
The biggest strike against this book is the main character Thomas Covenant. He's afflicted with leprosy, which would give him some sympathy, except he acts like a total douche to everyone he meets. When he is transported to the Land, his leprosy is cured...and yet he continues to act like a dick and keeps trying to find a way home. Why? In the Land he's cured of an incurable disease, and yet all he wants to do is go back to the world where his flesh is constantly rotting from his bones. Worse, he rapes a 16-year-old girl, the daughter of the people who welcomed him to the Land. He makes no apology for it and seems to try to repress the memory and responsibility for doing this horrendous act throughout the book. Only at the very end does he have a bizarre attack of conscience, but by that point, I had already lost any shred of sympathy I had for him. What author makes the protagonist of their heroic fantasy tale a rapist and expect us to still hold any possible kind feelings towards them? The only reason I kept reading this book was because it was for a class. Otherwise I would have tossed it across the room.