It’s hard to know exactly where to start here, which seems to be how Stephen R Donaldson felt when he decided to take one more trip to the well for The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. The Runes of the Earth is filled with the retelling of tales any fan of the earlier books already know-and surely no one would pick this up and start reading here-so why all the backstory? The Runes of the Earth is a pretty bad book on countless levels. It follows in the tradition of the Second Chronicles-give the readers something broken-by allowing long years…
Tag: linden
The One Tree by Stephen R Donaldson
The Matrix lost it’s way once the Wachowski Brothers decided the machines were the good guys and humans didn’t matter. Once the Programs took the lead, the story was doomed. In The One Tree, Stephen R Donaldson starts down the same dark path that the Wachowski Brothers took-he begins to make mere humans irrelevant. The fruit of his love affair with demi-gods will not ripen until the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but the seeds are planted here. I still loved The One Tree, for all it’s nonsense about Elohim and The Worm of The World’s End and The Guardian…
The Wounded Land
When the Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant came out, I had already read the first Chronicles at least twice. I read The Wounded Land greedily and found it to be just as compelling as the first books. It was kind of tough having to wait years between books. The Wounded Land starts off with our real hero, Linden Avery. A doctor who has a lot of secrets and has burdens laid on top of her from the moment she arrives in town. The first three chapters or so take place in the real world and the Second Chronicles breaks the tradition…
Against All Things Ending
Stephen R Donaldson writes about people you don’t like doing things you don’t understand. But I still have a soft spot for him. Among the first books I discovered on my own were the three books of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever. These were kind of a cross between Alice in Wonderland, Lord of The Rings, and Dune, with a touch of The Wizard of Oz tossed in for good measure. I loved these stories. The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant were a little less cheery than the first, and the first were about as cheery as a…