In addition to today (April 13) being Roger Zelazny’s birthday, today is also Stephen Donaldson’s birthday (b. 1947).
I’m not trying to start something, but I’m going to start something.
I’ve read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I think it was the summer after I graduated college, but it might have been the summer between my junior and senior years. It’s been too long.
The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant came out while I was in high school. I read them while I was in graduate school.
The first volume of The Final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Runes of the Earth, was published right after we got back from Kazakhstan with our adopted son. I read it, but I never read the rest of them. I did pick up the rest of the series at various Friends of the Library sales. At least I think I did. I may not have the last one. I’ll have to check. Most of my library is still in boxes.
There was a recent thread about the first trilogy on Twitter/X/Whatever a few weeks ago. The general consensus is that most people didn’t like the books, or at least loathed the character of Covenant.
I have to admit that if a friend who had read them hadn’t given me a heads-up about what happens at the end of the (I think) second chapter of the first book, I probably wouldn’t have read any further.
I still probably wouldn’t have finished the first set if Covenant hadn’t stopped whining and tried to actually do something heroic by trying to save the little girl who had been bitten by a snake early in The Power That Preserves.
I have to admit that the Darrel K. Sweet covers were what first caught my eye. I had somehow gotten trade paperback copies of the series instead of the mass markets, and those were the editions I read.
I’ve read some of Donaldson’s shorter works and liked them. I’ve not read any of his novels in either his science fiction or fantasy series.
So, here’s where I’m going to start something. I’m curious.
Have you read any of the Thomas Covenant books, and if so, at which point did you stop (if you did) and why?
What do you think of Covenant as opposed to the world Donaldson created? I loved the world and the other characters. Even while despising Covenant.
Not that I’m trying to start something or anything.
I did read the first two Covenant trilogies on a fairly regular basis back in high school & college. (And I admit that the first time I read them, or even the first few, the full implications of THAT action of Covenant’s kind of slipped past me.)
The last time I read them was when the first Last Chronicles volume came out, and I was surprised to discover how much of my internal fantasy lexicon had actually been lifted wholesale from the Covenant books.
Someday I’ll have to go back and reread them, and continue on through the full Last Chronicles.
Yeah, if I hadn’t been given a heads-up about the rape, I doubt I would have read further. I can see how it would be shockiing if you didn’t know it was coming.
I seem to remember reading the first one, and there was a rape?, and I stopped.
I only read the first one and did not like it. That probably precludes me from making a judgement on the whole series, but I don’t really feel the need to read the rest. Maybe they got better.
I remember some reviewer who considered the books better and more “grown up” than the Lord of the Rings because of the rape and other dark things. I don’t actually think he was for rape, but that was kind of stupid thing to say. (He was also ignoring some very serious stuff in Tolkien’s work.) You can write extremely dark books that are very good. I very much admire Blood Meridian, but it was about man’s inhumanity to man. The rape in TC was just gratuitous.
I agree. The first time I reread Tolkien as an adult, I was surprised at how dark some of the LoTR was. I also had that reaction to some eof Fred Pohl’s and Henry Kuttner’s short fiction. Grown up does not need to mean gratuitous sex and violence.
I read the First Chronicles when I was in eighth grade, so the spring of 1982 or thereabouts. I remember that Covenant’s rape of Lena upset me terribly. I was old enough to understand what Covenant did, but I continued the series since there wasn’t a lot of options in the fantasy genre at the time. I didn’t like Covenant, but, over all, I did enjoy them.
I re-read the series when I was 24, and, while I still didn’t like Covenant, I found that I enjoyed the series more than when I was 13. I re-read the series again when I was 49 and have to say it is one of my favorite fantasy series. In fact, I’m currently re-reading The Power that Preserves.
As the years have gone by, I have returned to both the First and Second Chronicles over and over because of the beauty of the Land depicted by Donaldson and the many secondary characters that I’ve grown very fond of such as Lord Mhoram and Foamfollower. As for Covenant, I can’t say that I like him but I’ve grown to have a modicum of appreciation for him.
I’ve tried reading Donaldson’s other works but didn’t find them appealing. And I read the first chapter of The Runes of the Earth but found Linden Avery to be even more unlikeable than she was in the Second Chronicles so I decided to skip the Last Chronicles. Honestly, when the Second Chronicles were published, I really didn’t see the need story-wise for a second series. I felt that the first series had a satisfactory ending. But I read the second series and enjoyed it, and it had a satisfactory ending, so I don’t see the need for a last series.
It was everything except Thomas Covenant that kept me reading Donaldson. The Land and the secondary characters were what carried the story for me.
Covenant is not meant to be a likable character, at all, when you first meet him. Yes, he’s been dealt an awful hand by life, but he’s been determined to make the worst of it. Not only does he rape a woman while convinced everything is happening inside his head, but he then (in book 2) tries to push all responsibility for fixing the mess he has helped create in the world onto his daughter (the daughter resulting from that rape). At the time this was written, that was shocking in the fantasy genre world. Now we have many more antiheroic characters in our genre fiction, so no one is shocked by the same type of character in Abercrombie or Martin (even if they don’t like the character).
But the overall story arc is one of redemption, from the absolute low point on the last page of book 2. Covenant has to acknowledge his selfishness and cowardice and start trying to be less of an asshole. Book 3 ends with him having taken the first small steps on that path. In the second trilogy we keep an eye on Covenant, but mostly switch over to Linden Avery, doctor–and murderer, who has her own redemption arc that follows slightly behind Covenant’s.
Like you, I read the first book in the third series but didn’t feel it was worth going any further, since that book had all the stylistic tricks and plot choices that made the first two series sometimes a chore. But mostly because I thought the first two series came to a perfect conclusion, at the end of book 6. The story felt complete, the two flawed protagonists had paid their dues and the plotting of all the other factions involved in trying to save the Land had come to fruition. Donaldson did some things in the course of the six books that were off-putting, puzzling, frustrating, and even anger-inducing, but he also created a genuinely beautiful otherworld, which made the threat to it really matter, and he also portrayed characters like Mhoram and Foamfollower that were very sympathetic (unlike the two protagonists). For when he was writing this, it was an original and not at all safe choice for the type of story it told.
Paul, I apologize for not repolying earlier. I’ve been ont he road the last few days.
I agree with everything you say. I was surprised when the last series was published because I thought Donaldson had wrapped up the series well. I didn’t see a need for further books.
You’re right, the series is a redemption arc, and Donaldson did take some chances. If Covenant hadn’t been trying to save the girl who had been bitten by the snake at the beginning of the third book, I doubt I would have gone further.