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 rainy November funeral. But I really liked that set of books as well. I didn’t like the general direction that Stephen R Donaldson’s thoughts were heading, but they didn’t interfere too much with the story. It was still a story about people and their struggles, but like the second set of Star Wars movies, it also wanted to be about Issues.
The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant was a bit of a surprise, first off because good old Tom was killed off at the end of the Second Chronicles. To be honest I was expecting the next set of books to be The Chronicles of Linden Avery The Chosen, the other main character in the Second Chronicles. Having loved the first books so much, I am reading the new books as they come out.
Against All Things Ending is book three of four of The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. It is a long book in which a lot of nothing happens. There are too many random characters doing too much of the same kinds of things. All the things that were wonderful about the first trilogy are gone, all the odd and familiar things from the second trilogy are subtly altered and rendered unfamiliar. Whole hordes of new characters are tossed out by the dozen. It is all but impossible to keep the players in mind, even with Donaldson reminding us everything they are mentioned exactly who or what they are.
Clocking in at a ponderous 624 pages, Against All Things Ending plods along in the usual fashion of detailing every moment of every day as our heroes, such as they are, plod across endless barren landscapes while giving battle to endless all powerful enemies. As always, Donaldson loads down his prose with obscure words, working in such gems as adumbrated, eidolon, susurrus and minificence-among endless others. You need a copy of the OED to translate them all. These are besides the countless baffling words he makes up for the proper names, place names, and varied and sundry names of magically powers in his world. He employs all manner of weird and confusing words for ‘magic’ and prefers always to use a ten dollar word when a ten penny one would suffice. But this, of course, is nothing new for Donaldson.
The Sequels to The Matrix lost their way when they decided that humans were no longer the main characters of the story-once programs became the main characters, the movies became pointless and meaningless. Much the same has happened to the Thomas Covenant books. People no longer matter. The entire focus of the Last Chronicles is a vast horde of villains that didn’t exist in the other books. And the villains in the other books were bad enough, immortal and forever evil, what more could you ask for in a bad guy? I guess a lot. Donaldson has added so many new bad guys that he has to read them off a list several times to remind the reader and himself just who our paltry heroes are up against. The fact that our heroes are all but gods now makes this cavalcade of villains necessary, but it also seem utterly pointless.
Several characters die in Against All Things Ending, not a single death triggers any emotion at all. Everyone except Covenant and Linden are cannon fodder that will give up the ghost for their heroes at some point. The usual gang of Covenant followers are all basically one character and they are interchangeable in their actions and advice. The Giants with their overly cute names have no distinct personalities, none of them are as rich and full as Pitchwife or Foamfollower. The Ramen are random voices of self righteousness, as all Ramen have always been. The Ur-viles and Waynhim aren’t given names and act as a mob anyway. Every death is meaningless in the face of the ultimate death which hangs over all their heads as The Worm of The World’s End busies itself eating the Elohim before heading to The Land to drink the Blood of The Earth.
Stephen R Donaldson continues to make it up as he goes along. The relatively tight structures of the first books forgotten as he works his way to a finial resolution of the story. The solution is Linden’s adopted son, Jeremiah, who can make structures which can be used as prisons. All we need to do is lock up The Worm, The Despiser, and all the rest of The Land’s enemies and then the world can go back to those glory days of yesteryear. But knowing Donaldson, he’s more likely to turn everything into a cinder and destroy the panverse out of spite. We’ll have to wait till The Last Dark to find out.
I was wondering when this was coming out.
I thought the previous one, Fatal Revenant, was the best of all of them.