I read the First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant when I was in High School. It was a profound and very interesting work. Even to my young eyes it was clear that Stephen liked to write with a Dictionary and Thesaurus close at hand, as the books were full of words like Elohim and Adumbrate and Loins. Streams of waters, were always rills. Large rocks were always megaliths. Nights were always Stygian. And so on and so forth. Reading these books was a vocabulary lesson as well as a heart wrenching story of loss and despair. And I loved every verbose, rambling, overwritten word of it.
The first three books were good. They were enough. Like The Matrix, they were complete and true to themselves. And like The Matrix, the idea that there was more money to be wrung out of this well was clear for all to see.
The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant were almost as good as the First. It was full of wonder and desecration and loss and despair. I liked it, even if I did not agree with many of the things it said. The fundamental alteration of the Laws of The Land could only serve to make everything that went before meaningless. It would only get worse in the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, which should have been called The Chronicles of Linden Avery The Chosen.
The Last Chronicles, well, where to start? Thomas Covenant died at the end of the Second Chronicles, so we have no ‘real’ world story of him. Instead we have Linden Avery, who has adopted one of the ash covered freaks that brought forth Lord Foul in the Second Chronicles. This makes about as much sense as a Norman Bates going back home to run the Bates Motel. There is a lot of stuff that happens in the ‘real’ world. Roger Covenant, Thomas son, is now a bad guy. His Thomas’s ex-wife Joan, is mad and under Dr Avery’s care, something else that makes no damned sense at all. The adopted son is autistic, and spends all his time building things. Everyone gets killed. Avery, her idiot son, Covenant’s son Roger and his ex-wife Joan. They all end up in The Land. Since they are all dead, there is no need to worry about whether they will head back home anytime soon. The story in The Land can go on forever, or as close to it as Stephen Donaldson wants to take it.
I read The Runes of the Earth, but to be honest, it left next to no impression on me.
Before I get to The Fatal Revenant, I need to talk about a few key moments in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever. Our hero, such as he is, Thomas Covenant, is a not so good man. But he has power, a power greater than any other on Earth. He just doesn’t know how to use it. That is the crux of the first three books. The important bits of the story, the ones that gave me goosebumps the first time I read them, were Thomas Covenant coming into his power. These were small acts, almost accidental. But they were good.
Again I will fall back on The Matrix. In the first movie, the special effects were cool, but they served the story. In the second and third there was no story, it was nothing but pointless special effects that were totally without meaning.
Which brings us to The Fatal Revenant.
We open the story where The Runes of the Earth left off, with Thomas Covenant and Jemimah, Linden’s idiot son, riding toward Revelstone. The story is fraught with familiarity. An endless horde of new bad guys add nothing to the story. The surprises are the same, the pointless use of Power is the same, the meaningless hopping from place to place is the same. As with anyone who gives up regular story telling to use the gimmick of Time Travel, nothing matters, as anything can be changed. Oh, there is a lot of talk about breaking the Arch of Time, and it seems impossible that the things she does in the past could have not changed history. It has also been setup so that she will need to travel back in time again to met with Berek Halfhand.
There are many battles, all of which mean nothing. Many deaths, to random strangers, which mean nothing. The bad guys are too numerous to count, and still can’t seem to win any battles that matter. As with all the other Chronicles, Lord Foul has made no appearance and will likely not show up till the last chapter of the last book.
In the end there is more power, more enemies, more unexpected help, more confusion as to what it all means. It was all a big build up, and I must admit that I liked the last few pages more than all the hundreds that preceded it. This is a story that feels drawn out for the fun drawing it out.
And yet, I still read it. I still went out and bought it, which is something I seldom do. I’m a big library user. And will read the next book, or two books as the case maybe. This was a good read, but it could have been better.
There is always hope that Stephen R Donaldson will pick up the ball he has dropped and run for a touchdown. But it is looking less and less likely that he will do so.
