#20 Thomas Covenant books by Steven R Donaldson

Behold the anti-hero of legend. One that so many reviewers love or hate. When last I wrote this book countdown, I placed it in my top 10, but time has not been good for the series for a few reasons. This is a book that, so often, I see people stop reading a few chapters in and give up on it, and over time has been lost on many peoples lists.

First, the newer books in the series become more incoherent as each one is published. That makes me struggle with the series as a whole. I think the author should have given up at the end of the second trilogy. The second trilogy was not great, but it was not bad. Then it just got bad.

Second, I believe that I am living in the greatest age of fantasy writing. In the 1970s, a number of mediocre writers wrote fantasy. They are hailed by many, but the books are not very good. So it is easy for a good book like this one to rise to the top in the 80s and 90s, However, the same book is struggling with the writing of today’s authors. yes, many are still pumping out junk, but there is a vast array of fantastic storytelling and writing out there.

The final thing varies in this time frame that makes it not age as well will be covered in my review.

I listened to many of these books in the last few years. I was trying to pull myself back to my youth and relive this. I have read the first trilogy every 5-6 years now I am older. The world building is deep and for the time it was written it is unique.

Thomas Covenant is a leper. The stigma that goes with that was more horrible 40-50 years ago, so he was really cast out of the community. No one wanted to be near him, no one knew how it was spread. His wife and child left him, and he found himself bitter and alone. He hates everyone for the place that he is in, he was an author and is living on the few checks still rolling in. Physically, he has had some of his fingers amputated when he did not take care of himself, and clings to his wedding ring. The white gold ring that is the memory of his love and marriage.

This paints him and bitter, angry, cynical, and just a disagreeable character. He rarely lets glimpses of a better, happier person seeps through. I think this resonated more in my youth. I had my friends. Eric, Merrill, Dan, Tracy, and a few other nerds growing up, but before them, I was picked on and ignored. I registered that anger, and bitterness.

He finds himself summoned to a magic land by a being wanting the white gold and the power it represents. Legends tell of the power in it, and that it can save and/or destroy the land. He ends up in a small village and is found by a teenage girl who sees a half handed figure fighting the evil. It brings to people’s mind the image of Berik the half hand that saved the land a millenia before. Due to a chain of events that I will not try and explain, he eventually ends up raping her. This transgression will haunt him in every book and every step of the journey he takes. He can never escape it.

That is the reason that many stop reading, and is why the book does not go over as well. I see myself in the girl’s father now. As a father to three daughters, I struggle more with the book than I did as a youth. In the books, no one feels they can judge him because of the power he wields. Overwhelmed by grief for what he did, he tries again and again to fix things, only to destroy and damage the land a little more. In many ways, the anti-hero come to peace with what happened by realizing he can never atone for what he did. There is not making it better.

He makes poor choice after poor choice. Some knowingly, others by chance. He does do both. He does destroy the land, and save it. The second trilogy is heartbreaking, as he returns after a millennium has passed. Everything about the land that he loved is gone, everything’s is corrupted by the evil that can never fully be destroyed.

As I write this, part of me thinks it should be lowed, and also higher than where I dropped it. Maybe I will come to grips with this book. I hunted for the original trilogy in the covers with the picture I show here. I only rarely hunt for Hardbacks, They can overtake the house, and i don’t want to damage them by taking them out into the world on trips. So it is pretty rare I grab them, but this trilogy I did.