Against All Things Ending - Stephen R. Donaldson

[rameumptom]

The Last Thomas Covenant Chronicles nears the end of a series that began initially in the mid 1970s.

In the First Trilogy, beginning with the book "Lord Foul's Bane", we get to slowly learn about a place called "the Land."

Thomas Covenant is a best selling author and newly married with a baby son, when he contracts leprosy. This sends his wife freaking and abandoning him. He is rejected by his community. On a rare trip to town, an old homeless man approaches him and gives him a cryptic message. Not long afterward, Covenant is hit by a car, and finds himself transported to a different place, called "the Land." The Land is a place with giants, humans, monsters, ravers, and the evil Lord Foul. Through the first trilogy, as Covenant jumps back and forth to earth and the Land, we find that the old man is the Creator of the land. In creating a new world, the creator found out that his archenemy had placed evil throughout the world, in order to take possession of it for himself. However, while Lord Foul was busy in the Land placing his evil, the Creator enclosed him inside the world by the Arch of Time. Since then, Foul has sought his release by destroying the Arch.

Because of his leprosy and need to keep control of what goes on with him so he doesn't lose body parts to injury, he initially chooses to disbelieve what is happening to him. He stands passively by while he sees Foul destroy peoples and friends through his manipulations of everyone, and destructive armies. Eventually, Covenant accepts that the Land is real, and steps in to save it.

Thomas Covenant's wedding ring is of white gold, a clear violation of purity. It possesses wild magic, hard to control, but powerful enough to either stop Lord Foul or destroy the Arch of Time and allowing for Foul's release.

In the first Trilogy, Foul is thwarted by Covenant and friends he has made in the land.

In the Second Trilogy, Covenant returns to the land 10 years after his last encounter. This time, he arrives with a woman, Linden Avery. She becomes the Chosen, as he is the UnBeliever and owner of white magic. Lord Foul now uses a corruption of the Land to slowly destroy it. While before, the Land gave people special percipience and magical power, now it has been corrupted by blood sacrifice, etc. Covenant and Avery travel through the trilogy attempting to create a Staff of Law to control the earth power and return all to its natural ways. Along the way, they must attempt to gain wood from the holy tree that made the original staff. It is on an island, where the worm of the world sleeps. If it is awakened, it will consume all things, breaking the Arch of Time. They do create a new staff. At the end of this trilogy, Covenant hands his white gold ring over to Foul, who then seeks to use it to destroy Covenant. His body destroyed, his spirit returns and Foul's efforts to stop him causes Foul to diminish himself. Covenant has become a part of the Arch of Time, defender of the Land. Linden Avery is returned to earth, where she keeps Thomas' ring as a memory of the love they shared in the Land.

This second Trilogy was written in the 1980s. The last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant began just a few years ago, and will contain 4 books total. Against All Things Ending is the 3d book in the series, with the last book coming out in about 2 years.

The Last Chronicles begin 10 years later with Linden Avery as a doctor over a psychiatric ward. Thomas' ex-wife, Joan, is one of her patients. Lord Foul had created a religion on earth of people that were in despair. These had mutilated and burned their right hands, as to mimic Thomas' missing fingers. Linden has adopted one of the children, Jeremiah, who is autistic and missing fingers on his right hand. Jeremiah does have a gift of building remarkable structures with tinker toys and legos.

Thomas' son, Roger, has just turned 21 and comes to claim his mother, Joan. Linden refuses, and so Roger ends up kidnapping Joan and Jeremiah. Linden chases after them. Due to events, all of them are transported to the Land. Linden is separated from the others. In the first book, she finds that the Land has changed even more, as a thousand years has passed. She obtains friends, and finds that the Staff of Law that she and Thomas created the last time, was lost.

Joan is now in the hands of a raver, one of Lord Foul's wraiths. He is using her broken mind to create rifts or caesures in time. Linden uses these caesures to go back and retrieve the staff from a period long ago. In returning to the present with her new companions, they go to the old fortress of Revelstone, where they are surrounded by the enemy. In the midst of this, she sees riders coming into the fortress, including Thomas Covenant and Jeremiah!

The second book shows how Linden works with Covenant and Jeremiah, her friends and some very powerful beings (each with their own agenda), to try and fix things. Again, they go back into the past, where Covenant plans on drinking from the river of earth power to obtain the word of command to destroy Foul. Linden finds out that it is not Thomas Covenant, but Roger Covenant disguised. Roger wears the powerful hand of a being named Kastenessen, and uses it to destroy. Jeremiah, who has seemed to be alert and alive, is now seen to be still in his original state, but with a croyel sucking his blood and forcing Jeremiah to do their bidding. Jeremiah has the power to creat constructs that can bend time and space. Roger and the croyel seek to destroy Foul and the Arch of Time, so they can have Jeremiah take them anywhere through constructs, making them gods.

Linden escapes with her friends back to the present, where they go to the virtuous glades of Andelain, where the righteous deceased dwell. Many powerful beings seek to stop her from going there. Upon arriving, the ancient beings arrive with Thomas Covenant. None of them speak, as they must allow Linden the ability to choose for herself. Using the staff of Law, Thomas' wild magic ring, and a magical knife that gives power to Andelain, she resurrects Thomas. He kneels trembling before her and asks, "Linden, what have you done?" One of the powerful beings states, "She has awakened the Worm of the World."

The current book, Against All Things Ending, continues here. Thomas is resurrected, but his mind is filled with millennium of events occurring as part of the Arch of Time. He slips in and out of those memories as time goes on. While in past trips to the Land, Thomas' leprosy was "cured", this time the leprosy remains with him. The worm of the world is awakened, but it will take several days for it to make its way to the Land and destroy everything by drinking up the river of earth blood. Its first mission will be to consume the Elohim, a group of powerful beings who were created to protect the world from the worm, by keeping it asleep. They all flee into hiding, so as to prolong their lives and that of the world.

Major enemies to Linden and Thomas include: Lord Foul, the worm, Kastenessen, Roger, Joan (who is semi-controlled by a raver), She Who Must Not Be Named, and other monsters that have been set loose upon the land. Jeremiah must be saved. Joan must be stopped from destroying the world with her wild magic. All must be done before the worm destroys the world and sets Lord Foul loose.

To not give away any of the book, I must say that this book keeps up the intricacy of all of the books. There is always something going on. Fortunately, for those who are just beginning the books, there is a prologue on each book explaining what has occurred before. Also, many previous events that impact on the current situation are covered well inside the books. These books are as descriptive and involved as Tolkien's LOTR and Hobbit, yet they are very different. They are dark and drastic, but excellent.

For those enjoying an intense fantasy series, this is one to read.

[NeuroTypical]

The first trilogy was probably my favorite set of fiction back in my high-school and early college days - even topping Frank Herbert for a while. I found it very thought provoking, and learned a lot about the nature of despair and hope.

Then I started dating my future wife, and she read the first trilogy and absolutely hated Covenant. From her point of view, he showed up, raped a girl, and spent the next three books whining about his sorry life and how he was such a victim and everyone was mean to him. He held his place as protagonist and hero, basically because he felt really bad about the rape, and also because he could destroy the world so all the good guys had to humor him. That interaction brought my understanding of hope and despair to an even higher level - and tempered it with a healthy dose of pragmatic reality.

So yeah, I did a lot of growing through reading those books and talking about them with folk. I consider that pretty high praise for a work of fiction.

LM

[rameumptom]

Covenant's view of despair and victimization changes in the following trilogies. By the Last Chronicles, he realizes how important others have been to his success in saving the world. And he learns to believe in others, trust, and look beyond his own weaknesses, and take responsibility for his actions. Very interesting to see how he is redeemed and actually helps to redeem many others in the books, as he gets beyond his own problems, and truly becomes a savior archetype.

[mikbone]

Thanks for the post.

I loved the Thomas Covenant Chronicles and read them in High School. I never really got into his other serries but loved the land.

I had no idea that this 3rd trilogy was out. I just downloaded the electronic version.

[Kawazu]

Having read several fantasy novels, I found the 1st Chronicles of Thomas Covenant to be refreshing because the trilogy highlighted how the hero, propelled by destiny, seems to be boxed in by the expectations of those he is supposed to save.

By contrast, most fantasy novel protagonists seem to bear the mantle of greatness, lightly.

Another thing that struck me was how forgiving the people who inhabited the mythical land were. It seemed like that characteristic would make the land a very empathetic place.

[rameumptom]

Not all the characters in the first trilogy were forgiving. Thomas raped 16 year old Lena, imagining he was in a dream. Her father Atiaran went crazy and attempted to destroy Covenant by destroying the fortress Revelstone's integrity.

[NeuroTypical]

Yeah, Lena's parents had it tough. The Mom had to give up any notions of justice for her daughter within 24 hours of her daughter's violation. The dad woke up the next day to find his daughter all raped, and his wife off acting as travel guide to the guy who did it, and every good guy in the Land telling him to just shut up about it and not make waves, or else the whole planet would blow up or something.

As I said, I learned a lot lot about the nature of despair and hope.

I also learned that most of the time, it's pretty much a good thing to not shut up, and make the biggest friggin' wave I can, when in that guy's position.