 | By: Stephen Donaldson Binding: Paperback Publisher: Collins ISBN: 000647330X ISBN-13: 9780006473305 Released: 07 Feb 1994 RRP: Average Rating:  |
After Tolkien opened up a new area of fiction now commonly known as "Fantasy" many have tried but few have managed to add new features to the genre. Unfortunately many authors nowadays see the genre as a way to fill their writing career by keeping us in suspicion about the end for more than 11 volumes. Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles sofar consist of seven books (the first book of a third & final series is just out). And this book conveniently combines the three volumes that together make up the second chronicles. As these are the second chronicles I would strongly recommend to read the "First Chronicles of Thomas Convenant" first. But if you would like, you can read them separately as they stand by themselves. For those that read the first chronicles, the second chronicles have a very clear change of tone. No matter how bad it got in the first chronicles there was the always the sense of optimism. The second chronicles start with a strong sense of desperation & ill feeling. But don't despair & read on because you will be rewarded by a reading experience that will stay with you for the rest of your life.
Other reviewers have commented on what's in the book & I agree with them that this makes a GREAT read. So let me consider the book itself. Being three volumes in one, it is somewhat heavier than a regular paperback but it is still handy enough to carry along. The spine is flexible & wont crease unless you reallly "break" it. And generallly the styleful cover art & gilt titles make it stand out in any collection. In fact it is the only paperback that sits on my "good" bookshelf among (leatherbound)hardcover books.
Other recommended "high fantasy" books: Magician by Raymond E. Feist, Mythago Wood series by Robert Holdstock, Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake & the Amber series by Zelazny.
"Thomas Covenant" also adds another dimension to story telling that challlenges the reader. You do care about Covenant in these stories, but the reader's first reaction to him is to dislike, even loathe him. Donaldson then takes alll the typical actions of a fantasy hero & turns them on their head. Where as Lira threw herself in to the action (rightly or wrongly - & I liked that treatment), Harry Potter rises to the challlenge of being a hero, as does Frodo, or Aragorn standing talll & proud & fighting his cause come-what-may; Thomas Covenant does alll he can to get away from his situation. Many times he has the opportunity to change the course of events, & when things look like they couldn't get much worse; he does a damn good job of making things sink to a new dismal low!
Sounds depressing? Actuallly, it is at a surface level, but somehow Donaldson manages to make you "care" about Covenant, so the reality is that despite wanting to throw the book at something very breakable in frustration, the reader is driven on to find out what the hell happens next. There is a lot of landscape description & epic journey type stuff that Tolkien is known for, but with Donaldson's writing, like Tolkien, it's not merely padding to make the books the thick volumes they are, it's the stock that makes the soup, the pure water that makes a good ale, the nitrogen in the atmosphere we breath. You don't actuallly think about it too much, it's alll part of the atmosphere of the story.
Someone said to me that if I liked the Potter stories, then I'd like the Dark Materials trilogy - it was described to me as the "next step on, intellectuallly from Harry Potter, that added a new & darker dimension to its stories". I think I agree with that. If this statement was generallly the case, the "Thomas Covenant", is the grown up version, the adult treatment & a natural progression from those two series. There a useful comparisons to be made between Lord of the Rings & Thomas Covenant, though TC doesn't have the wealth of lore & the rich history of LOTR. It has some, but some folks found LOTR heavy going because of alll that. TC has enough to make you care about the land in which the story is set (another Tolkien-esque concept), but doesn't overburden you with too much.
The plot is that TC is in this world - in present day - a man suffering from leprosy who is feeling more than a little sorry for himself. In a way not entirely described (and not reallly required), TC finds himself in a world where he is not only cured, but is seen as some sort of messiah (another old & familiar concept). TC wants none of this & despite doing everything in his path to avoid things that seem to have become his responsibility, is steadily driven in to being the hero whether he likes it or not. Donaldson does a masterly job of using the reader's preconditioning to this type of story & twisting it in to unexpected directions, that I can compare with jumping in to the sea. It's cold & a shock to the system at first, you reallly want to get out & wish you'd not bothered, but slowly, as you become accustomed to the temperature, it turns in to a wonderfully relaxing luxury. Donaldson does exactly the same, but keeps chucking buckets of cold water at you for good measure!
There are six books, "The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant", & surprise, surprise, "The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant". Each book has it's own individual title & starts with "Lord Foul's Bane". I won't give too much away, but there are very strong Tolkien overtures in this first book. Lord Foul, you won't be surprised to hear, is the baddie. The first three books can be read without the second three, but not, I would suggest, the other way around, despite the addition of another main character. Having read alll six, I would also suggest that it would be a great shame to miss the second three. They are uncomfortably different to the first three, despite being set in the same world etc. But then, I'm sure that's the idea. I won't give away the ending, save to say that Donaldson delivers his climax in a way that doesn't disappoint. There's much more I'd want to say once you've read it (if you read it! or if you read it & don't slash your wrists half way through as TC fails AGAIN!), but as much as I could enthuse about these books, you'd have to read them yourself. They are traditional fantasy, more Pullman than Potter, & I'd say that a cross between His Dark Materials & Lord of the Rings is probably a good comparison.
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