THE ILLEARTH WAR is the second book in the CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT THE UNBELIEVER, sequel to the first book LORD FOUL'S BANE.
Tonight I finished reading LORD FOUL’S BANE, the first book in Stephen R. Donaldson’s epic trilogy THE CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT THE UNBELIEVER. In an earlier post (“Discovering the Unbeliever”) I talked about how Donaldson bowled me over with a mix of traditional fantasy elements, a heavy dose of originality, and a perfectly anti-heroic protagonist. Now that I’ve reached the end of the first book, I’m nearly as ambivalent about The Land as Thomas Covenant himself. The poor bastard…
Covenant could not take his Messianic role seriously because a) he believed The Land was only a dream he was having, and b) he was an emotionally and spiritually scarred coward to the core. And this is what bugs me about the first book’s conclusion: I expected there to come a moment at some point during the battles, the desperate flights of magic, the near-death moments, the confrontations with evil and strange powers that rule The Land and threaten to destroy it…I expected there to come a moment where Covenant quits whining and realizes a) “Wow, this really isn’t a dream–it’s all real!” and b) “I should embrace my role as White Gold Wielder and draw upon this tremendous power I’ve been given instead of bitching and moaning at every step along this quest!”
But that moment never came.
At the end of the first book, Covenant is just as frightened, hopeless, spiritually atrophied, and wracked by denial and cowardice as he was at the beginning! Well, he may be a tad better, but these problems still plague him, even up the point where he peforms an act that saves the lives of his fellow questors. Where was his transfiguration? Where was his enlightenment? Where was the magical apotheosis that was going to transform this unlikable whiner into someone worthy of being called the “ur-Lord”? (Which he was called anyway, although greatly undeserving of the title.)
Okay, I understand that years of being a leper in “our world” (i.e. earth) made Covenant afraid to feel, destroyed his emotions out of self-preservation, made him live in a world of constant loneliness and ever-present terror of injury. But one would think that The Land and its wonderful healing power would have affected him in some way. One would think that the heroic quest and the great heroes he accompanied and assisted would have changed him…gotten him used to being “human” again…helped to heal his scarred soul. But no…Covenant is just as miserable and clueless at the end of the first novel as he was at the beginning.
And this bothered me…because one would think that all the knowledge he has gained, all the evidence of the Lords and their power, The Land’s healing properties, the OBVIOUS FACT THAT HE IS NO LONGER A LEPER, all this would eventually change him into what he is raging against being: a hero. But Covenant is bound and determined NOT to be hero…not to be the savior everyone hopes he will be. He is one of the most frustrating charaters in fantasy literature, hands down. Every time you want him to do something right, he does the opposite. Every time someone offers him a hand in friendship, he smacks it away. Every time someone offers hope, he tears it down.
Thomas Covenant is a schmuck.
Donaldson has simultaneously fascinated me and revolted me as a reader. His fantasy world is so compelling, so full of grand beauties and stark terrors, so redolent of Nature and Myth and Dream, that I long to return there in the second book. But Thomas Covenant is such a pathetic loser that I really would rather make the journey IN SOMEONE ELSE’S COMPANY.
I look at the gorgeous Darrell K. Sweet cover painting on the second volume, THE ILLEARTH WAR, and I want to dive right in and savor The Land again, to see what becomes of its noble people in their unfinished struggled against the Soulcrusher and his legions of doom. But I’m so glad to be OUT of Thomas Covenant’s messed-up head and guilt-wracked psyche that I’m hesitant to crack the book open.
Donaldson’s first book leaves me ambivalent…however, that’s also what I like about it. Most epic fantasies are predictable (I already stated what I “expected” to happen to Covenant)…but LORD FOUL’S BANE never went in the direction I expected it to go. When I thought he would zig, Donaldson zagged. He simply refused to follow standard fantasy tropes and consign his characters to archetypal roles…he was far more concerned in evoking true personalities and following them to their utmost limits. His characters are true to themselves…hence Covenant’s lack of any major transformation.
This is exactly what fills me with respect for Donaldson’s writing. This is what will get me cracking open my gorgeous copy of THE ILLEARTH WAR. (I had to pay a little extra for the Darrell K. Sweet cover edition since it’s out of print). With Donaldson, you simply can’t predict where he’s taking you. It’s a testament to his authorial skills that even though I can’t stand his protagonist (Covenant), I simply can’t wait to get back into the world he has created.
THE POWER THAT PRESERVES is the third book in the trilogy, and word-of-mouth tells me it's the best of the bunch. Another terrific Darrell K. Sweet cover on this original out-of-print version. These covers are icons of my youth...I could not imagine reading the series without them.
How is that even possible? How can I read an entire book told through the point-of-view of a protagonist I simply DO NOT LIKE and yet still feel compelled to see where Book II is going? I’ve never felt this way before about a book or a series. Usually, I either finish a book because it’s completely amazing, or a stop reading one-third or one-half the way through because I finally realize it’s not working for me. But something about pitiful Thomas Covenant makes me look past my antipathy and hope that when he returns to The Land (as I’m sure he will in the second book, based on the title of the trilogy), he will eventually find that growth and healing that he needs.
Maybe it will take the winning of this war against Lord Foul and the healing of the wounded Land itself to heal Thomas Covenant. (I also know that the sequel trilogy begins with a book called THE WOUNDED LAND.) Perhaps if The Land represents Covenant’s tattered psyche (and/or body), he can never be completely healed until The Land is healed…and vice versa. This is another point of the series’ strong appeal…thematically, it works like magic.
I just hope Covenant doesn’t whine and moan his way through THE ILLEARTH WAR the way he did through the entirety of the first book.
But there’s only one way to find out…
I’m off to The Land.
Peace!
John
John-
Very well stated. I read Thomas Covenant when I was young. I hated the books, and yet I could not stop reading them. I never understood this mix of emotions the book brought out, but I think you stated exactly how I felt at the time but could not understand.
Hey, John,
Glad to know I’m not the only one who finds Covenant so unlikable. I keep thinking: “He loves to suffer. He’s in love with his own pain.” At some point you’d think he would realize “I should stay in The Land forever and I won’t have leprosy every again!” But all he wants to get back to the world that hates and fears him. It’s annoying. And yet this very complexity of emotion and character is what makes the books unique. Even in today’s world where we’re obsessed with “anti-heroes”, they don’t make them like Covenant.
The second book is off to a good start. I just read the part where Thomas returns to The Land 40 years later and finds out there’s another person from Earth who is there as well. The warrior Hine Troy. It’s got me hooked.
Cheers,
John
I tried to read the books when I was in high school, and his first action in The Land (you know EXACTLY which action I’m talking about) is so reprehensible that I stopped reading. And I think Donaldson did that on purpose.
I’ve got to read the books again, but from what I remember, Donaldson’s Covenant is a commentary on the unlikeable aspects of ourselves. Donaldson forces us to ask ourselves, “If you could get away with it, would you do it, too?” And the truth of it is, we really don’t know–we’re (thankfully) rarely put into those situations. He’s not just an anti-hero (Elric of Melniboné is an anti-hero, but quite unlike Covenant). I’m wondering if we’re supposed to sympathize with him, and feel uncomfortable about that.
Donaldson has to have been pretty brave in an era when post-Tolkien fantasy was dominated by pastiche of Middle-Earth. I think much of the public didn’t want THE LORD OF THE RINGS to have ended when it did, which explains the success of Terry Brooks’ heavily derivative works. I’m under the impression that Donaldson wanted to deconstruct a lot of the fantasy hero tropes, and to do that required a bit of daring. Hence, I see it as a good thing that we find Covenant reprehensible. I also suspect we sympathize with him because, let’s face it, in his situation, many of us would probably behave much more like he does than like Frodo or Samwise. Covenant is a character who wears his flaws on his sleeve, and sometimes, those are the most human and realistic characters we can read about.
This just inspires me to pick the series up again, now that I’m older, and give it another shot.
My thoughts exactly, Dave. This WAS a brave and ambitious fantasy undertaking in 1977, and it still carries that weight today. (I talked about the sexual assault in my first “Unbeliever” post–I couldn’t believe his publisher let him get away with keep that scene.) You’re totally on-the-nose here about Donaldson exploring the selfish, weak, “shadow” sides of ourselves through Covenant. Like an addict who clings to his disease, Covenant clings to his pain because he believes it is all he has in this life. He is a terribly tragic figure, but also a terribly frustrating figure. At least towards the end of the first book the full magnitude of his crime against Lena falls upon him like a lead weight, and he nearly loses his mind. He does his best to repair the damage he’s done, but it is a futile gesture because he can never go back and undo his crime. He has to live with it. There are so many deep layers of Irony and Pathos here that it makes the read utterly compelling. The very fact that this series was so incredibly popular with such an unlikable protagonist is a testament to Donaldon’s genius. He was definitely one of the first post-Tolkien writers to start breaking those fantasy tropes and exploring the humanity in the cracks and crevices of the Epic Fantasy (much like R. Scott Bakker does in PRINCE OF NOTHING, in his own way). And that’s the fantasy that really gets me and stays with me…it explores the human condition through a lense of fantasy-adventure. It’s what I call Fantasy Literature. I’ve only just started it, but I am digging the second Covenant book. From what I hear, the series gets better with every volume. I’ll continue blogging my reaction/analysis as I read through each book.
Cheers!
John
If you like Donaldson and Bakker, I’d also recommend Tad Williams’ MEMORY, SORROW, AND THORN series. The closest thing I can compare it to is David Eddings’ BELGARIAD. The similarities are mostly due to Eddings and Williams both pulling on a large number of character archetypes and themes common in medieval and renaissance romances (i.e. pre-Tolkien fantasy, if you could call it that), but Williams doesn’t just repackage them–he subverts them. And well. And the ending is probably one of the most subversive aspects of Williams’ novels of all. Williams inspired George R.R. Martin to write fantasy that wasn’t “kid’s stuff.”