From archive Fri Aug 21 13:23:20 MDT 1992 Subject: Donaldson's new book From: kdale@bbncc-eur (Keith Dale) Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Date: 4 Nov 86 16:42:53 MET I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this yet, but Stephen Donaldson has come out with a new book - "The Mirror of her Dreams". It appears to be the first of a new series (makes no pretense at being part of a trilogy) called "Mordant's Need", and Thomas Covenant does not appear in it (!). It is hard cover, of course, with 658 pages, and the copy I have is a British edition - I picked it up in London about three weeks ago. I haven't read it yet (it's next on my list), but for you die-hard Donaldson fans I've reproduced the dust cover blurb below. I'll offer a review shortly. "The story of Terisa and Geraden began very much like a fable. She was a princess in a high tower. He was a hero come to rescue her... She was held prisoner by enchantment. He was a fearless breaker of enchantments. "As in all the fables, they were make for each other." 'But their story was not that simple. Terisa Morgan was plucked from a life of wealthy dreariness in New York City by Geraden, the oldest ever apprentice to the congery of Imagers in the threatened land of Mordant. Terisa's inexperience and Geraden's ineptitude made them unlikely champions for Mordant in the desperate hour of her need. 'Yet the compelling sound of horns in her dream that drew her away from her existing life, and the swirling images in his mirror that pushed Geraden her way could not be denied. For Mordant was directed by the skill of the Imagers with their mirrors, and they now pointed to a champion who would come to save them. 'The threat to Mordant is dire indeed, and comes from within the kingdom as well as from the reappearance of the arch-Imager Vagel and the invading hordes of Cadwal. Suspicion is rife in the fortress of Orison at the heart of King Joyse's Mordant. Just who is friend and who is foe in this confusing land of conjured images in unclear. Somehow Terisa and Geraden must find a way through the many treacherous traps laid for them, and must escape unharmed, too, from the fierce attacks of a mysterious figure in black.' Keith From archive Fri Aug 21 13:23:20 MDT 1992 Subject: donaldson From: brothers@topaz.rutgers.edu Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Date: 6 Nov 86 19:26:12 MET I've just read the new Donaldson novel. I got it kind of to give him a last chance after the abysmal second Covenant trilogy. Reports: - side: As usual the protagonist is an incometent dweeb transported from Earth to another world she doesn't understand or care about. Furthermore, the protagonist is such a wimp that she is more or less uninteresting throughout most of the novel. The magic in this world is totally illogical, not just antiscientific -- magic is of course that. But this stuff is just unreasonable. It's interesting, though, if you ignore some of the weirdness and inconsistencies that are implied. Another minus -- as usual the only normal and sympathetic characters around are pretty much set up to get killed or have bad things happen to them -- it's kind of obvious in Donaldson's work that as soon as you read about someone you like, they will get killed, possessed, roasted, assassinated, you name it... + side: The protagonist may be a wimp, but she at least shows some signs of escaping her wimpitude eventually, as the novel progresses, unlike Covenant, who should have been killed immediately after the rape in the first book.... Also, she isn't a leper. Big plus, that. No more stupid mangling of English. There is a big difference between, say, Gene Wolfe's kind of word play and the annoying misuse of words that Donaldson was prone to in his previous two trilogies. The characters are in general more fun and interesting, since these book(s) seem to be much lighter and more comedic than the last ones. One really funny prolonged joke is how the heroine continues to avoid having sex with a villain -- kind of like Shakespeare.... Also, as I say, though the magical premise is bizarre, it is at least interesting. By the way, I believe it is more or less stated somewhere that this "series" will be two books (a bilogy?). -Laurence Laurence R. Brothers brothers@topaz.rutgers.edu "I am a pure crystal." From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 3 14:24:19 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!usc!sdd.hp.com!mips!apple!ig!dont-reply-to-paths From: sheol!throopw@dg-rtp.dg.com (Wayne Throop) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: The Gap Cycle, by Stephen R. Donaldson Message-ID: <712374704@sheol.UUCP> Date: 31 Jul 92 22:28:21 GMT Sender: mcb@presto.ig.com Lines: 146 Approved: mcb@presto.ig.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) The Gap Cycle, by Stephen R. Donaldson I have a sort of love/hate relationship with Donaldson's work. His characters moan and whine, and a large portion of his work is taken up in internal dialogue explaining why his characters don't do something straightforward and simple and staring them right in the face to resolve the plot, but instead do something self-defeating and stupid, but which advances the plot. But, despite their basic irrationality and silliness, his characters, situations, and settings seem to have some pull on me. The Gap Cycle is no exception. The characters are as twisted and psychologically convoluted as ever, and the plot twists, settings, and general angst are as compelling to me as ever. This series is set against a background somewhat reminiscent of the "rebel" series by Busby, with a basically corrupt monopolistic industrial enterprise having taken over most functions of government, and regulating essentially all interstellar commerce. We have pirates, secret bases, and people who go through quite startlingly horrible experiences while they develop their character. So far, two of the books of the series are available in paperback. "The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story", and "The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge". Next in the series is "The Gap into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises". There are (I think) two more to follow. I qualify by "I think" above, because Donaldson explains in an afterword that there are four books in the cycle, but I think that "The Real Story" is not part of the count of four. I could be wrong, but that's my impression. I won't try to summarize Donaldson's afterword in "The Real Story", which gives some backstage details about this series, but I will comment on it a bit. For myself, I certainly saw the first, simpler theme he was trying to get across in "The Real Story" (it's really too blatant to miss, even for me), but without reading the author's explanation of the rest of the cycle, I wouldn't have interpreted it as what Donaldson states it to be. Not that this is a fault of Donaldson's: he himself says that the basic source of his material is pretty cryptified in this incarnation, certainly beyond my ability to decrypt without hints. My point here being that I'm not sure whether one is better off reading the afterword of "The Real Story" before proceeding to read the rest of the series, or reading it (if at all) after reading the rest of the series. My own taste is always to read spoiler information, and always get the annotated versions of things, perhaps simply because I'm slow on the uptake. But your mileage may vary. So, what we have so far is a complex stew of tortured abnormal psychology, dark convoluted motivations, archetypical characters charging around an exotic setting. Typical Donaldson. About what one might expect after reading the Covenant and Mirror works. ( As a digression, it *isn't* quite what I'd expect from reading his shorter works, which I consider superior to his novels. My favorite is "Worthy of the Angel", which I found in the book "Daughter of Regals", and which I recommend. Of course, even in his shorter works, the Donaldson hallmarks are there, but they seem to me to be better balanced than in his novels/series/cycles. ) But before concluding, I'll focus on something I *didn't* expect. And that is the uncomfortable and distracting technical gaffes with which Donaldson sprinkles this series. None of them are extremely bad, or even all that annoying. But they disturb the flow of my reading, like hitting a rock while boating down a dark and powerful river. This sort of thing is unexpected to me because I feel he did fairly well on several points in the Covenant and Mirror works. For one example, the Sandgorgon seems to me to be a pretty nicely thought out creature, with interesting adaptations to its peculiar situation. But for three examples of ill-thought-out points in the Gap series, we have: A passing mention of a "thermonuclear pile". Now, OK, we can give the phrase some meaning and pass on, but it jumps out and grabs me by the throat, disturbing the flow of my reading: thermonuclear processes simply don't go on inside "piles". Never have, never will. There are several computer terminology incongruities, perhaps the most annoying being the notion of setting up "batch commands" in the computer system running a spaceship. "Batch" commands? "*BATCH*" commands? Maybe the term is revived sometime in the future, either out of the original notion of "batch" (as opposed to timeshare), or the MS/DOS use of the term to simply mean an automated command script. I even know I'm overreacting even as I overreact, but.... "**BATCH**"? Yuck! Much better to use the more colorfully descriptive "demon", "daemon", "dragon", "ghost" or whatnot, or the simpler and more neutral "script", "file", "command", "process", or "program". Maybe even "macro" in a pinch, though I'd still probably wince as I read it. But "batch". Hmpf. OK, so it's a very small nit... it still jarred me out of the storyline. Probably the worst is a can of technical worms opened up by having a ship accelerated by mysterious means to .9 lightspeed. From the technology level portrayed up to that point, I expected there to ensue a great deal of activity in trying to rescue the "marooned" ship. Instead, Donaldson just treats this matter-of-factly... but wrongly. To start with, in the ensuing scene, Donaldson has this spaceship approaching a station at .9 lightspeed, another approaching the station at .4 lightspeed in the same direction, and then casually mentions that of course the two ships are closing at .5 lightspeed. AAAUUUGGGHHH!!! It probably wouldn't bother anybody else, but it was like running into an unseen brick wall to me. I expected him to say *anything* but .5 lightspeed. The actual closing speed of the two ships should be something like .78 lightspeed. That, and he has his ship decelerate from .9 lightspeed to a near standstill in just a few hours, with no "inertial dampers" or "cosmic energy source" or other magical notions. Maybe he just forgot to mention the magical energy source that his spaceships use or the inertial dampers or other acceleration shielding equipment... But he makes a big deal about the computers doing "relativistic corrections" on the incoming data. And his descriptions elsewhere are pretty clear that there IS no acceleration damping going on (this is required for one of the plot twists early on). And the technology portrayed would have no hope in hell of generating that much energy from a portable source in a spaceship. As you might suppose, I'm quite disappointed in the stories because of the technical "potholes" that jar me while reading. On the other hand, the books *are* typical Donaldson, and quite effectively squeeze angst from stones as well (or as badly, if you don't like Donaldson) as ever. I'll probably read the rest of them as they come out, despite the marred reading surface. %A Stephen R. Donaldson %T The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D 1991 %G ISBN 0-553-29509-8 %P 241 pages %S The Gap Cycle %A Stephen R. Donaldson %T The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D 1991 %G ISBN 0-553-29760-0 %P 455 pages %S The Gap Cycle -- Wayne Throop ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw From archive Fri Aug 21 13:23:20 MDT 1992 From: sasblc@sas.UUCP (Brad Chisholm) Organization: SAS Institute Inc, Cary NC Subject: A Man Rides Through (REVIEW) Date: 11 Nov 88 02:58:39 GMT SUMMARY: Less powerful than the Thomas Covanent series but more enjoyable. I know, I know... It's a little late for a review, but this book just recently came out in paperback, and since I'm such a cheapskate, I waited until now to buy it. The first thing that struck me about it was the lack of a synopsis of the first book (Mirror of Her Dreams). Instead, it simply begins directly where it left off, and since neither volume can stand on its own, I had to go back and re-read the first before starting "A Man Rides Through". It may have been more appropriate to publish both books as a single volume, although such a large book probably wouldn't have made as much $$ as the two smaller (but still sizeable) books. The plot has a similar feel to the Covenant books: a depressed, disillusioned, modern-day person gets wisked away to another world where something basically ordinary here makes them the most powerful person in the other world. In this case it's the heroine's affinity for mirrors, in a world where mirrors are used for transportation/trans- lation. There's nothing particularly stellar about the plot, but I still found myself enjoying the book much more than I had anticipated. The story flows along very smoothly, and (perhaps I sould be embarrassed to say this) I'm impressed by Donaldson's writing skill. True, there are no twists or surprises, but he uses that predictability well in setting up conflicts between the non-omniscient characters. (Rather like horror movies showing the audience the monster lurking under the stairs as the baby-sitter descends to retrieve the laundry.) I'm not sure I would recommend "Mordant's Need" to everyone. I don't think it (they?) would appeal to action/adventure lovers, whether in SF or fantasy. Nevertheless, I found them quite enjoyable and engrossing. There's more than 1200 pages all told (both books SHOULD be read together), but it doesn't FEEL like 1200 pages. I'll give it a +2 on a -4 to +4 (modified Leeper) scale. == Brad L. Chisholm == ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brad L. Chisholm | I found these opinions lying in sasblc@sas.UUCP | the street and decided to adopt !mcnc!rti!sas!sasblc | them and give them a good home. From: ghogenso@muddcs.Claremont.EDU (Gordon Hogenson) Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA Subject: Re: A Man Rides Through (REVIEW) Date: 13 Nov 88 21:26:57 GMT Reading "Mordant's Need" was one of the highest points of this past year. It is easily the best book I have read in the last four years, in the field of fantasy or any other field, and I do read quite a lot. Why did I like/ love it so much? Let me explain. Both books absorbed me utterly for several days--enough to enter my dreams and command my time for their duration. The reviewer of "A Man Rides Through" mentions that the plot was not extraordinary. On the contrary, I found the plot superbly done--it seemed to stand out as one of the few extraordinary plots of our time. The plot is totally believable because it it moved along by characters--each of whom has a goal, each of whom has theories about what has been happening, none of whom is quite right. Thus, while all the characters are working to achieve their motives, sometimes with good intentions, sometimes not, the plot unfolds as if it were happening before my eyes. I am bewildered that the plot was called "predictable"--I found it wildly unpredictable, and I experienced genuine terror at the outcome--who would die and how many. Each death was a severe blow to me, even the soldiers in the battle, who die in every fantasy book of this kind. The horror in this book is very potent, a powerful depiction of the most twisted, insidious evil. True, the theme is somewhat like that of the Covenant novels--a disaffected human who finds her/himself the master of wild magic... But I think it is a strong, viable theme and Donaldson brings it off well. It always bewilders me when I hear that some people preferred the Covenant books to these. I was not particularily excited by much of the Covenant material. In "Mordant's Need", the furious pace never lets up. Many of you will disagree, but if you liked such books as The Belgariad, and the Shannara books, Mordant's Need is lightning from the heavens. Worthy of the longlasting eminence of true genius, and many rereadings. Gordon Hogenson @ Harvey Mudd From /tmp/sf.14663 Tue Mar 30 17:24:16 1993 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!uunet!enterpoop.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu.!wex From: hunt@oils.ozy.dec.com (Peter Hunt) Subject: A DARK AND HUNGRY GOD ARISES by Stephen Donaldson Message-ID: <1993Jan19.145922.16074@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Reply-To: hunt@oils.ozy.dec.com (Peter Hunt) Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1993 15:11:07 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 76 A Review of Stephen Donaldson's The Gap Into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises (c) 1993 Peter Hunt This book is the third and most recent volume in Donaldson's new Gap series. I found the book to be every bit as good as its predecessors; for myself, this means I thought it was excellent. For others who have not liked the Gap series so far, this episode will most likely not change your minds. This series is Donaldson's first in an SF setting, rather than the fantasy setting of the Covenant trilogies and the Mordant's Need series. It's also a departure from Donaldson's traditional style; the prose is more abrupt and immediate. The long, flowing descriptions have been replaced with short, punchy, matter-of-fact statements. The characters themselves are unlikable for the most part, and have psychological aberrations which are extreme, even by Donaldson's standards. Many of the events of A Dark and Hungry God Arises take place on Thanatos Minor, where Angus Thermopyle, Morn Hyland, her son Davies, and Nick Succurso converge to settle scores and carry out plans. There they have to deal with the Amnion, who will threaten their humanity, and the Bill, who controls the bootleg shipyard of Billingate. Deals are struck and alliances made, but the story is really about the characters and their changing relationships. The characters' actions are nothing unless you understand their motives, and to understand THOSE you have to understand what they believe to be their enemies' motives. This leads to a book full of characters trying to figure out each others' intentions, and trying to manipulate each other with what power they have. It's definitely more a book of intrigue than of action, but the intrigue is so, well, intriguing, that you hardly notice the pages turning. Having said that, I should add that this IS a book of revelations. The previous book, Forbidden Knowledge, tended to raise two questions for every one it answered. A Dark and Hungry God Arises does reveal a lot about the major characters, and I felt I knew more about what was really going on than I did while reading Forbidden Knowledge. I do have two criticisms of the book, and they both have to do with plot. Firstly, there are discrepancies between how A Dark and Hungry God Arises refers to past events, and how previous books have described them. Some are discrepancies in the ordering of events, and some are discrepancies in their detail. Unfortunately, a couple of these were blindingly apparent. Secondly, the pacing of events was too sporadic. For four-fifths of the book, Donaldson concentrated on the characters motives and perceptions of each other, and events moved slowly. The final fifth of the book was a rollercoaster ride of action. It made for an exciting finish, but the change was too sudden, and the events' effects on the characters weren't explored in any detail. I knew that Donaldson had picked up the pace for the sake of a big finish, and it worked, but it left me feeling he'd neglected his characters. But these are nit-picks. The latest volume of the Gap series is no let-down. It develops the story and the characters nicely, and while Donaldson's style has changed, his standard of writing has not. There are some threads left hanging, but enough is resolved for the reader to turn the final page feeling satisfaction rather than regret or frustration. The next book in the series is entitled The Gap Into Madness: Chaos and Order. %T The Gap Into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises %A Stephen R. Donaldson %D 1992 %I HarperCollins Publishers, Hardback %O $A25.00 %P 477pp -- +---------------------------+------------------------------------------------+ | Peter Hunt | I'm digging in the dirt, | | Networks and Comms (Aust) | to find the places I got hurt, | | Digital Equipment Corp. | to open up the places I got hurt. | +---------------------------+--------- Peter Gabriel, "Digging in the Dirt" -+ From /tmp/sf.4258 Tue Feb 1 03:27:54 1994 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!netcomsv!netcom.com!dani From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) Subject: Donaldson's "Gap" Series (Spoilers) Message-ID: Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) Date: Tue, 4 Jan 1994 05:01:13 GMT Lines: 124 Stephen R. Donaldson's "Gap" series is brilliant, but not always palatable. It is technically better than the "Covenant" trilogies in almost every respect. It is more tightly plotted, there are fewer one-dimensional characters, and (halelujah!) Donaldson doesn't use ten-dollar words where five will do. The story is interesting -- riveting, in fact -- and is allowed to become increasingly complex without becoming hard to follow. The main problem which some readers will have with these books is that most of the major characters are vile. Reading the series has been like peeling an onion -- backward: Each book in the series is larger and more complex than the previous one. The first book, "The Real Story: The Gap into Conflict", is short (something that probably hurt sales) and relatively simple. It begins with the story the public sees: A loathesome toad of a space pirate is somehow brought down by a dashing freebooter, who leaves with the fair lady who was in the pirate's grasp. Then we get the story behind the story -- particularly the story of how Angus Thermopyle (sic) enslaved Morn Hyland, and why Hyland went off with Nick Succorso -- and it's appalling. It's appalling, but it's still a small drama played out on a small stage. Donaldson ends the first book, "The Real Story", with an essay (excellent in itself) on Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelungs", which provided much of the inspiration for the Gap series. In "Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision", the stage gets much larger, and we begin to see what was missing from the first novel: context. Behind Morn Hyland of the United Mining Companies Police is the UMCP itself, and behind it is the UMC. Behind "space piracy" is the infrastructure that makes it viable, such as illegal ship repair yards and, most important, customers for the loot. The customers are the Amnion, a very alien race whose peace with humanity is uneasy and unstable. Amnion biotechnology has progressed as far as human mechanical technology (which they purchase). Indeed, their imperialism is biological: They do not wish to conquer humanity, but to change humans into Amnioni. Most of "Forbidden Knowledge" follows Nick Succorso's ship, Captain's Fancy, on which Hyland has exchanged her earlier enslavement for a more polished one. By the end of this book, Captain's Fancy has reached Billingate, the main illegal pirate base, Succorso has sold Morn's son, Davies, to the Amnion, and promised them Morn, as well. And the UMCP has rebuilt Angus Thermopyle and sent him to Billingate on a mission of destruction. In "A Dark and Hungry God Arises: The Gap into Power", the scope of the story widens again. This is also where the Wagnerian analogues start falling into place. The book begins with Holt Fasner (nicknamed the Dragon), CEO of UMC, visiting his mother (heavy-handedly named 'Norna'), for advice. Their relationship is a good metaphor for most of the relationships in the novel: She is a medical prisoner, kept alive decades longer than she wishes, because her advice is valuable to Holt. Her advice must be taken with caution, however, because if she can give him apparently good advice which will destroy him, she will do so, and both of them know it. Mutually destructive relationships built on hate and need are more the rule than the exception in this book. "A Dark and Hungry God Arises" follows two parallel (and occasionally intersecting, if you'll pardon the non-Euclidian metaphor) stories. Back on Earth, Warden Dios, director of the UMC Police, is working to destroy Fasner's power without bringing down the UMCP. On Billingate, a game of plot and counter-plot is played out. The UMCP has developed (and suppressed) a defense against Amnion mutagens. If word of this gets out in human space, it could bring down the UMC. On the other hand, a hint of this defense has been given to the Amnion, to make them more tractable. The Amnion want Succorso because of his links to the anti-mutagen, and they want Morn and her son, who may be the key to their efforts to mutate human minds without mutating the bodies. They are willing to put a great deal of pressure on Succorso and on the owner of Billingate, known as the Bill, but too much pressure will compromise the willingness of humans to sell them human technology. Similarly, the Bill can't be seen to be selling them paying customers without compromising his own credibility. Succorso, who would cheerfully sell Morn and all her relatives to the seventh generation, must worry about alienating his crew. To the Bill and others, Angus's arrival is an unexpected wild card, and it seems marginally better to let him in and see what he'll do than to refuse him admission. Milos Tavener, Angus's former captor and torturer, has been sent with Angus, and given a control over him -- but their mission doesn't look like one which Tavener is likely to survive. Donaldson plays the game fairly: There may be some close timing and some unlikely coincidences along the way, but all the characters behave in manners which are consistent with what they are, what they know, and what they need. For most of them, what they need is to put the pieces of the puzzle together quickly enough to survive the experience. By the end of the book, Nick Succorso's only hope of survival lies in cooperating with Angus Thermopyle in rescuing Davies (a most unlikely Siegfried) from the Bill and Morn from the Amnion. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the political battle between Warden Dios and the Dragon is starting to generate real corpses. Presumably we'll see a good deal more of this conflict in the next book, "The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order." As I said at the beginning, the skill with which Donaldson has constructed this series is not in question. (He does occasionally forget that he's writing soft sf, and try to give more technological detail than holds up, but that's the closest he comes to showing technical flaws.) Most of the characters are on the despicable side though, and so is much of their behavior. To Donaldson's credit, the worst of this behavior is implied, rather than shown. (The not-so-bad can still be pretty bad. I could have lived a while longer without the bar scene where the floor show consisted of a woman cutting her breasts off without anesthetic.) One might argue that the characters are not gratuitously ugly. Most of them have climbed out of miserable and impoverished conditions -- conditions which are part of the background problem in this series -- and it's hard to come out of such an environment without being twisted by it. But ugly is still ugly, and these characters and the ways they behave towards each other are the worst things about the series. If you haven't tried the series, and it sounds as if it's worth a try, read the first book. Not only is "The Real Story" considerably the shortest of the books, but they get steadily better, so if you decide to continue after the first book, you won't be disappointed. ----- Dani Zweig dani@netcom.com "You have the reputation of being one of the nicest guys in the field. We both know you're a hyena on its hind legs. How have you fooled everyone?" "By keeping my mouth shut when I read garbage" -- Gene Wolfe From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 02:00:47 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: Doug Ingram Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (both series) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 13 May 1994 07:04:38 GMT Organization: The Internet Lines: 230 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9405130511.AA22733@stein1.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson Review copyright (c) 1994 by Doug Ingram Before I begin, allow me to lay down some ground rules and reveal my biases. This review of the Chronicles is intended for two audiences. First, it is meant for those who are relatively new to the net, haven't really heard much about the Chronicles one way or the other, and don't know what to make of all the arguing that goes on back and forth whenever Donaldson is mentioned (though it is at least an order of magnitude less than the volume of Jordan threads). Second, I'm sure this review will be read by many who are all too familiar with Donaldson and the history of the Covenant discussions on the net. I'm not expecting to change any minds with this review of the books, but I love a good debate (and if you hadn't already guessed, put me down as a Donaldson fan). I've done some reviews in 1991 when r.a.sf.reviews first popped up, but this isn't going to be anything like those book reviews. After all, I'm trying to review an entire series here rather than just one book, so it is very difficult to know where to begin. I will try to start with a very broad overview of the books and will apologize in advance for the unavoidable spoilers (there's only one important one that I will give out, and it is near the beginning of the series anyway). From there, I will talk about the strengths and weaknesses of Donaldson's style with a couple of specific passages from the books as examples. Finally, if you get that far (I hope you do...it's the most important part!), I have some general advice for the reader on how to approach the series. This series is an example of a "crossover" story that takes place both in "our" world and a world that somehow exists alongside. The other world is known simply as "the Earth" with the major action taking place in "the Land" (as opposed to what I will call the real world). The main character, Thomas Covenant, was once a happily married popular author who came down with leprosy, a disease that destroys nerves and requires the sufferer to be constantly vigilant in order to prevent an undetected injury, which can easily develop into a severe problem. Once the disease is discovered and Covenant is taught about how to deal with his new life, his wife leaves him out of fear that their newborn son with catch the disease, so Covenant now lives by himself well outside of town, cast out by his family and his community. He has gone a little bit mad as a result of everything and is in a great deal of mental anguish. Donaldson takes a long time building up this persona of Covenant since much of the story involves Covenant's reactions to events. While on a trip into town, Covenant gets knocked unconscious and wakens to find himself in the Land. He is warned by some entity named Lord Foul (the Grey Slayer) that the Land is doomed, and Covenant gets a small hint of his own importance. The teenage girl who finds him after this experience heals him with a gold-flecked mud called "hurtloam", which not only fixes up his bumps and bruises but heals his leprosy and reawakens his sexual potency. Covenant finds that the villagers treat him as a reborn hero out of an old legend, and this pressure combined with his inability to accept his healthy condition, drives him to the brink. When the young girl, Lena, tries to comfort him, he rapes her. During the course of the first book, Covenant discovers why the people in the Land see him as so important. It is because he possesses white gold, a metal foreign to the Land that gives its bearer the ability to invoke "wild magic," though Covenant can never understand just how to do something like this. It is a cruel irony to Covenant that his power and status come from the wedding ring he still wears after his wife abandoned him. To his anguish, Covenant later finds that Lena and her family are willing to forgive him because they feel he might be able to save the Land. With the help of Lena's mother and a friendly Giant names Saltheart Foam- follower, Covenant finds the Lords in the fortress of Revelstone and they eventually travel off to meet the menace Covenant was warned about. Much of the first book is taken up with this getting the reader acquianted with the Land, a place that assaults the senses with a texture deeper than any found in the real world. Love, hate, cold, heat, rage, passion all seem to exist here but in far greater depths than Covenant is familiar with. There are several examples of the kind of writing Donaldson uses to express this imagery with words; I have chosen one passage from the time when Covenant and Atiaran (Lena's mother) wait for the Celebration of Spring: "Waiting was not difficult. First Atiaran passed bread and the last of her springwine to him, and eating and drinking eased some of his weariness. Then, as the night deepened, he found that the air which flowed up to them from the bowl had a lush, restful effect. When he took it far into his lungs, it seemed to unwind his cares and dreads, setting everything but itself behind him and lifting him into a state of calm suspense. He relaxed in he gentle breeze, settled himself more comfortably against the tree. Atiaran's shoulder touched his with warmth, as if she had forgien him. The night deepened, and the stars gleamed expectantly, and the breeze sifted the cobwebs and dust from Covenant's heart--and waiting was not difficult." This is one of the shorter passages that gives the reader some idea about Donaldson's writing style and the approach he is trying to take with the Land. More will be said about this "word imagery" later. At the end of the first book, Covenant is sent home, where several weeks pass. Covenant is called back to the Land to start the second book, this time by the Lords who helped him last time. Covenant finds that 40 years have passed in the Land since he left, and the Lords ask him for his help in a war that Lord Foul is bringing upon the Land. Though his leprosy had returned to him in reality, Covenant is healed again with hurtloam, and he is determined this time to keep his emotions rational and under control. He meets another person from the "real" world named Hile Troy, who was summoned to the Land by a student who had been trying to summon Covenant back, and Troy tells Covenant that Covenant had better appreciate the Land and fight to save it since it is a far more powerful and greater good than anything one could live for in the real world, but Covenant refuses, fearing to risk his sanity. Covenant travels with the High Lord anyway in an attempt to help her unlock a hidden source of power. His actions eventually lead Covenant to feel an even greater responsibility for what happens to the Land, a responsibility he fears but by the time of the third book, decides to accept in an attempt to redeem himself. With two of his companions from the first two books, Covenant seeks out a final confrontation with Lord Foul. By the end of the First Chronicles, it still isn't entirely clear that Covenant hasn't just been having an extravagant halluciantion, and this is a problem Donaldson eventually leaves for the reader to decide. Either way, Covenant is left to deal with it. The Second Chronicles begins 10 years later, as Covenant and a doctor named Linden Avery are all but forced to return to the Land where 4000 years have passed. Now, Foul promises Covenant, there will be no choice but for Covenant to utterly give up his will and do what Foul wants. As the title indicates, the Land Covenant was familiar with is now "Wounded" and in fact filled with pain and evil. Somehow, Covenant is numb to the rich textures that were once present in the Land, but Linden feels everything that is going on and is nearly driven insane with the sickness inherent in most everything she sees. The two manage to journey across the Land to Revelstone as Covenant seeks out answers to why everything is so warped, and along the way, he is repeatedly infected with a venom that Foul has purposely designed in order to enable Covenant to more easily use his white gold. Covenant eventually learns that he must journey to the One Tree, a legendary tree of Earthpower from which the original Staff of Law (an implement that helped preserve the natural order of things in the past) was fashioned. With the help of several companions along the way and a mysterious ebony creature named Vain (given to him by the ghosts of his old friends from the First Chronicles), Covenant and Linden go on a quest to find the answers they need to fight Lord Foul. Along the way, they meet the Elohim, a race of beings who seem to be the manifestation of the power in the Earth, and the Brathair, a desert people. Eventually, they return to the Land to fight Foul's servants and Foul himself. Linden's will is repeatedly put to the test as she is exposed to the relentless evil in the Land, and she and Covenant must both survive an ultimate test of wills against Lord Foul in order to escape the madness and try to save the Land. This whole series of six books was very profound for me. Every once in a while, I go back and reread the Chronicles (the only other author who regularly gets rereadings is Brust) just to pick up something that I missed before. The story is THAT deep. I always come away from it with a new image of the Land and scenes from the book. A lot of it comes from Donaldson's almost overflowing use of description. Who has read Donaldson and not come away with a clear mental portrait of Lord Mhoram, Kinslaughterer and his horrible walk through Coercri, Gibbon or Foamfollower? Finally, some advice on how to approach reading this epic. The Chronicles are unique among many of the epic fantasies that have been written in that they deal with more complex and uncomfortable emotions. There isn't another series out there in which the author goes to such great lengths to spark a reaction, positive or negative, from the reader. It could be argued that a majority of readers come away with a negative impression of Donaldson after reading the first half of the first book. Many of these readers vow never to pick it up again, and the new reader may feel the same way. There's nothing wrong at all with this rationale for not wanting to read the series (criticizing the series because of this, however, is unjustified, and I see it happen too often). I think a lot of the negative reaction comes from frustration. Most readers new to Covenant have had it very strongly recommended to them by someone, and so they go in expecting to love the books. You can guess what happens. It's the same thing that happens when someone tells you a movie is "just wonderful!" and then you go in and feel let down when it doesn't live up to the hype. The best way to approach the Chronicles is to read it without any preconceived notions of how good/bad it is going to be (I realize it takes some nerve to say that after a ~200 line review). Just give it a chance. Realize going in that your natural tendency will be to identify with the main character (either Covenant or Linden). Also realize that you will most likely DISlike (or even passionately hate) the main character. I think a lot of readers mix their feelings of dislike for Covenant with their feelings toward the whole series. Other people dislike the series because of the rape scene, and they don't feel comfortable being manipulated into accepting a rapist as the redeemable anti-hero of the series. This, too, is completely understandable. The Chronicles are clearly not for everyone. These people would argue that with the rape scene, Donaldson has gone over the edge in getting us to loathe Covenant. That's an individual decision. The other most persistent criticism of the series is the argument that Donaldson's writing style is too "flowery" or too "hackish." As I argued above, this style of writing is important to the series because of the imagery of the Land. Those who criticize Donaldson in general for not being able to write well should take a look at some of his other work. I think then it becomes clear that the "word imagery" is intentional. Still, there are those who have such a problem with this writing style that they dislike the series. If you feel it detracts from your enjoyment more than it adds to your mental picture of the Land, then you probably will not like the series as much as big fans like myself. The information below is a capsule summary of the titles of all six books. _Lord_Foul's_Bane_, _The_Illearth_War_ and _The_Power_That_ _Preserves_ are the three books of the "First" Chronicles. _The_Wounded_ _Land_, _The_One_Tree_ and _White_Gold_Wielder_ make up the "Second" Chronicles. The publishing information is from my (very old) copies... there have been a few newer versions in the bookstores since then, but they are easily found in just about any bookstore with a fantasy/sf section. %A Donaldson, Stephen R. %T Lord Foul's Bane %T The Illearth War %T The Power That Preserves %T The Wounded Land %T The One Tree %T White Gold Wielder %S The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever %S The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever %I Del Rey Fantasy %C New York %D August 1978 %G ISBN 0-345-29657-5 %O paperback, US$3.95 %P 2000 pp. Doug Ingram // ingram@u.washington.edu // "Carpe Datum" From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 02:03:10 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca (Aaron V. Humphrey) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Prograde Reviews--Stephen R. Donaldson:The Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 19 May 1994 01:04:49 GMT Organization: The Anna Amabiaca Fan Club Lines: 55 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <2rdt0o$fh@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> Reply-To: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu Stephen R. Donaldson: The Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge A Prograde Review by Aaron V. Humphrey The first book in the Gap series would have been almost perfect as a standalone. In fact, it was initially written as such. But having read the next book in the series, I can't regret that he decided to continue the story. The Gap series focuses around three characters--Angus Thermopyle, a pirate; Nick Succorso, another pirate; and Morn Hyland, a member of the United Mining Company Police. Neither Angus nor Nick is a really sympathetic character, but Donaldson uses his talent for making you sympathize with the unlikeliest of people. Angus is scum, with few morals and fewer scruples, but he has a tenacity that you can't help but respect. He takes an unfortunate background role in this book after his starring role in the last one. Much of the book is about Morn Hyland's self-corruption and deception of Nick Succorso. She plays the game about as far as she can before Nick finds her out, and even then is ultimately victorious. Nick is nowhere near as sympathetic as even Angus(despite his much better public reputation), and by the end of the book you will likely end up hating him as much as Morn does. In the middle of this are some highly interesting science-fictional ideas. Datacores(a form of write-once memory used to record _everything_ shipboard for UMCP perusal)were explored in the first book, but are more precisely explained here...the zone implant(a device implanted into the brain which allows control of much behaviour)is also more fully explored, especially since Morn, implanted in the last book, has her own control for much of this book... You also get to explore Forbidden Space, and the alien race of the Amnion, whose idea of communication is to use mutagenic viruses to make you into their image. And the tension rarely lets up for more than a few pages, as Morn plays a dangerous game for her survival... %A Donaldson, Stephen R. %T The Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D July 1991 %G ISBN 0-553-29760-0 %O Paperback, USD5.99, CAD6.99 %P 455 pp. %S Gap %V Book 2 -- --Alfvaen(Editor of Communique) Current Album--Brian Eno:Another Green World Current Read--Sheri S. Tepper:Sideshow "Thinks again--thanks to brain, the new wonder head-filler!" --Bluebottle