Fatal Revenant: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

For those of you who have not read the previous seven books in this epic, I urge you to do so. To try and write a synopsis of all that has gone before would require yet another book. Much easier, more enjoyable and more uplifting to read from the beginning. You will not be disappointed.
For those of you who have suffered through all of Covenant's throes, you have probably already ordered this book. I think Donaldson's writing has gotten even better: sharper, more precise, and more able than ever to exact emotion from his readers. This is one painful book. But, as you know, they are all painful. And joyful as well. The balance is absolute.
The story of Thomas Covenant has been with me from the beginning, from the very first book back in 1977. I no longer crave fantasy as I did when younger, but these stories are such a part of my life, that I have no problem falling back into them. What Donaldson has done, perhaps better than any other fantasy writer, is to create characters whose utter frailties and incredible strengths are far more important that the colorful imaginative backgrounds in which they have to function. These stories are about everyone, and all of the battles life requires of us. They are not like those hugely expensive watch only once CGI films which are full of eye-candy and nothing else. They are very solid and enduring literature.
I might also add that I find it reprehensible that Genre writers, many of whom are far, far better writers than those on the NY Times Bestseller LIst, are not given credence as great writers by those who are able to bestow the accolades. Genre is not considered serious or great literature, which surely leaves such writers as Shakespeare, Poe,Wells, Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, T.H. White, and any number of others out in the cold.
I might also add that every single reviewer has given this book five stars. That, in itself, is enough.

It took me a week... life gets in the way... but I finally finished FR last night.

While I was not disappointed with ROTE (4 stars), reading it I felt the same degree of strangeness as I did after beginning The Wounded Land so many years ago. SRD does this, of course - we want to expect more of the same, but he turns the tables on us by unmaking a lot of what has gone before. The result, after you deal with this uncomfortable self-imposed barrier that comes with the implications of new situations, is so much more. Any shock and reluctance turns to realization and awe. ROTE was an excellent novel, yet I had to come to terms with the fact that it was an introduction to what appears to be an impressive third act. It is with FR that we discover the depth and implications of what I can only hope will continue to be an incredible story.

How can it be that after 8 volumes of dedication to the same mythology it can still feel fresh and new. The writing is better - a lot happens in this book - in that it is more efficiently focused and well paced, improving on already literary standards. The same themes are present as in the past volumes, but the implications are far deeper and more disturbing. I will not discuss any plot elements, there is no need to expand in this regard here (details can be obtained elsewhere). Suffice it to say true fans of the series will recognize and appreciate classic Donaldson elements. They will not be disappointed.

I did want to dedicate a paragraph to a particular criticism I have read regarding this series and other works from SRD over the years, not necessarily only here, but also in other sites. To those who complain about SRD's love affair with his thesaurus to the detriment of readability: get over it - and learn. If the style does not appeal to you, stop reading. But don't criticize and justify by saying (in a round about way) that you are not willing to make the effort. Many started reading TC when they were very young (and limited in vocabulary), and somehow could still immerse themselves in a great story. Other criticisms are, in my opinion, far more open to subjectability and have to do with personal tastes in storytelling, but it offends me when any author is sometimes brazenly criticized for choosing a style which should raise our level of literacy, if only we are willing to make an effort

To conclude: amazing new installment. The knot in your stomach on reading the cliffhanger at the end is something that I welcome, and kind of wish would not go away.

Wow. What an incredible journey. What amazing charactors. I too am a longtime fan of Donaldson and I think this might be his best book ever. I laughed, I cried, I cheered, I jeered, I got angry, I got frustrated, I pounded my head on the desk and I loved every word that evoked all those emotions throughtout this masterpiece of a novel. It's brilliant simply brilliant. If you are a fan of fantasy and you haven't read Donaldson, then you are missing out on some of the best fantasy ever written. I repeat another reviewer's suggestion, for those who haven't read any of this series you should start with "Lord Foul's Bane."

Fatal Revenant was so much more than I expected, in many ways.

I've read the First and Second Chronicles countless times over the years. I've treasured them, as part of a small niche in the sea of fantasy that transcends the genre. To my mind, these books are about humanity, and the cost of choices. They speak about the price of love, and the eye of paradox. The fact that they take place in a magical realm is only secondary, a useful tool for Donaldson to paint a broad canvas. Most fantasy is content to explore the archetypes, Donaldson is giving us story in a pure and potent form.

I remember as a young adult coming to the second chronicles with shock and distate. All that Donaldson had created, and all Covenant had defende, in the first chronicles was rent from the reader and twisted. It was a difficult challenge to adjust. But with time, I started to mine the gems of 2nd Chronicles. Eventually, they took their place in my mind as novels I will never forget (as novels I need).

Something similar happened in the 3rd Chronicles. Again Donaldson has changed all the rules on us. Runes of the Earth was difficult to accept, Covenant was a memory - Linden Avery was the new protaganist. It almost didn't work. But Fatal Revenant is the payoff for trusting Donaldson through Avery's interminable monologues. It is spiraling, floating way above his other works. This is his best novel (better than anything in Mordant's Need, or the Gap series, or the The Man Who). This is a triumph, but I don't have the skills to tell you why. If you have any interest in Thomas Covenant or the Land read this book. If you don't know Thomas Covenent or the Land, run *don't stop*, to the page about Lord Foul's Bane---and enjoy.

EDIT: Initially, I was slightly critical of Donaldson's word choices. We all know that he picks and chooses words carefully, and nowhere do we see his wordsmithing at play more than in the Covenant series. In Fatal Revenant, it seemed to me that he had gone overboard with his use of so-called $10 words, even by his standards, and I voiced a concern that some readers might find that the book required too much work to get through. While I can't disagree with that concern - I know that his use of language turns people off - I have a different take on it now.

When you do the extra work required, you're more often than not rewarded. Sometimes you'll find hidden humor, sometimes added depth. In my experience, it's rare to find a word that he absolutely shouldn't have used, or that he should have replaced with a simpler synonym, because the word he chose is precise. Not all synonyms mean the same thing. To use a very simple example, "black" is a synonym of "dark". So is "gloomy". All three words have very specific definitions.

A sentence that I picked out as initially frustrating became beautiful when I went one step beyond looking the words up and thought about how they were used, where they were used, and then, of course, why. Some fine folks at Kevin's Watch were most helpful in this, and went a long way toward helping me see my error. That sentence appears on page 229 of the American hardcover (this version), and is as follows: "'You can hear me,' she pronounced, speaking now in lambent chrysoprase and jacinth rather than saffron blots."

I won't say a word about this sentence, because doing so would be giving away a REAL gem in the book, but I'm pointing it out to make sure that YOU do the work I was initially too lazy to do. It will help you appreciate the scene. I promise.

THE BOOK

**NO Fatal Revenant (FR) spoilers in this review.**

There were some (not me) who thought The Runes of the Earth (ROTE) was not all it could be, and by extension thought The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant were a disappointment. I want to address those Doubting Thomas's first.

Donaldson raises the stakes so high in Fatal Revenant (FR) that it was difficult, at times, to wonder how he was going to pull it off. I'll be honest: I doubted that he could do it, and I'm a true, dedicated (not obsessive, thank you) fan. However, after turning the final page of FR and sadly setting the book aside, I'm more than a little embarrassed to admit that my ability to express my emotions and thoughts had been significantly diminished. Rational cogitation evaded me entirely, and I felt like the teenager I was when I first stumbled on Donaldson in the early 1980s (gulp). All that ran through my mind, in a continuous loop, and for about five minutes was, "Dude! This is awesome!" And it was. It is. I hold Donaldson to a higher standard than most writers, because he's earned it. Not only did he meet meet my already inflated expectations, he by far exceeded them. To say that I'm anxiously awaiting the third book is like saying that as a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan, I really want them to win a World Series. (The third book will likely arrive first...*sigh*)

So, to those disappointed by ROTE, to those unsure as to whether you want to continue reading, I say: READ! THIS! BOOK!

***If you haven't read ROTE, please skip the next paragraph. (You really shouldn't need this warning anyway, should you? You know better. )***

At the end of ROTE, Linden Avery discerned six figures riding to Revelstone. "One was Jeremiah; her son beyond question... The other stranger was unmistakably Thomas Covenant." If you're a fan, you've been waiting three years to find out how or why Jeremiah seemingly regained control of his mind, and why Covenant is corporeal (he's supposed to be dead, after all).

Donaldson will answer your questions, and the answers will stagger and satisfy you, and leave you gasping for more. In typical Donaldson fashion - and something he's been getting better and better at over the years - the answers, or solutions to the problems, aren't what they seem. Nothing is. Hellfire - Covenant, alive? Jeremiah, talkative and energetic? Surely this is impossible.

The book opens with Linden facing a corporeal Covenant, and a responsive Jeremiah. Please: Read the first few chapters carefully. Don't speed through them in a mad desperate dash to start the marathon run to the finish, because if you do, several events leading up to the ending, and the ending itself (Donaldson has become, I daresay, the master of the cliffhanger) might not make a bit of sense to you. For that matter, the entire book should be read carefully. After finishing this book I see more and more why Donaldson thought that he needed to take time away and work on other projects before coming back to this. Most fantasies - his First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant included - are fairly straightforward in their presentation. That's why The First Chronicles had such a broad appeal. They most certainly were not simple - when you scratched the surface, there was surprising depth - but you could, at thirteen years of age, read the books and fully enjoy them without looking into the vast abyss of nuance Donaldson wrote with. While I don't want to say that young readers should be wary of these books, they have layers and layers of subtlety and subtext. I expected Donaldson to write a book that made me think, but I wasn't expecting to be addled and befuddled, and I just want to say THANK YOU to SRD for writing a book that that caused so much cerebration.

Linden needs answers. The Demondim are at Revelstone's gate. The Mahdoubt is nowhere to be found. Covenant and Jeremiah are too foreign for her to trust completely, and so Esmer is her only resource. His duality often prohibits him from speaking clearly, and his aid often creates more problems than it solves. The book starts out with a simple (yeah, right) quest, and her companions are two who should bring more delight to her than any: Covenant and Jeremiah. But they do not, because she cannot physically touch them, something she longs to do, for reasons I'll let Donaldson dramatize. But imagine Linden's grief. After ten years in the "real world", and several audacious days in the Land (ROTE), Covenant and Jeremiah stand before her, restored. The only man she ever loved, and her son.

Essentially, this book is about the choices she makes. Perhaps she was dubbed "The Chosen" for more reasons than we know.

SELECTED VERBOSITY

I feel the need to address some reviewers concerns regarding ROTE, if only because I wouldn't want those reviews to dissuade someone from reading it and, thus, this book. Addressing those here is germane to the topic at hand, I believe, for reasons that should become obvious. Some reviews have said that The Last Chronicles suffer from original, inventive characters like Pitchwife or Saltheart Foamfollower, and they have said that this is a detriment to the series. I would argue with that. First, we know that this is a time travel story. To think that we won't go back in time and meet some folks we've been aching to meet for the past seven books wouldn't be logical. I'm not saying that we will, mind you, I'm just saying that the likelihood (and I thought the same before reading ROTE) is pretty darn good. Second, remember that Donaldson's mind is fertile (the Amnion, anyone?). Do we really think that the only characters that we will encounter are the ones we've met in ROTE? After satisfying first books in his first and second Covenant series, Lord Foul's Bane and The Wounded Land, respectively, he introduced us to people, races and creatures that left us in awe of his creative muscle. In the Illearth War, he gave us Hile Troy, Elena, and Amok. In The One Tree we had the Elohim, Kasreyn, and the Sandgorgons. Think back to how brilliantly Donaldson's world opened up to us.

Have faith. You will be well rewarded.

The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant began with Donaldson setting the pieces on the board with great care. Since the First Chronicles, Donaldson's writing has at times reminded me of a chess master. While he is not plodding, as one reviewer here wrote of ROTE, he is meticulous in the placement of his pieces. When I finished reading The Real Story: The Gap Into Conflict, the first book of his five-book space opera, The Gap Series, I couldn't see how he was going to get five books out of it and frankly really didn't care about reading the next book, Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision. Yet he did get five books out of that, and the universe that he unveiled to his grateful readers was breathtaking in its conceptual amplitude. It was like being inside the tiniest Russian doll, and escaping, to find that there's a larger doll, then a larger doll, etc., and finally you escape and you're in, well, Russia. Maybe not as exciting as warm and inviting as Hawaii, but you get the idea.

Regarding the "sameness" of everything. Why are the Haruchai still the Haruchai? Why is Foul still around? The Ramen? The Ranyhyn? Shouldn't things have changed in the Land? Why hasn't technology replaced "magic"? After all, it's been about seven (?) thousand years since Thomas Covenant first appeared. And what about this Linden character? Isn't she annoying?

Foul is still around because he can't be killed. We know this. The power required to kill him - even were it possible - would break the Arch of Time, and that would fulfill Foul's plans nicely. As to the races - well, realize that the Land itself is a very small area, and it's fairly well secluded. It shouldn't be terribly surprising that things are still so similar. I'd agree with someone if they argued that things don't need to be so exact. For example, Mithil Stonedown is still Mithil Stonedown. In seven thousand years (granted, different world, different rules) what's Chicago going to look like? What did Chicago, for that matter, look like seven thousand years ago.

With regard to technology, that's really the easiest issue to deal with. Necessity breeds invention. If you have magic, and it provides everything you need, then hasn't necessity been taken out of the picture? Without need, there is no desire to explore any further than with what you have already. How many thousands of years did people live on this, our Earth, with the only answers available to them, and the only answers required by them, provided by their religion/mythology?

About Linden. There's a "group" who call themselves THOOLAH, The Holy Order of Linden Avery Haters. It's a bit extreme for me. I understand that Donaldson's characters aren't always likeable (Covenant's first act in the land in Lord Foul's Bane was to rape a girl), but that's kind of the point. Would you rather be reading about morally altruistic characters like Richard and Kahlan from Goodkind's universe? If so, that's great, no harm done. But I prefer my characters to not only have grey spots on their morality gauge, I like them to be *real*. Whine all you want about *Linden's* whining (regarding her son), but find me a mother that wouldn't be doing and thinking and struggling *exactly* as she is. Good luck. (I mean no offense to THOOLAH members, or anyone who simply doesn't like Linden, and while I don't care for Goodkind's work at all, I mean no offense to his fans either.)

If you'll indulge me in a final burst of verbosity:

When I saw the cover art for Fatal Revenant - the main image, a figure of a wizardly-looking chap bearded and robed in snowy white - I cringed. It was bad enough that Del Rey tried to cash in on the success of The Lord of the Rings movies by releasing mass market paperback editions of The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant with pastel covers displaying a *yellow* gold wedding ring. (They hoped that the new readers of fantasy that the LOTR movies gave birth to would see a gold ring while perusing the shelves at their local bookstore, and think, Hey! I need to read this Tolkien knock-off - which it most certainly is not.) The problem there is that our buddy Tom wore a *white* gold wedding ring, and it is the nature of the alloy of white gold that formed the paradox of "white wild magic gold" in the Land. Now we are treated to what looks to me, and probably every fan of fantasy extant, Gandalf the White or, as depicted in the films, perhaps the figure more closely resembles Saruman. Let me reassure you that neither Gandalf nor Saruman appear in this or any other Covenant book. Who is it then? I'm not saying, but even a casual reader of the Covenant series should be able to make a good guess.

Happy Reading. Donaldson himself said that we would be going on a ride. I am more anxious, now, given how high he has raised the stakes, to see the third book than I was this one. The next three years will go very slowly.