nce upon a time, Dr. Linden Avery was transported, with the leper Thomas Covenant, to another world. In this world, known as "the Land," Thomas was not only healthy, he was a hero, and the wielder of "wild magic." He and Linden found the Land threatened by his old foe, Lord Foul the Despiser. Foul sought to break the Arch of Time; his success would destroy both Land and Earth. Thomas Covenant paid the ultimate price to defeat the Despiser.
Ten years after returning to Earth, Linden still grieves for Thomas, with whom she'd fallen in love. She finds consolation in her demanding work at Berenford Memorial Psychiatric Hospital and in caring for her beloved adopted son, Jeremiah, whom trauma has left in an autistic state.
Then Thomas' son, Roger Covenant, enters Linden's life. She wants him to leave immediately. He looks entirely too much like his father, and his character seems entirely unlike his father's. Linden's distrust is justified when Roger kidnaps two people: his insane mother, who is Linden's patient, and Linden's helpless son. In the ensuing violence, Linden returns to the Land—and Roger delivers her patient and her son to Lord Foul.
Linden discovers that she has arrived in the Land far from Foul, and that more than 3,000 years have passed here since she and Thomas Covenant defeated the Despiser—a defeat that has proven temporary. Foul has renewed his attack on the Arch of Time—and now, because he has Thomas' wife, he possesses the powerful wild magic once wielded only by Thomas. How can Linden defeat the Despiser, save two worlds and rescue her son and patient, when she and Thomas together couldn't stop a much weaker Lord Foul?
Confounding expections
Like most high fantasy series written in the wake of The Lord of the Rings, Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant has some resemblances to J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy. However, most of these resemblances occur as reversals. Tolkien and other high fantasists create damaged lands that are healed by the rightful king's assumption of his throne; Donaldson's Thomas Covenant is no king, nor even a native of the wounded world he is supposed to save. Instead, Thomas was born in the democratic United States, and he seriously doubts the Land is real. Too, he is sometimes antiheroic, committing dark deeds unimaginable for the protagonists of other fantasy epics.
Donaldson and Tolkien have strong, distinctive and very different voices. Readers seeking prose as majestic, fluid and clear as Tolkien's probably won't like The Runes of the Earth. Donaldson's dialogue is more stilted than stately, and his prose is stiff and occasionally opaque.
Like Tolkien and other fantasists, Donaldson invents new words for his invented peoples and monsters. But he goes further, giving old words new meanings. Unfortunately, his new meanings are difficult or impossible to decipher. One battle scene in The Runes of the Earth describes "[b]lood and shredded flesh [that] articulated the dust" (p. 515). If the dust is articulated, it is either talking or has jointed limbs. Neither interpretation makes sense. Here, as in too many other places, The Runes of the Earth leaves readers with no idea what Donaldson means.
Though their series are significantly different, Donaldson's treatment of his characters resembles Tolkien's: Both put their characters into horrific situations and subject them to great physical and emotional pain. Such extreme harshness foils readers' hopes and expectations. And it's by confounding readers that both Tolkien and Donaldson have earned millions of fans.
