I read some thread on the SD referencing this series, about how they were going to turn it into a movie, and about how he was basically “unsanitisable”. Well, curiousity got the best of me (insert joke about Cats and curiousity here) and I bought the first book second hand off Amazon.
Blazed through that in a night. Stayed up til 3, but I finished it.
Ordered the next book. Got it in the mail a few days later, chew it up as well.
Just finished the third book. Just ordered ALL THREE of the second series.
Something tells me I’m going to be awake the whole night sometime next week…
I did the same back in high school in '81. In fact, I still have the exact same three paperbacks that I originally read, and despite the fact that I loved them (though they did disturb my young 18-year-old mind somewhat) I will never upgrade to handsome hardback editions. They’re like “comfort” copies–they’re actual pieces of my past I can touch.
Never tried to read any more follow-up trilogies.
Damn, maybe after 24 years it is time to read them again.
Thanks for the memories this thread brought back… Saltheart Foamfollower, right?
They were the first books I remember reading in which the protagonist is generally unlikable. You sympathize fairly easily with almost everyone around Covenant, but it’s much harder to get behind the Unbeliever himself.
I still think if I ever have occasion to take on a small army with nothing but a broadsword, I’ll just have to shout, “Melinkurion abatha! Durok minas mil kabball!” [Forgive the poor spelling of the Lord’s language–I did that from memory, and I last read those books about the time that ‘White Gold Wielder’ came out in hardcover.] It’s just plain a cool battlecry.
By the way, if you want a little added treat, try to find a copy of ‘Gilden-Fire’, the chapter that was edited out of ‘The Illearth War.’ It tells of the adventures of Bannor(?) when he was separated from Covenant for a while. It was taken out because the book was too long and it was the only part not from Thomas’ POV. Kind of weakens the Unbeliever thing if people exist when they aren’t with the guy.
Not bad! It’s "Melenkurion abatha! Duroc minas mil khabaal!
A great addition to any library! Thanks for reminding me! I’ll fish out my copy.
Donaldson borrowed a lot from Tolkien. Berek halfhand: Beren the one-handed. The powerful ring. And the Lord’s tongue sure sounded a lot like a melange of JRRT’s languages.
Well, just be prepared for a radically different feel. While the first chronicles have their occasional dark and dreary moments, the second chronicles have their occasional warm and fuzzy moments. Actually, no they don’t. All dark and dreary, all the time.
Every time I read all 6 books, I always dreaded the second chronicles because of the downer they were. Even worse, the second book seemed to go on for hundreds of pages with no plot advancement. I grew to like it eventually, but the first read-through made me almost bail from the slowness. And don’t get me started on the final confrontation in the last book.
Still, I’m a big fan of all 6 works. I’m convinced it’s because of the titles. Nobody had cooler titles than Covenant.
Let me know when you get to “They were featureless and telic, like lambent gangrene. They looked horribly like children.” God knows Tolkien’s prose could be bad, but Donaldson’s? Buy a thesaurus, is my advice.
Not Bannor, unless I’m horribly confused. He wasn’t on the mission to Seareach; indeed, those Bloodguard that were got corrupted by the fragment of Illearth Stone that they removed from the corpse of the Giant-Raver Kinslaughterer, and Bannor was one of the Bloodguard that had to fight them when they showed up.
This sounds like he did buy a thesaurus, and used it at every opportunity.
But I enjoyed the books, and read them at the same time Sir Rhosis did (and I was the same age, too.)
I never made it past the first book that Avery was in, though.
A lot of people have complained about Donaldson’s language in the series, but it was the obscure language that helped me “step out” of the real world and buy into the fact that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Almost as if I was understanding a foreign language I’d never heard before. I guess it’s the geeky part of me coming out. (About the only example I can remember is when one of the characters used the word"aliment" to refer to “food”. )
It made sense to me that the second series sounded more real world in that Linden Avery became an important focus.
Not that I thought the books were perfect, though. The protagonist could be a whiny bugger, couldn’t he? Sometimes I just wanted to shout, “Jeez. Get a grip already!”
Man, this thread takes me back. I, too stayed up all night reading the books in the series (not all 6 in the same night, though). Now I’m wanting to go read them again.
I’m trying to get this book (can you tell I’ve already finished the second chronicles?) and Amazon tells me it’s only going to be publised on the 21st of April.
I’ve only read the Covenant books once, but I did like them once I learned to skim over the unusual word choices. I had a hard time getting into them; it took me about a month to read the first half of Lord Foul’s Bane. Then I finished that one, read all of The Illearth War and the first ~50 pages of The Power That Preserves and stalled. I finally went back a month or so later and finished.
I still haven’t read White Gold Wielder. I finished The One Tree about six months ago and have not been able to get myself to read the last one. Don’t know why.
The Illearth War is my favorite book of the series, though I don’t know whether that is because it actually is better, or because it’s the only one I read straight through all at once.
I’m waiting for the whole Last Chronicles to come out before I start those, though. And maybe then I’ll actually get around to reading White Gold Wielder.
That must be the second book in the “Last chronicles”, which I can’t remember the title of off-hand. It’s mentioned on the “Read the further adventures of Linden et al in {title goes here}” page of Runes. The first volume was published back in October.
