Thomas Covenant starts out as an ass and … well I don’t want to ruin the ending except to say I kept reading to see if he ever got less assholeish. Way back when I young and starved for fantasy books, after finishing LotR for the second time, Convenant was a bit of fresh air. In the same vein as LotR without being to derivative like some books I could mention. There are some excellent scenes that I still remember 30 some years later. Ultimately the story as a whole didn’t really lead anywhere so I have to echo others in this thread and say, life is too short to read books you don’t feel like reading. Lot’s of good fantasy these days, or so I hear, that you could spend your time with.
I LIKED the Thomas Covenant books (both the first and the second series) but I liked them more for The Land than for Covenant. The Land is fascinating, and the rest of that world likewise. But I’m a Subcreation (as Tolkien phrased it) freak…I’ve owned, at various times, the Karen Wynn Fonstad atlases of The Land, Pern and Middle-Earth, and I practically collect “A Guide To” books (Vampire Chronicles, Mayfair Witches, World of Wheel of Time, etc.) and D&D setting sourcebooks. I love worlds more than stories sometimes.
I slogged through all the (too-heavy-handedly-written) books, and I found myself identifying with Tom: He was in The Land without wanting to be there, and I WAS TOO!
Okay! [puts down Time Traveler’s Whatever, picks up another Animorphs book] Ahhh…
I sort of enjoyed the books when I read them, but I’ve never had more than a tiny urge to read them again. If I did, I might skip around just to read about the Giants and the Blood Guard, who were great characters.
Donaldson seemed to know how cool they were compared to his main character, since he got a separate book published just to let us read the excised chapter about Banor, and Saltheart Foamfollower has become a god-like figure by the second trilogy.
Still, if I’m ever called to cut a bad guy in half with a sword, I might shout “Melenkurion abatha! Duroc minas mil khabaal!” as I landed the stroke.