The Last Dark: The climax of the entire Thomas Covenant Chronicles Author: Stephen R. Donaldson | Language: English | ISBN:
B00C5R7446 | Format: EPUB
The Last Dark: The climax of the entire Thomas Covenant Chronicles Description
“It will take a long time for fans or critics to digest and appreciate Donaldson's almost 40-year achievement. But in time “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant” will be seen as one of the self-defining works of the third millennium, our equivalent in scope and ambition of earlier epics and fantasies, from Virgil's “Aeneid” to Tennyson's “Arthurian Idylls” and Tolkien's “Lord of the Rings,” the last now a lifetime (Donaldson's own) in the past.” -The Wall Street Journal Compelled step by step to actions whose consequences they could neither see nor prevent, Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery have fought for what they love in the magical reality known only as "the Land." Now they face their final crisis. Reunited after their separate struggles, they discover in each other their true power--and yet they cannot imagine how to stop the Worm of the World’s End from unmaking Time. Nevertheless they must resist the ruin of all things, giving their last strength in the service of the world's continuance.
- File Size: 3486 KB
- Print Length: 593 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0399159207
- Publisher: Putnam Adult (October 15, 2013)
- Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00C5R7446
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,717 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
If you are reading this review, then there is no point in recapping the series (incidentally, the "story so far" summary at the beginning of THE LAST DARK is one of the most lucid and well-written for a series this monumentally long that I have ever read).
I have been looking forward to this summation of Covenant's and Linden Avery's stories for many years and parts of this book were entirely satisfying in that regard. I will begin by talking about the things that I thought were very well done, followed by a few problems that I regret mar this book for me and cost it two stars. Spoilers ahead, although I will try to be circumspect!
Pros:
1) Lots of Giants (but, see also, the cons below). The Giants are one of the most affecting recurring characters in the Covenant canon. Donaldson took some pains to clarify what it means that "joy is in the ears that hear, not the mouth that speaks." There is a surprising level of angst with the Giants in this book that is partially settled by a kind of caamora which readers will recognize from an earlier book. That said, Giants are the characters whose nobility and capacity for courage and sacrifice are made archetypal rather than caricatured. I will always be haunted by Baf Scatterwit and how beloved she is by her crewmates.
2) The Haruchai. These are arguably the most carefully considered characters in the series. They are flawed, though immensely admirable, and Donaldson obviously venerates them and their lives of passion and service.
There are some spoilers in here, but I can't really imagine that's an issue -- if you read the first NINE books in the series, you're GOING to read the tenth, if you haven't already. And if you haven't read the other nine, you're not going to start here, are you? Nonetheless, here's my review of this book in particular and the series as a whole.
In 1980, my Senior year in High School, my brother returned home from his Freshman year in college and gave me a birthday present of a book that he'd heard would be good for a Science Fiction fan like myself. "Thanks!" I effused, thinking how stupid my brother was for not knowing the difference between Sci-Fi and Fantasy. But a voracious reader leaves no book unread, so soon I found myself slogging through fifty pages or so of a depressing story about a leper in modern society, outcast and unwelcome, hated by everyone around him, and feeling smug about just how much of an idiot my brother was.
Until......suddenly I was introduced to a Land where health and beauty are tangible things, where power and authority are palpable and used to serve noble purposes instead of as tools of mendacity and greed, where corruption and goodness are deified in the personage of good and evil Lords. This was a world that could be loved by a tech geek that was bored to tears by "The Hobbit", these were people and beings that deserved the utmost respect and affection. But in this world of health, beauty and respect, a normal man with normal human foibles and a profound illness has a hard time fitting in, especially when it's vividly pointed out to him just how much he's lost, how mundane and empty his normal human life has become.
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